 My
Kodak
Memories: the Printer & the Zoomer
I will beat the dead horse joyfully!
... I am triumphant that Kodak’s teeming evil minions are forced
to
grovel in the shadows, searching for other tech scams in a harsh
unforgiving world. ... To express this another way, amongst extremely
stupid bankrupt American companies, Kodak holds a special
place in my heart.
In their
pre-bankruptcy days, I bought two
things from Kodak:
-
 At
8/11, a $280
(!) 12mp
Z990 camera
— although I’ve come to
suspect its major sin
is
perhaps collective, if no
less despicable.....
-
At
11/11, a $120 Kodak ESP 7250 printer.
The printer I threw away
even before the Great Move
it was such a paragon of absolute brokenness. The camera I’ve retained.
I almost took it to the goodwill before it poisoned my life
forever, but at last I came to know & sympathize with its
fraudulent
ways. ... To
understand it, is
to despise it — but poignantly. ... But it kinda worked
after I turned-off the LCD....
The
Enthusiast
Camera’s Ephemeral Battery Life and the Brilliant Shiny LCD Live
View ![[3]](three.png)
 Check-out the
beautiful digital camera
ads in the magazines/online for “battery
life”; or this
specification
of the Silly Camera Collection’s Canon
450 DSLR.
... Or for that matter the same review site’s Z990
specs. ... I’ll wait....
... Oh! ...
Didn’t find anything,
did you? ... Why
do you suppose
that could be? Hmmm? ... Let’s
press our fingers
to our foreheads
and
concentrate. ...
Oh
I
see: they all
have 10
minute battery lives! ... Until proven
otherwise. ... And that ungainly object  is  a
“battery
grip”, which is probably
what anyone uses who for some bizarre reason wants
to take more than three pictures, or use the camera more than 10
minutes. Sadly the Z990 apparently never got one of these inspiring
devices — but the Silly Camera Collection’s DSLR
does!
... Anyway,
10 minutes is generous
for the
Z990. I should’ve known when
the camera was supplied
with a
fast recharger and a set of NiMH AA cells. ... And because the handy
built-in time-of-day clock is apparently spring-wound, if I just leave
the camera off,
the batteries
are still gone in a day or so. ... And this puff
actually reports a Z990 “short battery life” — presumably
shorter than all the others, but since all
must lie, it’ll never be clear....
My Lies
&
the brilliant klieg light LCD
In
latter
days & a new world
I put newly-charged
original Kodak batteries into the Z990 weeks
ago,
and the battery icon is still
full! And I took a
picture (+
a second picture on AC).
... And countless weeks have passed, and the valiant Kodak soldiers on,
battery-full icon held high. I even set the clock! ... But
I have
been religiously avoiding lighting up the LCD, and that
apparently
was
my secret sin
of omission —
secret from me;
presumably not from Kodak, who nevertheless defaults the camera to
beautiful blazing instant battery-consuming beacon-bright LCD
illumination.
... But
after all, the supreme
goal of
manufacturers is to delude
and gull
the consumer in this way, so they can really alienate him and make him
not only hate their products with an undying passion, but the entire
industry! ... And it worked great
with the enthusiast camera battery life & their
default / compulsory
LCD displays. & me.
 ...
But actually the Z990 provides a little hint, in its dedicated EVF/LCD
button. ... Without any picture-taking or foolish lighting-up
the LCD — the camera approximately always off
— the
batteries lasted 2 or three (?) months. And when I changed them
soon-enough,
the clock didn’t
lose time.
My sacred DSLR
performed comparably (with
the 6xAA NiMH battery pack,
to be sure)....
Their
Lies
Latter-day magazine
scammery continues the campaign enthusiastically, for instance
referring to how “we
ran out of
power
a couple of times while shooting long days” in an Olympus OM-D E-M10
Mark
II puff, p
63 Popular Photography
2/16 — thus apparently complaining
about battery life just to show how honest
they are, but actually
mendaciously
implying
that any
digital camera’s
battery would last anywhere
near
a day while using the LCD — which they always
puff extravagantly
with never
a hint of
how it drains the batteries....
They
don’t actually say
you can
run your camera all day with the LCD on; but they never
never NEVER
say otherwise.
The technical
term for this practice is lying.
... Sadly
these magazines are mostly consumed by innocent
prospective purchasers — who else, except for the occasional lunatic
cranky geezer? — who can be victimized with these ridiculous
falsehoods by the high-minded magazine scriveners who are paid to
sell the color ads and lie to the reader.
