Light leaks: art or accident (or both)?
May. 15th, 2014 10:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

This is from a roll that I shot in the Smena 8M and recently had developed. I’ve never known this camera to have light leaks before, but I shot the first half when I went to Rayne (this was taken in the “wrong way” cemetery), and didn’t finish it until I went to Madisonville, a few months later. I suppose it could have gotten jostled at some point. Also, the film shot in this camera has to be removed and wound back into the canister by hand inside of a lightproof bag, due to the fact that the original take-up spool is missing and I had to cannibalize the inside of a film roll. Another possibility is that the bag wasn’t as tight on my wrists as it should have been; however, the second half of the roll was mostly free of light leaks, which points to the former scenario as the more likely culprit.
Anyway, light leaks are one of those things that give digital perfectionists fits and make them prone to dismissing all vintage/toy/plastic camera enthusiasts as hipster dilettantes. They like to point out that the effects of these cameras, if for SOME reason they are desired, can be replicated with Photoshop. To which we reply, where’s the fun in that? Stop being such a control freak and see what happens!