Left work this morning to see this gorgeous sight filling the sky
Just leaving work this morning after a long night shift. It appeared very red outside, as I looked behind as I got to the car I saw this beautiful 180 degree double rainbow over the station at Leicester. Strange thing is it was not raining, I suspect we have some rain incoming.
Have a great day.
Week two of Seven days, seven pictures
Welcome to week two of me documenting my week with one picture every day taken on an old camera that i have previously repaired.
So for week two, we are going to use a Canon Powershot S5 IS Digital Bridge Camera that I repaired back in July 2025 – Canon Powershot S5 IS
Sunday: it’s the 23rd August. It’s been a nice warm day, we’ve had numerous members of the family visit. It’s been a lovely day. It’s one of those days where I’ve taken a handful of good photos, but for the purpose of this post I have to be brutal and pic just one. So here it is, meet Barney, my nieces dog, we brought him a new toy today that was demolished within about twenty minutes. If it has a squeaker in it, it’s his dog bound duty to remove it, and the balls of stuffing surrounding him shows that this mission has been a success. He never eats the squeaker though, he always leaves that to one side. Mad, but a lovely dog.
Monday: it’s the 24th August. A bit of shopping today. But before we can go out and do any, we have to wait for the Amazon lady to arrive with more shopping. Did I mention my wife loves shopping?
Tuesday: it’s the 25th August. Working today, and whilst I was carrying out some checks in the Oakham area I couldn’t help but notice the amounts of elderberries on the bushes. I remember as a child collecting lots of these, so my father could make his elderberry wine.
Wednesday: it’s the 26th August. Another working day, and today i was carrying out barrier checks on a number of crossings in our area. This one was at Brooksby crossing just outside of Melton Mowbray.
Thursday: It’s the 27th August. The yard at work, and since I’ve never been to Blackpool tower I may as well show this lovely old, still working traction unit class 37 (37407) named “Blackpool Tower”
Friday: it’s the 28th August. No work today “Hooray” it’s one of those days of just catching up with things. I’ve had to fix an extractor fan in one bathroom and adjust the timings on two other fans, I’ve also put a new raised flower bed under the front window in preparation for the spring bulbs that will be planted in the next few weeks, just letting the soil settle for a while prior to the planting.
Saturday: it’s the 29th August. New shoes. Well for attending football at least, hence they have the club badge embossed on the rear. Heading south today to meet up with family so these will get their first outing today. The weathers still very wet, however wet is wonderful as far as I’m concerned.
Week one of Seven days, seven pictures
I have so many cameras hanging around the place that I have fixed over these last few years. I have therefore decided to select a few of them to do a little series entitled seven days in seven pictures. One camera for each week. I will choose a random camera, and choose one picture on each day that has a little story behind it. For me, just as my working week does, the seven days will run Sunday-Saturday.
It could be from any era of camera I have fixed, and for those who take the time to read my posts you’d realise that it could be anytime from about 1920 to the present day. With all the cameras I currently have (about 125 in storage, and growing) this series could go on longer than the soap opera Coronation street has appeared on the telly box ( That comment will be lost on anyone outside the UK).
So for week one I’m going small, with this lovely little portable camera.
A Nikon Coolpix L22, I repaired this way back in 2023, I was going to pass it on to a family member, kind of pleased I kept hold of it though. Here’s the link to the original post: Nikon Coolpix L22
Sunday: it’s the 16th August. I’ve just finished a run of night shifts and for the first time in what seems like months, the temperature has dropped to a nice cool temperature and it’s lovely. To be honest there is only one subject i can choose for today, it’s exactly two years to the day when we lost our beloved little dog Alfie. This is a little display we have on a unit in our living room, often spoken to, touched and stroked, his ashes and pictures dominate this shelf. He was a beautiful and much loved companion and confidant, who we will always miss, he was such a big part of our family. Beautiful boy ❤️
Monday: It’s the 17th August. I’ve been asked by work to do a buckshee night tonight, so the wife and I are going to go out for some lunch today. And today’s photo is from the Grange farm centre where we ate. I go to buy plants, the wife goes to fill the garden with pottery figurines. In this case a couple of sheep, a hedgehog and an Owl. No plants for me though.
Tuesday: it’s the 18th August. On the grand scale of things, this is a quite boring picture, but quite relevant. In the Uk, and especially in my location we haven’t had rain in over 50 days now due to a quite spectacular heatwave. That dry spell ended about 1 am in the morning when we had the first rains. Beautiful, the smell was gorgeous and for the first time in a long period the air was fresh and clean.