Omerta Forever
And
the exalted dpreview
contributed
its mite
recently with a “product of the year 2017” article
about a Sony battery
which is
so wonderful it’ll get “through a
demanding day of shooting”. Which presumably all the previous batteries
didn’t, which I’m sure their reviews pointed-out with righteous
indignation.
And of course the “day of shooting” surely must include lighting-up
the
LCD all day — of course
a super-pro celebrating such a treasured resource
wouldn’t just omit
that
little detail — could they!?!?! ... Although he doesn’t
actually
say
so — just an accidental omission no doubt.
... And
the beat goes on! ...
In an undated (“Issue 198”) issue
of Digital Photographer
a page 101 puff of the Sony Alpha a7 III, the puffery actually
refers, but indirectly of course, to the LCD blowing-out
the battery
and, in
addition, includes a heartwarming instance of the warmly traditional
scammy simulation of honesty, by alluding to how bad last year’s
model
was, which of course was scathingly
revealed in that review:
The
a7R II is
notorious for its short battery life [ ridiculously
dishonest honesty simulation], but the Mark III uses
Sony’s
NP-FZ100 battery and has a life of 530 stills when using
the
viewfinder.
... And there you have it — at my underline is an actual
LCD allusion — but totally indirect — to how one
shouldn’t
light-up the LCD.
But still doesn’t actually say
so, of course; they would’ve gotten a
horse’s head in their telephone booth editorial offices for that.
...
And then I realized both the DPReview article and the Digital
Photographer suck-uppery are both puffing-up the same
fault:
the old Sony’s obviously defective battery — so it was undoubtedly
a rewritten Sony press release, or perhaps entirely Sony-written, to
avoid the pointless expense of hiring someone to lie when Sony is so
happy to. ... And the wonderful $2K-and-up
new Sony a7 III was revealed in DPReview to have a striping
problem — probably (?) not
a Sony press release — which, of course, was never referred to again,
certainly not
in their
fabulously-enthusiastic
review.
... So your $2K camera pix may stink, but at least the batteries’ll
be
wunnerful all day with, presumably, the halogen-bright LCD on....
 Eff-You
“Share” Scammery![[1]](one.png)
But there are many
fond Kodak memories that linger
on. ... When I got the Z990 the SD
card was to me still a hermetic mystery; I could barely deal with the Compact
Flash
thingeys. So I didn’t appreciate how thoughtfully the Great American
Mediocrity forced its users to
operate their scammy always-runs stupid icky-poo-paw-me-please “share”
garbage program. Which I assume was going to herd them into a wonderful
social world of Kodak web sites ruled with an iron fist. ... I’ll
never know, because although eventually I actually
installed
it, I killed the
service
they thought I should have running at every moment because I don’t
have enough junk to blow-up my computer, and without it, there is no
way
to transfer photos from the camera. Except by removing
the SD card
and
plugging it in to an SD socket attached to the computer which for some
reason
they didn’t make impossible, probably too stupid — well, they
probably
thought it was so technical it’d never bother the little minds of
their intended victims
customers — but it’s obviously the
easiest way, especially if you’re using the LCD and have to change
batteries every 10 minutes anyway....
That is, just plugging it in with its micro USB cable
does not
access the SD card — the way numerous other less scammy cameras do
— no
doubt a circumstance of deep sorrow for those other less-scammy firms —
I mean,
what’s the point
if you
can’t
torment and infuriate the purchaser!?!? ... Oddly, the USB cable does
do something useful for the Kodak — it’ll
power
the camera, but it’s
a secret and
Kodak denies
it!![[2]](two.png)
... But in my dotage I may return to
the ez-scam dream yet again, with cuter quainter sillier kodaks
and perhaps a derlict sacrificial computer....
Lens
Cover
I almost forgot another brilliant highlight. If the
batteries
fail
after 10 minutes as they do, or if you remove them without
turning the camera off, which after all is going to be common what
with the constant battery changing — the lens stays
extended, so my lens cover won’t
fit. ... Indeed, if you try to turn it on, assuming the
unlikely
chance that the
batteries
are functional, it refuses
unless I remove
the lens cover.
... Now that’s
design! ... And I noticed it says “Kodak” on it! Me and a
fan’s.
So it was original
equipment,
and the way the camera won’t work with it on is a feature!
... Which does
cut-down on those
“blank picture” support calls, I suppose. ... And
this just in:
there’s no filter thread
on the silly thing! I can’t attach cunning UV filters and fish-eye
adapters and such
nonsense. How could they?!?!
But
the Fans Love It!
