A bit of background

Recently I bought a film camera from the 1970’s – the Canon A-1. Considering that the camera is almost 3x older than me, it was no surprise that there are a few issues with it. The first camera I got jammed before I even loaded in my first roll, and the replacement camera had a battery drainage issue (which took an almost complete disassembly to fix).

But anyway, that isn’t the point of this blog post. Electrical problems aside, my main issue with this camera is its lack of a flash. Unbeknownst to me when I bought this camera, film cameras can’t really operate without a ridiculous amount of light (at least by modern camera standards). Even in a reasonably lit room, the camera struggles to take photos without the help of a tripod. This led to me trying some creative solutions, with limited success.

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