u/Im__TheGuy

Kind of a weird situation, don’t know where to go. Took my car (2015 BMW) into Carmax to see what they’d give me and the guy came back and said they couldn’t make me an offer because the car was never imported properly into the states. I tried to get him to explain more and he wasn’t really able to. Mentioned something about there being a sticker of some kind that was missing (maybe emission related?) but nothing more. I bought the car in Canada and imported it to the states after a few years. Went through the proper channels, obtained the letter of compliance from the manufacturer saying it met US EPA and safety regulations, declared the car at the border and paid import fees and registered the car here, so I know it was imported properly. I have retained all this paperwork. Not sure where to go from here. Tried contacting the DMV and all they were able to do is confirm that the car is legally registered in the US. Hoping someone here might have some experience and point me in the right direction. Would a proper BMW dealership be any help? Thanks

New to film photography and picked up a Canon A-1 which I had CLA’d before going to Ireland a few weeks ago. Just got the images back and while there are a few good ones it seems like most of them don’t look good. I know part of that is definitely user error, but I wanted to get the community’s input to see if I’m looking at these correctly.

Took in total 4 rolls of film, 1 Ektar 100 and 3 portra 400. I let everything neutral for the ektar and set exposure comp to +1 for the portra. All in all just under 140 photos. Had them developed and scanned at a local photo lab and it seems like maybe the scanning wasn’t great? It looks like a combo of the white balance and tint is off in a lot of them and inconsistent. Cool and blue in some photos, warm in others, some have a green tint, some yellow etc. I’m also pretty sure there is some shutter capping going on and some light leakage. Here are a select few images showing some of these issues, let me know what you see and if you agree with me. 1-3 are ektar (4 might be too, I don’t remember and when I got the image files back they weren’t grouped sequentially), rest are portra. All shot in aperature priority mode. I definitely need to learn the quirks of how to gauge exposure with these cameras since they evaluate the entire image, a lot of the golf course photos and other bright day photos left the subject way too under exposed.

White balance/tint off
Shutter capping
Light leakage in bottom left and right

5 and 6. Light leakage on bottom

7 and 8. These are two images taken back to back, look how apparent the color shift is. That has to be from scanning right? Or could that be something in camera? I can’t imagine analog camera’s have adjustable in body white balance and tint, do they?

White balance seems off

A lot of the white balance issues and inconsistencies are pretty apparent in portrait shots but since those are of my girlfriend she wouldn’t appreciate me posting those.

All this aside, I did have a blast using the camera and can’t wait to get better at using my equipment. Still had a number of shots that turned out well so I’m happy enough with those. The photo lab gave me all TIFF files so I should be able to do some corrections in photoshop but want to get anything fixed on the camera that needs to be. Thanks a bunch!

Edit: wow, I got so many more responses than I would have expected for a 9 pm post on a weeknight, I really appreciate all the help from everyone. Consensus is that I got a bunk CLA (it was $40 when a full service is more like $200 😬) and the scans don’t seem to be the best. I’m going to bring the camera in to a well established local shop (Glazers) and have them do a full CLA and rescan the negatives (fingers crossed they weren’t accidentally tossed by the developing lab). Thank you all!

Trading in an imported car