And
then I made the mistake of checking — and the Z990 was still for
sale
at Amazon! A year or so ago, it was a $100 more than I paid, but then
it
dwindled to $200 or less, used. ... But
335 reviews, average 4 (out of 5) stars! ... Battery life OK boss! ...
I mean one or 2 cranks complain about the batteries, and one telling
comment was “OK for a digital camera”....
... Ah well. I thought the vicious iphone killed ’em all off; but
I guess
these happy users didn’t get the memo — like the fellow with
the
picture
on his flickr
page — well occasionally it runs the obligatory malware ad,
and/or it might insist on you signing-in so they can steal your cellphone
# only because they want to help
you — but I’ve gotten past that once or twice....
And then, the Kodak ESP 7250 printer
was still for sale; with 374 reviews
but
at least a solid 3/5 rating. ... Well wait this is a little
hanky-panky;
a bunch of the recent reviews are bad, and the printer isn’t actually
for sale
at Amazon; it’s
available used,
and for a ridiculous
$1300 new from a third party
(companies
sometimes have
to buy a particular product no matter how stupid). So that’s OK;
probably Kodak started
shipping bricks just about the time I showed-up or something....
My
Battery Excuses
I will buy digital
cameras no more forever, until I find a camera that at least advertises
long battery life (or amuses
me enough).
I mean after all, the phones and laptops are all
rated like that. ... And I broke
down and googled for “camera
long
battery life” and found at least
http://www.cnet.com/topics/cameras/buying-guide/
which claimed I should
“check out how many shots its battery has been rated for”,
supposedly an official standard. ... Well just so! My Z990 manual
claims
(page 65; pdf page 73):
“500 pictures per charge. Battery life per CIPA testing method.
(Approximate number of pictures in Smart Capturemode, using an SD
Card.)
Actual life may vary based on usage.” So it is
rated, and the rating is obviously
bogus; even with LCD securely off,
although with it on it’d be more like five. ... I may actually have
read that in the weary wandering years and it was so ridiculous I just
paid
it no mind.
... Presumably “usage” is CYAese
for “if you leave the LCD on, like we default it, camera’ll
run
out of juice in 3 minutes”. ... Yeah probably they test it by going
into continuous shooting mode and holding the trigger down until it
keels over ... as a typical usage scenario....
Battery
Sin
Kodak’s sin is cooperating with the
industry-wide
scam
to pretend digital cameras’ battery lives
don’t suck. ... This fraud is obviously designed
to afflict newcomers such as I was, who discover the
bitter
truth
via the
stupidity-tax
of paying
for one of these things. Afterwards we’ll be forewarned if we’re
stupid-enough to buy another, but I’m pretty sure many of us never
reach that stage,
hence the inspiring
success of the digital camera biz.
 And
actually, I did
have at
least one silly
amateur point-’n’-shoot
digital optical-viewfinder/LCD
Canon PowerShot
A540 into which
I could place two
AA cells, and they wouldn’t
be dead
the next time
I used the thing! ... That camera is weirdly defective
in other amazing ways, and the iphone’s 8
megapixels
spit
on
its pitiful six.
... But I
do tend to use its viewfinder in preference to the LCD, because of my
years of SLRs. ... On
my last SLR outing
many years ago (reminiscent chuckling), the cut-rate Seattle
Film
processor sent back a snooty note about how if I just concentrated a
little more I wouldn’t’ve taken a totally blank roll, never
having
actually advanced the film from the impossible-to-load cassette. ... So
those days were not without their endearing charms. ... But
I never ran out of power....
Battery
Adventures
So I bought some super NiMH
rechargeables + a fancy recharger, with which I attempted to
separate
the
sheep
from the goats in my existing herd, with an arbitrary cutoff
of 1,000mAh capacity — and who knew that regular
Alkaline AAs supposedly come in at 1700-3000
mAh?!;
I certainly didn’t (AAAs 860-1200).
...
But then I was bloviating to the multitudes in an amazon comment,
advising the simple folk to just get some expensive NiMHs, a
working cheapo charger and a comparable battery tester, charge ’em
up,
put
’em the camera, and when the camera refuses to turn on or stops after
2½ minutes, test ’em — i.e., with the battery tester gadget
—
throw away the failures, and repeat —
and I
decided I’d take my own advice, at least for the vast horde I
purchased in the old days, and so far only a small percentage failed,
at least right out of the cheapo chargers. I’m assuming they won’t
keep
the Kodak going more than few seconds, so for that I’ll use a
ridiculous fancy charger as soon as I can get one that actually works —
the LaCrosse unit I returned didn’t, at least according to their
highly-dubious pamphlet “manual” in seventeen mostly-human
languages, although the NiMH insiders in the amazon comments seem
to swear by it....
