With April brings the end of my journey with my AE-1.
I took it with me to work an event on April 8. There was an area around the event that had fresh construction and I was walking from my vehicle through the area to the event when disaster struck! I stepped on what I thought was a rock, but it crumbled underneath my foot, causing me to go tumbling and spraining my foot.
To add insult to injury… and embarrassment, I landed on my AE-1!
The breech mount was broken, along with the bottom left corner crushed in causing the door to pop open and not shut back. I immediately covered it best I could and rewound the film. The pictures for this month are the last that camera will ever take.
Going forward I will be using a new camera, new to the project and also fairly new compared to the AE-1. The Canon Elan II with a plastic fantastic 50mm f/1.8. The camera and lens were picked up at separate times, but at $25 for the body and $15 for the lens, the total of $40 comes in below the $50 threshold for the project.
Things will be different from here on, I will have a working meter, and autofocus! Autofocus is not a normal feature for me in cameras, I tend to prefer manual focus systems. That’s one of the great things about this project is getting out of your comfort zone and enjoying photography for what it is and not worrying about having the best gear to do it with.
The Frugal Film Project 
Sorry about the camera, and your foot!
I don’t know the Elan II but I guess the optics of the lens are probably as good as that for the AE-1 which is all that is important anyway and the autofocus (generally a pain) can be turned off?
Hey, thanks! The lens does have a switch that the can turn the autofocus off, but it’s not easy to manually focus Canon EOS lenses. The Elan II was an enthusiast level camera so mid-tier when it came out, but don’t let that fool you it’s a very capable camera. I’m excited to be using it now.