the camera and the washing machine

I needed a new camera, as my trusty old Canon 1000d was well past its prime. None of the cameras I checked out appealed to me. my main problem was that I had a nice lens, and I didn't want to get rid of it because I purchased an incompatible camera. and I didn't want to buy another Canon, because I didn't like it. Dad told me that Fuji cameras are compatible with Canon lenses. I was surprised, as I had never heard that before.

I decided Fuji was perfect for me. And just like, that a Fuji SLR was in my hand. it was nice, a little more compact than the Canon, jet black plastic (in contrast, the canon's once-black body was now discoloured and faded). It also had neat red accents that looked pretty classy! I liked it.

The main thing though, was to try it out. And to make sure both lenses worked together. Yes, the Fuji lens had a way I could thread the Canon lens on, like an extension! Pretty cool. I threaded the lens on, and switched on the camera. I looked through the viewfinder and the image was a little blurry, but gave a pretty good zoom. I pointed the camera at a TV, which was probably hooked up to a computer, as it had a page from Wikipedia on the screen.

I realized the blur went away when I adjusted the focal length of both lenses to their maximum. I wondered if I would need to adjust the aperture to get a good shot, but the more I thought about it, the more I was convinced I did not need to do so, as the aperture was within the camera, and the lens was just open to let light pass through all the time.

I clicked a photo. It was in automatic mode, and it turned out pretty sharp and very highly zoomed - from about 20 feet away, the TV was so highly magnified that there were barely 5 lines of text in the photo.

I clicked a few more, checking what settings the camera selected while in auto mode. I took care not to touch the focus ring. 

I then had the idea that I should check the focus setting, and try different manual focus settings. Since there were two lenses stacked, there were two focus rings. I turned off auto focus and tried adjusting one ring. the image magnified even more, but also blurred. Beyond a point, I couldn't really tell how magnified the image was, as it was a complete blur - the text and background merged into a grayish frame, almost uniformly coloured. I tried turning the focus rings on both cameras to their extreme settings (not sure if I was focusing in or out), and as I was focusing the outer lens (the Canon one), the image abruptly started getting sharper. As it got sharper and I could identify the alphabet on screen, it turned out it had zoomed a lot more in the process. The entire frame was covered by just a few words - maybe 3 or 4. But funnily enough, the image was inverted! As I reached the limit of the focus ring, the image was perfectly sharp (in fact, so sharp that I could see detailing of the serifs of each letter on the screen (and they were quite detailed!).

I was very happy with the result. This was brilliant! I wasn't expecting using two lenses to produce such excellent results. I wanted to now take the camera out somewhere and click more photos. My only worry was that attaching and detaching the second lens on top of the first might end up scratching it, since both the glass surfaces were pretty close to each other and seemed like they would come in contact while being screwed on. I decided it would be safest to always use this camera with both lenses attached in this manner. 

I slung the camera with both lenses around my neck and went downstairs. Once downstairs, it was instantly familiar as I was at my parents place (although somehow the room I was in and the TV seemed completely unfamiliar).

Downstairs, I walked out onto the street from the pedestrian exit of the apartment. Karishma was waiting in her car. She said she was glad I decided to come for a drive instead of taking my bike out as I usually did.

As I was getting into the passenger seat, I noticed there was some sort of black tub, about 8 inches deep, filled with dirty looking water with some soap suds. It also seemed to have clothes in it, presumably Karishma's. Karishma told me to go ahead and sit, and showed me where I could place my feet. The tub was a washing machine, in the passenger side of her car, under the dash! And it seemed to be operating as we spoke as well!

I squeezed in, and as she was about to start driving, I asked her if soapy water would splash on me. She said it might.

I told her I didn't quite fancy getting dirty soapy water on myself, and decided to sit in the rear seat instead. 

I opened the door, and stretched my legs to get out without getting my feet into the washing machine. 

And that's when I woke up.