 And
a year or so later,
with a “Powerex”
charger,
some
of the sheep graduated to goats and joined their fallen brethen in
the great lithium charger in the sky, and will charge no more forever
here in Florida — oops, their mortal lithium lives will continue
on a
little further, just misunderstood the complicated charger gadget
yet again — it tells you the total milliamphours “mAH”
it’s managed to add
to the
battery’s charge, not the battery’s total
mAH capacity, which apparently is unknowable in this vale of tears
unless I go through an entire discharge/charge cycle, which the machine
will happily do, and takes forever, and so I’ve never actually done
it....
 Alternating
Current
I bought the Z990 so long ago (8/11) it was a time I did
not routinely download the PDF manual for my gadgets, although
I apparently did
in extremis at some point, but anyway I was perusing the thing and
happened to notice on page 9 (pdf page 17) an assortment of battery
icons, one of which was  “AC
Power” —
mentioned nowhere else
except
for exclusions /
denials aka “safety” threats: I was warned against misusing
the “KODAK High Performance USB AC Adapter K20-AM” which I’ve
never encountered in my life, but the manual has nothing about using
it....
 The Z990’s
Darkest Days
In
the
last dark
days
in 2012
when
I finally
foundered with the Z990 I was attempting to take
pictures
of motionless
things, with no flash / small aperture (aka “high f-stop”),
indoors
with a tripod
— pictures of other gadgets of course — which the Z990 couldn’t
manage
without running out of power. ... I think then
came
the advent of our glorious iphones — well, my
glorious iphone — and the rest is unedifying postlude;
but I must note that the iPhone with a tripod/iphone
tripod attachment gadget will suffice for almost all web
photos at any rate. And no alternating current need apply, neither
—
although as all mankind knows, the iphone runs good with a USB charger
+
the usual proprietary Apple cable....
 But
if I’d’ve run the Z990 on AC
— oh, the sensuous ecstatic joy!
...
Leave that stupid LCD on forever! Wander out of the room
and take a nap, everything’ll be OK! ... And apparently I could’ve.
... For a good time, you can
google
for “z990 ac power” and if you’re lucky find some guy
on
a forum
quoting Official Kodak that “the Z990 receives no power through the
USB
port” which is amazing since I just removed the batteries
and turned it on with a micro USB cable and a (forum-suggested 2.1 amp)
USB charger — and took a picture of my batteries! ... This is why we hardened
techie types are so tough on the miserably ignorant support creatures
and
the clueless scripts they read.
 ... I mean I might
still want to use the Kodak outdoors someday, but not likely,
what
with the iphone so portable & often in
my
pocket, so AC power essentially solves my remaining Kodak problem. ...
But I will
cherish my bitter memories. ... And my growing Silly
Camera Collection,
now that it has another member. ... And in the fullness of time (2019)
the Z990 with its extravagant 30x zoom is the official laboratory
lizard cam, as I loll about the pool in paradise.
And with the halogen-bright LCD off,
the batteries last for months....
Z990
Muttering?
I
picked it up, and in the beautiful silent morning
I
could hear
the thing
muttering to itself, doing, I’d guess, a recalibration i.e. checking
the
mechanical parts hadn’t been misplaced during sleep.
That’s
what takes so long
before
the full powered-on screen appears — in the viewfinder of course,
since I’ve suppressed the LCD....
Z990 Telephoto
But
I must admit that it is
possible to take telephoto pictures with the Z990, handheld and not too wildly
out-of-focus. At least I’ve
demonstrated it to myself in a test and who knows someday I may
actually use
the feature....
—
the newly and strangely elated cranky programmer
6/16
Recollected at
Last in Tranquility
3/18. But as the weary years drift by, I’ve made my
peace with
the wily Z990 and it is a proud member of the silly
camera collection in good standing. ... As long as I don’t
use
the LCD display, and
avoid the 22 megabyte
“raw” setting, which
was always
a scam anyway. 1/20. And finally it’s
come to such a pass that I bought another.
For $50, used, to be sure, but I had this vague yearning for a superzoom
zoomier than my beloved canon SX20, and over
the years the SX20, particularly  its dubious
circular control, has become a little
less beloved — so the second Z990 was the obvious choice. ... Of
course I never turn-on the LCD. 2/4/20.
