The Misadventures of a Misfiring Konica
September 29, 2024
Tags: photography gallery konicabigmini302
Let me present to you the tale of my Konica Big Mini 301. A camera that you often see described as “Premium… but fragile.” I like the way the camera feels and the way it handles is remarkably easy. It has nice lines, and almost sharp edges, cool textures on the top and bottom. The way the lens barrel recedes and protrudes is all very sleek and cool. The back holds all the functions, which coming to do some research is half the reason of its downfall. You see there is a very flimsy and fragile ribbon cable that serpentines itself around the hinge-point of the film door and this cable is prone to breaking. Whether that is the reason for the following double exposures and poor tracking, I’m not quite sure yet, I have not taken mine apart to fully inspect it yet.
Sometime in 2015 I loaded this camera with a roll of film and shot a handful of frames. I then put the camera in a case and that case got thrown into a bag and then a storage bin. This was a pretty big point of transition of my life so its no wonder these cameras were abandoned for some years. Fast forward to a few months ago when this camera was unearthed. Battery dead, undetermined amount of frames shot. New battery purchased, installed and… the winding motor beginning whirring one way or another and the frame counter resets.
So I let it ride. I thought maybe I would lose a few shots in the middle of the roll, but never thought it would result in primarily double exposures. These aren’t just double exposures over the old pictures. It feels like there is something wrong with the winding motor. I need to take a roll of film that’s been ruined and load it into this camera and examine how it winds and how it rolls. You can see frames bleeding into one other, shots taken minutes apart stacked up. It would have been useful to keep a log of each frame, and I have bought some notebooks to do exactly this but my impulsiveness has not been squelched so I have not taken them out.
The camera used to shoot this film was the Konica Big Mini 302
A sleek point & shoot.
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