Wednesday: it’s the 19th August. Today’s been a funny kind of day where time has run away with us. However Wednesday is a day where we meet up with a couple of friends and spend an evening indoor bowling at our local bowls centre. We’re pretty new to it and are still learning the finer details of it all, however we are improving weekly and enjoying it thoroughly. It’s great company.
Thursday: it’s the 20th August. It’s a wet start, it’s been wet all day, in fact it’s been wonderful. It’s always good to see some rain especially after the bone dry heatwave period we’ve just gone through. My garden water butt went from bone dry to full in just one small rainstorm, and that butt holds just over 100 litres. I need more water butts. I had to therefore complete indoor tasks today, so I decided to get my garage sorted, stuff put up on the walls and a new set of shelves built. And that’s today’s boring picture, an uninspiring photograph of the interior of my garage using the cameras black and white setting. Still a bit to do, but it’s looking a lot tidier now.
Friday: it’s the 21st August. We’ve been busy most of the day, I had to drop my wife off to have her nails done whilst I had an appointment at the hospital about an issue I’ve had dragging on from last year. The good news is that I’m now discharged with no further treatment or appointments required, I’ve been given the all clear and now been told to just get back out there and enjoy myself. Picture wise it’s not anything exciting, once home I continued work on a camera I’ve been playing about with for a few months, with the 3d printer in the background that has been used to create replacement parts for this very camera.
Saturday: it’s the 22nd August. Back to work today for a day, as I’m covering a colleague who is unwell. It’s been a pleasant day, not too hot and I’ve been all over Leicestershire and Lincolnshire today. Ive taken a lot of pictures and to be honest it’s been hard to make a choice from them all. In the end I’ve settled on this nice picture of the signal box on the Leicester- Peterborough line at Uffington. The colours are lovely, the weather was just fine and the light was good. This little camera really does come up trumps at times.
I was a snob back in my teenage years and wouldn’t buy anything without a Canon or Nikon name tag. How wrong was I? I now have one needing some TLC, so let’s get it working again.
What the listing stated:
Chinon CE-4 35mm SLR Film Camera Body – Faulty – See Details
I tried testing the camera with batteries and initially it seemed to function and the camera fired at accurate speeds but after a couple of times firing it, it stopped responding and now I can’t get it to function at all.
Please note batteries aren’t included.
EBay
Here’s a little bit about this camera:
The Chinon CE-4 was the model which transitioned away from the 42mm screw mount used in the Chinon CE-3 to the Pentax K-mount. It’s an automatic 35mm SLR compact camera with aperture priority exposure system (AE).
Maker: Chinon
Dates: circa. 1980
Variants: black, CE-4s
Camera Type: 35mm SLR
Focusing: manual
Lens mount: Chinon Universal Bayonet Mount (Pentax K-mount)
Shutter: Seiko MFC electromagnetic focal plane, vertical, metal
from 8s to 1/1000Exposure meter: TTL, open aperture,
center weighted by two silicon blue photo cells. EV -2-19Exposure modes: aperture priority, manual, Bulb
ASA/ISO range: 25 to 3200 ISO
Finder screen: fixed split-screen
Flash shoe: fixed hot shoe, contact for dedicated flash
Flash speed: 1/60
TTL Flash: no
Motor drive: Chinon Power Winder S
Battery: 3 ×1.5V Alkaline (LR44, A76) or
3 ×1.5V silver oxide (SR44, S76, G-13)Dimensions: 135.5x85x50.5 mm
Weight: 485g
Camera- wiki.org
A previous seller approached me offering this camera and we settled for a price of £5:00GBP. A fair price for a camera born around 1980 and readily available at nationwide electronic stores around the time. I always avoided them, because as a teenager I had been infected by the snobbery of people around me, if it wasn’t Canon or Nikon it was crap.
I was a snob back then. Now I’ll buy anything, and I like the look of this so I brought it.
My reasoning in a nutshell. If it takes photographs, it’s good. Buy it. Sold!
Let’s await its arrival, and get it assessed.
Cosmetically this camera looks fine, apart from the name plate being detached from the fascia. This is easily remedied with some superglue to hold it in place.
As an addition i’ve printed out a body cap on the 3D printer for when i complete the clean, allowing me to protect the mirror, shutter and lens chamber area.