And then it turned-out, when I tried stealing a picture of the adorable
Mandy Kawa Sweetwater sales rep from their catalog — the sx20
stole an obviously superior picture.
And one of the  important
tasks of the travel camera is
stealing pictures — I don’t maintain scanners across the fruited
plains. Although as it turned-out, Mandy resisted until
I scanned it, half at a time. And it still didn’t work-out quite
right.... On
the other hand, the “lizard cam” still takes good wildlife
telephotos....
1.
Apparently the Kodak share thing drove me wild in those dark days, I
suppose with the batteries failing and all. ... But then in my new age
of innocence and peace, I decided it’s really just
a
harmless utility which, to be sure, does
try to autostart itself but that kind of thing is fairly easy to
suppress — CANCEL
CANCEL CANCEL Oh innocent hapless folly! It’s still
repulsive malware from h--l.
It apparently installs a service or who knows what, but even after I
uninstalled, the broken program / stupid
company ghost window kept popping-up, obliterating parts of the screen
and doing nothing. I hope. After rebooting, that stopped. ... My
supreme
sin was instructing my
firewall to
keep it from contacting the
mothership, undoubtedly
moribund and/or a thriving virus center. But my first sin was
probably inviting the vampire in by plugging-in an SD reader with a
Kodak SD in it! ... Astonishing how vile it all is, even after all
these years....
2.
Oh I
get it: the poor Kodak script readers were so adamant about no USB
power because otherwise the poor idiot user
might imagine that when he
plugged his beloved Z990 into his computer to use the wretched scammy
Kodak Share program he
wouldn’t have to worry about running out of battery power
—
which he undoubtedly would,
since the halogen-bright LCD
would still doubtless
be helping-out, and
the USB port probably can’t supply 2.1 Amperes — USB ports
are like
that; they have different capabilities, and will just turn-off the
power if they feel like it. So the script phone
support had
to emphasize how you
get no power, but never say why
of course that would be telling.
... Some PCs
— some Macs, in a good wind
maybe — could supply adequate current to fuel the Z990 & its
lovable LCD, but probably not
the average USB port. Or who knows. ... Right, and probably the whole
rigamarole was only tested
with
somebody’s Apple Macintosh — I mean, who
would use
that other — what’s
its name? — kind-of computer?...
3.
One obvious mystery of the 3-minute halogen-bright LCD camera battery
life is, of course, its nemesis, the iPhone, and its swarm of follow-on
competitors. How come their super-bright beautiful LCDs don’t make
the
phone conk out instantly? ... Indeed, phone battery life is constantly
complained-of, but it has always been obviously superior to the
cameras.
 Monday,
10/22/18: The Kodak
Box
Heads Out Into the Unknown with My Slides
Not content with my hieratic sacrifices to
the
eternally-bankrupting Kodak, I committed 75 slides
to the tender
mercies of the “Kodak
Box”
which really wasn’t ready for prime time out of the box so to speak,
but I went ahead, bowing to the sacrifice in joyous surrender. ... The
instructions were not
clear, there was a typo
between
one of the two
tiny documents they sent in their beautiful box, creating ambiguity
about whether I was supposed to submit 75 or 150 slides. And of course
no advice
on how to submit them, beyond an illustration showing slides thrown in
a plastic bag; I wound-up buying an amazon slide box, which I sincerely
hope will be returned to me along with the slides, but que
será será....
 Right
away, after the 3 or four days I spent selecting the 75 slides from my
foot-and-a-half shelf, I’d recommend just buying a scanner: they’re
$40
and up at amazon, and one I got a few years ago for $100 turns-out
acceptable
images, although dust and stuff makes them crummier — and that’s
only $20
more than the $80 Kodak Box. ... Later I realized I had a superior
~$160 slide scanner I’d
apparently forgotten about when I got
the $100 thing, making my Kodak adventure even more ridiculous. ... But
anyway, perhaps I’ll see if the Kodak
presumably-industrial-grade equipment does any
better (no)....
And
perhaps I won’t hold my breath. When I went to
their
web site
@ 10/24/18 and submitted as instructed my order number & zip
code,
it knew me not! ... However a friendly robot girl “Tosha” claimed
she
found the order, gave me a UPS tracking number which I probably already
have from the UPS store, and told me “they” were working like
blazes to
get that web thing working — translation:
it’s the prototype web page, they didn’t write any
code, and
they’re
not going to until some money $hows
up.
... So it looks like good
ol’ Kodak all
right....
