Sold image leads to new old Pentax SLR

I sold an image recently. This one.

City-County Building

This is the City County Building, essentially the Marion County Courthouse, in Indianapolis. I made this image with my Kodak EasyShare Z730 in 2008.

A television production company asked if they could purchase the rights to use this image in a documentary they are making for the Discovery Channel. Apparently, the story they are telling involves a criminal case tried in this building, and they hoped to use my image as an establishing shot. They found my image on Flickr.

Their contract was reasonable: I grant them a license to use and modify this image for the purpose of this television production in perpetuity worldwide, but I retain copyright and all other rights.

With what they paid me, I bought this Pentax ME SE.

My Pentax ME’s light meter quit working, despite the camera having been CLA’d in 2017. I paid all of $16 for that body, and it was well used when I got it. I wondered if sending it back to Eric Hendrickson for repair would be throwing good money after bad. Could my ME be like that old car that just keeps breaking down?

I decided I’d go looking for a much more lightly used body. I came upon this very clean ME SE at Victory Camera, which had given it new light seals.

The only differences I can detect between the regular ME and the ME SE are the brown leatherette on the body, and the split prism in the viewfinder is canted at -45 degrees rather than horizontal.

I’ve got a roll of Fomapan 200 in it now and will soon report on my ME SE’s performance.


Comments

13 responses to “Sold image leads to new old Pentax SLR”

  1. Andy Umbo Avatar
    Andy Umbo

    Congrats on the sale! I love this story! It always amazes me that you can kind of throw that stuff out there and there are people looking with money in their pocket! Not the first story I’ve heard like this from people with stuff on Flickr.

    1. Jim Grey Avatar

      Every once in a while someone wants to use one of my documentary photos. It’s remarkable to me.

  2. Greg Clawson Avatar
    Greg Clawson

    Congratulations Jim! A reward for your hard work over the years. May you make many photographs with your new Pentax.

    1. Jim Grey Avatar

      Thanks Greg! I’m sure I will.

  3. brandib1977 Avatar

    That’s awesome! Congrats!

    1. Jim Grey Avatar

      Thank you!

  4. matt Avatar
    matt

    Nice! Congrats on the sale, and the acquisition.

    I know with autofocus, the split prism idea is a bit superfluous, but I sort of wish they still incorporated this for when I’m using manual focus (usually because the autofocus can’t seem to focus on the thing I want it to!)

    1. Jim Grey Avatar

      I wish all my AF cameras had a split prism too. So useful when you go into MF mode.

  5. Jerome Avatar

    Way to go! Seems like a great way to finance new gear.

    Don’t your AF cameras have focus confirmation in manual mode? I was irritated by the fact that some of my lenses lose AF in macro mode, then realized I still could get focus confirmation with manual focus.

    1. Jim Grey Avatar

      It’s nice when it can happen!

      My AF cameras might have focus confirmation – I don’t know them well enough to know for sure. I just use them all, even my semi-pro Nikon N90s, as giant point-and-shoot cameras.

  6. Jerome Avatar

    Almost certainly the Nikon does. Even the Maxxum 7000 has focus confirmation in manual mode.

  7. Steve Mitchell Avatar

    Good news, and an excellent picture. That Z730 is an underrated camera, still use mine now and then! And it is surprising when every now and then someone asks to use a shot – never the shot you might expect in my experience!

    1. Jim Grey Avatar

      Those Kodak EasyShares were generally good cameras in their classes in those days. I have my son’s old EasyShare C613 around here somewhere and that $100 camera did fine work:

      https://blog.jimgrey.net/2017/07/28/kodak-easyshare-c613/

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