This camera takes three LR44 batteries and with these installed the camera is dead. There is no life, and no indication from the exposure meter in the viewfinder.
The bumper felt in the camera barrel is in excellent condition and does not need replacing. It’s a similar situation with the light proofing around the film chamber, they don’t need replacing just yet.
All buttons, dials and levers appear to be working just fine. There is no meter reading in the viewfinder due to the electrical issue. Let’s get onto that now, as it looks as if there is not really much else wrong with this camera.
So generally with electrical issues it’s always best to start with the simple things first before diving in and opening up the camera for dissection.
First things first, are the batteries any good, yep they have all tested as working fine, let’s move on. Is the power getting through to the camera via the battery holder. No it’s not. Let’s check the battery holder.
The battery holder showed no continuity when I used the multimeter probes on it, the whole inside of the holder had bad tarnish, preventing power getting through to where it was needed. A quick clean of the area with a grinding pen and some IPA to clean up, and you can now see your face in it. A quick check with the multimeter and continuity is restored. Whilst I’m in the mood for this kind of cleaning I also clean the contacts in the camera base. These weren’t so bad, however a quick blast with the grinding pen and a clean up does not go amiss.
The three batteries are reinstalled and hey presto, the light meter and all functions now appear. All this camera required was a five minute clean to resurrect it.
To test the camera fully I now need a K mount lens to check its functions. I’m looking for a basic one just to use for testing, just as well really as I also have some other K mount cameras coming up shortly. However, I am supremely confident this camera is working fine, so a lens is not the probity at this stage. I will probably move this on to the local hospice that I have dealings with.
A good clean is all that is now needed. I have cleaned the internals and sealed them by putting the body cap in place. Now I need to give attention to the exterior.
Sorry It’s a boring one, but hey it’s a win. Following a plan of attack starting with the most basic of checks, can be boring and repetitive, but also extremely beneficial as it’s not always the big issues inside the camera, nine times out of ten the issues are a lot more basic.
It just goes to prove that a lot of the items out there deemed as broken, are just in need of a little maintenance. If only people would just take a little time to look after their stuff, there would be less equipment thrown in to landfill.
Here is the camera after a good clean.
A little £5:00GBP camera has been given a reprieve and can live on for a few more years yet. As long as there is film being produced, this camera has a purpose. It’s a basic, but superbly capable camera that will keep its new owner happy for a good few years yet.
Let’s hope they have many happy moments capturing wonderful memories for many years to come.
Thanks for passing by. Always very much appreciated.
Ever had a jigsaw puzzle take five years to complete? I have.
For anyone who knows me, they will know only too well my fixation and fanboy devotion to the 90s music of R.E.M
I’ve been a fan from the early days, I’ve seen them live on many occasions, god I even have a tattoo of one of their album covers that I’m actually having touched up next week as it happens.
Around Christmas 2020 they released a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle in conjunction with the ALA (American library association) of an original poster that was released in 1990 to promote reading. This poster was quite collectible at the time and still sits in many fan’s collections around the globe. For those that did not possess the original poster, this jigsaw became the next best thing.
The puzzle sold through the groups own website and was produced by the Very Good Puzzle Company. In the UK the puzzle retailed for about £25:00GBP. I think it was purchased for me as a Christmas present from a relative.
I started the jigsaw in January 2021.
The intention from this day forward was to take a picture daily, as I set myself a target to dedicate an hour at a time towards its completion.
Beyond day four, which in itself had spanned a couple of months, time being spent on the puzzle when other commitments would allow. The puzzle became ever more difficult and confusing, as there are a number of areas within this puzzle where the areas are dark, or of just one colour and it just became a pain in the ass. So this was 2021 now, and very soon after this last picture, the jigsaw, on its base board just got put on the top of a cupboard in the spare bedroom, and there it stayed until early 2026.
For those who occasionally delve into my ramblings, you will be aware that in January 2026, after protracted selling shenanigans, we eventually moved to our new home. At this point we had packed and shifted almost everything, and the jigsaw was reluctantly broken up and put back into its original box. I guess I’d admitted defeat at this stage.
Step forward my Sister in law – Liz.
Now Liz loves Jigsaws, it’s her hobby and she heard of the ongoing issues with the R.E.M jigsaw. She has absolutely no interest in the group as such, and would probably, in her own way be quite opinionated in her views of their music, that’s her right and I respect that. She asked if she could take on the challenge to build it, and who was I to say no. So in March of 2026 I handed the box over to her.