Friday
10/26/18: Another chat, with “Jessica”, who lamely asserted
that
the
“dev team” or something would get right on it. When I asked,
she
assured me I’d get my slides back. And
the UPS tracking number said it got there Wednesday. So hope is not
dead.
Yet....
Saturday
10/27/18: But Lo! In the broken “my orders” form — which
is
ecstatically elusive, disappearing the moment one moves the mouse, or
breathes — there’s a “contact us” thingey, which
provided
an email
address: questions@kodakdigitizing.com.
So I wrote ’em a blistering
demand with threats of credit card dispute — which does
sometimes wake these people up, sometimes only after
you start the dispute. ... But of course they won’t get it until
Monday, or perhaps never if their email is maintained like the web
site....
Sunday
10/28/18: The email has been replied-to, informing me everything is
wonderful and I should wait 6 weeks for my slides. So their email
works! ... And I will contentedly await the stirring outcome,
which will infallibly occur @ or before 12/9/18....
Sad
Conclusion: Kodak Box
Sux
I went this route because of the
obviously-delusional idea that
Kodak’d be bound to not
throw the slides away — and because I was lazy, and didn’t
want
to go
through the endless agony of researching various dubious fly-by-night
digitizing services. ... I
was wrong;
I should’ve gone the endless agony route. ... Or, of course, better
still, just scanned them myself....
... The
only merchant I’ve dealt-with in this area is The
Darkroom, and they don’t do
slide digitizing. They did,
however,
manage to develop a roll of 35mm film and return it to me. And @
11/16/18, their ridiculous website has been completely unable to
display the beloved pictures I committed to their care, and they
promise to off them in 10 days — giving me an order number that
appeared nowhere on my order form, although it does
appear on the viewing page, once I found it, with great difficulty. I
of course got ’em already in a ridiculous CD, and reloading the page
seem to cure their aphasia ... but it’s not encouraging....
11/9/18:
Praise Be! Kodak Speaks!
They sent me an unsolicited
email!
... Gosh the robots must’ve been scurrying away overtime! ...
Hint/Tip/Trick:
The Fedex page
they linked-to doesn’t actually accept
pasting a tracking number, so get ye unto google and enter something
like “fedex tracking” and a little box will pop-up and that
works, and informed me I will see my beloved slides, committed so
foolishly to the stupidest company in the universe, by “Friday
11/16/2018 by end of day”. Presumably in the form of a fine
chemical-smelling dust in a battered box — but no, I will pretend
it’ll
be whole and beautiful and no
problema
— while, pitifully, I still can....
No
Code
But
reassuringly, the beloved order tracking page @
https://my.legacybox.com/order-tracking, duly referenced at the bottom
of the email, is still totally without function; it knows me not. I
guess there still
weren’t
enough suckers to pay anyone to actually write the code....
 Wed
11/14/18
1:41 pm: The Kodak Box Returns
It’s OK. Not amazingly wonderful;
there are dirt dots on the
images, which were carefully entombed in plastic sleeves for
years, but probably got dirty when the younger photographer got hold
of ’em so long ago. And I could’ve probably (definitely)
gotten better images
with my own scanner, if I tried real hard —
and perhaps I’ll do that someday. When Florida
freezes over....
 Kodak
Box Still Sux
However, the fraudulent web page incommunicado
policy still stinks,
and you’re still best-advised
to get a scanner. And
anyway, hardly anybody really
has any
use for these vast swarms of pictures. I have better excuses than most,
with my herd of computers
running “screen savers” showing the entire digital bunch randomly,
the
pictures dating from windows 95 approximately,  including
vocational and
random junk. ... And now I’ll have 75 more images from the perilous
past (77-90)
to gape and gasp at. ... Ad
astra
he murmurs to himself. ... However, I feel obligated to rename
the 75 images to reflect the order and dates of the originals, which
were carefully recorded by the younger photographer. And carefully IDed
by the old one, for that matter. ... Which would’ve
been much easier if I
had scanned....
  The
Epson V500 Digital
Ice
Scanner
I bought it for $160 at amazon 12/12, and
I must admit I’d all but forgotten it scans slides; I’ve used
it for
the humdrum pictures I get, mostly to enhance this beautiful
site with stolen images. ... But
it’s got the magical “Digital ICE” which works!!!
The example image there
is the most obvious “demo” amongst my pitiful ancient slides
— the original (Kodak Box image on the left) not only has dust spots
but
what looks like drops of fluid which I was afraid the
digital ice would just leave — but no, astonishingly, they all
disappeared!
