#olympuspen

OF GOODBYES, GRAVITIES, AND GROWTHS Let me pick these broken pieces and turn it into gold

iii.    t h e    e n d    o f    a n    e r a i have been here before, and i remember how i loathed that specific feeling. i was in a bad place when that happened over a year ago; yet i fought for it and won. but this time it is inevitable, after five long years of having my day job, i am now closing this chapter of my life. again, it was not really a choice of mine because somehow, i have this doubt that asks me if i can get through without this work i consider my bread and butter, but perhaps fate has other plans and i just need to hold on to that faith that this is a redirection rather than another rejection. so as much as i still want to keep this safety net, i have to accept that it ends here, and instead of feeling the weight of another loss, surprisingly i have accepted it lightly and i was just truly grateful for those five years — for this job saved me on many counts, especially during the toughest times of the pandemic years ago. something about this year tells me that i have to let go of most things to make room for greater ones. that i have to focus now on what i really want to do in this life, even the ones that generate revenue. so yeah, march of 2020 to july of 2025, that was a good run, and now we’re closing this era. thank you for all the learning from all these past years.

ii.    i n t o    t h e    m y s t i c    i s l a n d perhaps this opportunity truly helped me to accept the difficult things much easier now, because i wasn’t in a bad place, and darkness wasn’t at my doorstep waving at me. perhaps i was saved by these magical gifts life and mother nature gave me, and that i was fortunate enough for all of these perfect timings. for a whole week, i was given a chance to stay and live in the island of sibuyan in romblon. it is because i was part of another cinemalaya film titled raging. the island offered me calmness, and mt. guiting-guiting graced us with her beauty and rage, all at once. the set at most times was muddled, and the weather was not peaceful either, but all storms were endured because of the locals who made us feel welcomed and secured while we were there. during the last day of my stay, heaven knows how i fell in love with how mystical this island actually is — i bathed in the rivers, bathed under the sun’s orange rays, and bathed myself with nature’s rich foliage that reminded me how certainly amazing our earth is. despite the chaos, everything felt like magic and i really want to be back someday.

i.    r e t u r n    t o    f o r m sometimes i am seeing myself as a kid — back at my little cradle, old or new, where i can sleep peacefully, and wake up to mornings with so much love in my heart that i don’t know where or whom i can pour it to. then i see myself spending more and more time at home, the one i built, in the middle of this city that once betrayed me, and i am still here, still believing that simple days in this little room are the always the best days.

I've been having a tough time fixing a persistent light leak in my Olympus PEN FV half-frame film SLR. I replaced the light seals (twice!) to no avail. The leaks presisted.

So by my brother's advice, I inserted a roll of film, advanced it a few frames, fired a shot to mark the location of the shutter and let it stand on the sunny windowsill for a day. I then opened the camera in a dark bag, extracted the film and cut the used-up strip from the canister. I then loaded it into a patterson tank and developed the film.

I did this twice as the first time I didn't load the film into a reel and inserted with a light-blocking spool properly into my Patterson tank, which exposed the entire roll. My second attempt yielded me the results I wanted.

The leak appeared clearly on the roll and I could see where it could be coming from by aligning the last shot's exposed frame to the shutter opening in the camera. But to my surprise, the leak didn't come from anywhere near the film door. Instead, it looked to be coming from somewhere in the spooling area where the camera wound the film onto from the canister.

I took the camera apart and found the leak: a missing screw from the strap lug left a hole where the light would leak through from under the top plate. The light would enter through the gaps around the shutter button, bounce around the metallic surfaces on the inside and then filter down the hole from a missing screw.

Coincidentaly, I found that screw earlier inside the bottom plate of the camera as it obstructed the film advance mechanism. I saved it and found useful days later. It's still wild to me how it dislodged and travelled though the camera to create the most annoying light leak ever.

I replaced the screw and fixed the damn leak. But before I could do that, I had to learn how to open the top plate on my PEN FV. It involved using a rubber tool to unscrew a screw without any grip whatsoever and unscrew another screw that worked in the opposite direction of most screws (thanks to this YouTube video).

I took this photo on the remainder of the donor roll, which I confirmed to have zero leaks. At last! I'm also glad to have lubricated the film advance gear for a smooth like-new performance in this sixty-year-old film camera.

And here's what the light leaks looked like before I fixed them:

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透明な…。

涼やかだけど　

とてもとても暑かった日。

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