Good luck with that Liz!
Just a few days ago Liz and her husband Terry came to visit as we were all heading out for a day. And as they came in they had a large object in a black plastic cover.
“Sit down Dave and open this” I was told, you might like it. I did what I was told and to my immense surprise, not only had Liz completed the puzzle, but her husband Terry had also framed it for me. I now have the completed puzzle, and the way it is presented looks absolutely fantastic.
Liz had spent a lot of time on the puzzle, and also shared her frustrations on the dark areas that were problematic. But the thing with Liz is once she gets her teeth into something she will never give up. And for that I am forever grateful, for she has done a fantastic job, and this will be a welcome addition to my work room, as the wife won’t let me hang it anywhere else.
So after 5 years, the puzzle is complete. And I think it looks superb. I now have my own personal copy of that poster that was so popular back in 1990.
Thanks Liz. You are a star 🌟
A peaceful day to you all.
Just a few black and white pictures, taken whilst testing various cameras I’ve been working on recently. Just snaps, don’t get too excited.
Just a few pictures taken recently on various cameras I’m testing out. Nothing special, just mooching around and taking snaps.
All around the Leicester / Melton Mowbray area.
Have a great day.
Learnings from testing an old camera with expired film stock
Earlier in November 2025 i repaired a Canon Eos 10 camera from the 1990s and then took it out to test it with a roll of Kodak 400 asa film. You can find the repair here: Canon EOS 10
The caveat is that the film expired in 2005, 20 years ago. As a result I have overexposed it at 200 asa to compensate for the deterioration in sensitivity from such a long storage period. It may work, it may not, previous tests on a 200 asa film showed that a one stop over exposure was quite sufficient. Fingers crossed 🤞 on this one.
I don’t expect anything much, I expect quite a bit of grain and a definite colour hue over the entire roll. Who knows there may be nothing on it at all 🤷♂️
I’ve sent the roll off to our local photo guys in Leicester : Classic Photo Supplies and hopefully something will be on the medium res scans that i have requested. If there are pictures below, then there was some success, if not, enjoy the blackness.
Well, the scans are back and to be quite honest this one is a bit of a disaster. As stated the film is over 20 years out of date and there appears to be two problems here. Underexposure is one issue, I over exposed this by one stop but I don’t even think that is enough. If I’d overexposed at 2 stops though I might have improved the brightness, the already heavy grain would have been even more exaggerated. I think it’s fair to say this 400 asa old film stock I have is passed its time and not really fit for use.
So. Though the results were not good and I have now realised that this old stock film is probably best for me to use as test film only. There is heavy grain, a distinct cast over the film and a quite obvious shutter curtains sync issue. These frames above a shutter speed of 500 seem to be the issue, and that is where the shutter speed has not synced the curtain, it’s definitely running slow. The film has been beneficial in identifying an issue in this part of the camera. I will now do a CLA on this camera shutter assembly to try to remedy this issue. I wasn’t using flash here, it was a dull cold English Sunday afternoon.
This is an old camera that has been sitting idle for many years, it may sort itself out after a few more rolls of film, however I can do something about it now. And this is really a lesson to be learned for anyone buying old film cameras, they do need that little bit of tender loving care to get them back into a good working condition.
I’m pleased I’ve highlighted this issue, I will get the work done to improve the shutter sync and then run another roll of film through it.
Maybe now is the time to buy a shutter speed optical tester. That may save me a bit of expense on processing costs and will also allow me to make these checks before committing to film.
Just walking around the east coast of Norfolk Uk. Seaside places are usually a hive of activity during the summer months and then winter hits and everything then shuts down.
There is an eeriness of silence everywhere and I think black and white photos highlight that feeling just perfectly.
Have fun guys. Stay warm.
Ventured off to the East coast for a few days.. just arrived in Great Yarmouth
We’ve taken a drive up the A47 today and are currently residing in Great Yarmouth for the night. Tomorrow we move next door for a few days to Hopton on sea for a little rest and recuperation.
We arrived here just as the sun was setting, so just the one picture to be cracking on with.
Hoping for a little stress free time away from it all as everything has been just a bit too full on lately.
Take care. Stay safe. Be happy 😆
Just got in from work, followed this bank of fog home. Grabbed a quick picture.
Just got in from work. Chased this fog all the way home and just had to get a photo.
Have a safe and happy day.
Foxes Den 
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