... So Kodak or any digitizer is going to treat
the
slides
with whatever secret sauce they can come up with, which’ll include
color/contrast fixes and sharpening. I of course did likewise, and
actually both of these images were additionally sharpened to bring out
the dirt in the left image better. You will just have to trust me that
it was quite obvious in the original, and the picture of my beloved
work place at one of the numerous Ithaca
Intersystems
traveling offices was essentially unusable without the digital ice. Of
course it’s hardly usable with
the ice, except here, to demonstrate digital ice. Which does
take me
back to Intersystems, where all we seemed to do was sell computers to
people building other
computers....
And it takes forever; about 5
minutes per slide.
That infrared
stuff is slow.
And it’s hardly perfect — it always despeckles a bunch,
but in
the worst cases, which my skilled photographic skills seemed to favor,
many speckles remained and I had to use the clone
brush for final tarting. But doing that was much
faster after digital icing. And here is a useful PSPX
page
about tools available for such pursuits in that wondrous program —
in my case, of course, after
the
digital ice. ... And I note my precious now-antique V500 has been
superceded
by the
no-doubt superior V550 and the late$t
V600. ... +, as a special bonus, to my amazed surprise I learned that
an “unsharp mask” sharpens
the image! Which is why the V500 tends to default it to “on”
for
various tasks, and I was stupidly turning it off....
Moral of the Story
Digitizing
services bad;
$80 Kodak Box sux;
~$160
Epson
“Digital
ICE”
scanner good.
... Of course, your mileage may vary and undoubtedly some slide-scanning
tasks would benefit from a quicker/dirtier approach. ... On the other
hand, most slides are already antiquated, and keeping them in-house
seems a highly desirable goal....
|
 The
Cameras of Doom: The
Post-SLR
Era
The epoch for me begins around 6/8/96, when I
bought
my first Casio digital camera for $513.15! 0.25mp! — that’s a quarter
of a megapixel! ... And so, for a few years more, the chemical-film SLR
industry was safe. Although I had already neglected the
art
—
my marching SLR slide
books stop at 1992, the artiste
enticed-away by the beautiful
video
camcorders....
2006:
Broken
Canon A540
Canon’s market success EOS
300D / Digital Rebel
appeared in 2003,
so the post-SLR era was definitely underway @ 12/06 when I apparently
purchased
my broken A540,
a respectable (non-DSLR)
6-mp
camera
which, at least in terms of images + ease-of-use
easily
outdid the SLRs I’ve
known, no matter how much
more incredibly detailed the 35mm film images might be. Sadly my
introduction to the post-SLR digital camera was broken,
the
fault of the scam-o-rama that is normal camera retailing +
gullible
hysterical-enthusiast purchasing practices....
|
 But
I used this
camera anyway — 70 pictures through 2010. Apparently I didn’t
notice
the defects; I’d
just point ’n’ shoot, and the pictures weren’t bad!
And
the batteries
lasted, presumably because I used the viewfinder
by preference, avoiding the energy-draining LCD.
... And indeed, before
the iphone & until
a late-in-life antique acquisition frenzy,
it was my preferred camera....
|
But then came the coup
de grâce:
the
Kodak Z990’s 3-minute
battery life.
I doubt I was the only geezer to be utterly defeated by this common
“feature”
of post-SLR enthusiast cameras with their brilliant LCD
displays.
The outcome was simple: I didn’t even think
about another camera for 5 years. And I doubt I was the only such; I’m
confident vast herds abandoned the entire product category
as
too stupid
after such uplifting experiences. Particularly,
of course, after the iphone showed-up, but even before that there was
the
inspiring Flip video competition....
And
I think it’s instructive — or amusing at least — that
neither my broken A540
or the
amazing-battery-life Kodak Z990
could use
the fancy foto fan
features, specifically manual aperture setting. It’s true my ardor
was higly-intermittent at best, although at times intense,
but for a decade,
with two different cameras, I was unable to set an aperture basically
because
of
the astonishing ethical standards of the digital camera racket.
 My Flawless Market Analysis
Traditionally, high-end cameras had been promoted
in
the scamiest possible way, and photo fans just put up with it. The idea
that this arrangement would successfully continue in the age of
Amazon
and free information was faulty.
But
the real killer was the technology itself. In my lifetime, 35mm cameras
were a known quantity, well-understood by fans, and when
one purchased a camera from one of the typically-loathsome dealers, I
at
least still felt it was not a totally uneven contest.
But the digital
cameras
were
unlike
their chemical/mechanical
predecessors, even ’though
considerable effort was made to imitate their appearance.
 Thus,
it
seems obvious that the default brilliant LCD display of my Kodak Z990 —
and every other LCD camera on earth —
would drain the battery quickly — but it didn’t occur
to me,
which is
particularly startling given my ridiculously technical
background. It didn’t, basically because I couldn’t
believe anyone would sell a camera that
defective....
In summary, camera promotion is based almost
entirely on
industry-wide fraud,
and
every
newcomer will have the same awe-inspiring ridiculous battery experience.
The Three
Stigmata of Digital Camera Fraud
-
Brilliant
beautiful LCD screen 
ridiculously
short battery
life.
-
The ridiculous DSLR
mechanical mirror.
And the mechanical shutter
it came in with, for that matter....
-
Ridiculously
 ever-higher megapixels.
Lesser frauds:
-
The
“shooting mode wheel”: portrait, sports, hawaiian barbecue,
etc.,
selections which supposedly set-up the perfect shot but whose effects
are
barely distinguishable.
-
The point ’n’ shoot cameras with no viewfinder
— almost all (?) of today’s under-$500
flavor —
so they can’t
take pictures outdoors in sunlight, or for more than a few minutes anywhere!
-
 Low-light
performance
still dubious, and lot$
of
proprietary fla$h
acce$$ories.
- The
dubious halfway-down sacred shutter gesture.
They’re Not
Paying Attention! ...
 Oddly,
despite my thundering tirades here, the dying
camera industry
hasn’t
reformed.
... Maybe they only lie so assiduously in English; perhaps the Japanese
market
is full of truth & light. ... But I will not be severe;
I love
the silly cameras; they light-up my life, as they have so many
others’, I’m sure, but I indulge the special
pleasure of mocking
the camera manufacturers &
adepts & especially their cameras. Which are
silly; but lovable nonetheless, with their truly weird defects
& imitation
traditional
buttons & knobs & intricate & dubious software/hardware
mysteries. And their lovability is doubtless enhanced by
their cheap
used prices in junk stores & amazon.
... But I am
And I will miss
them, when they disappear
utterly in a few more years or
months.
Perhaps a few will get to museums or whatever dim fate the
future holds, but
probably most will be forgotten, like other embarrassing fads and
frauds which we do our best to bury in unmarked landfills. ... Look for
them with the PDAs
and those awful pre-Apple phones. ... But the cameras and their cryptic
 mysterious
mechanisms
will still call to me
... from beyond the
landfill — that’s why
I have such compassion for them now;
they’re my future
antiques,
to
join the beloved technological marvels
/ junk preserved and not
forgotten, what I am so
smitten-by. ...
And the future antiques thing works out
particularly well for the adorable cameras,
since they will not last the traditional 100 years or even 20 or ten,
particularly
those with whirling mechanical mirrors
in them. But all
the computery electronics, as we all know by now, is like unto the
mayfly — although apparently the fancy cameras are far less populous
—
and I
will enjoy their peculiarities while they last and I may — and the
used ones are really
cheap....
—
the kindly
digital-kind-of-guy
2/17
 1.
Innocent googling of 2016
camera sales provides endless support for my unremarkable
assumptions. DPReview
alleges that Canon’s doing better than the general death march; the
picture
shows the parade stumbling into the wall around 2011 when, despite the
camera industry’s amazing ethical standards, the ~2008 iphone camera
and its tag-along competitors were doubtless a major factor.
...
Obscure but still-startling counter-evidence is AmazonBasics’
Lightweight Tripod, $24
which, when I ordered it, they ran out of! ... But in its small way
it’s just like Apple’s super-success with the ipod et al, as
the music
industry keeled-over — monetization of a contracting product category.
I.e., the entire secret of the camera collapse, and so many departed
treasures:
things got
cheaper.
... And I must note that this is a unit
chart, and that most of those units were not
holy dubious DSLRs,
but humdrum mirrorless
point ’n’ shoot cameras that, of course, as far as anyone can
tell, took just as good pictures.
...
But then again, dpreview says
(5/17) things are getting better! ... The Trump boom no doubt. ... But
then maybe not
— or this pitiful whimper.... 
|
|
MySQL
Considered Harmful
Apparently
what MySQL thought
was like this: say
somewhere
on the internet there is a GPL MySQL database. Say you, in a hateful
effort to pay for groceries, connect to this
database, without
using a byte of MySQL code. ... Oops, Mr. Programmer: 
you’ve been caught without a license, you’ll have
to
pay. ... It’s like MySQL is trying to render in living color
Bill
Gates’ wildest fantasies about 
