Broken Doors: The Blue Tape Solution (?)

As I was pondering how to make my QRV4 broken battery door not dangle embarrassingly, I settled for a little while on scotch tape, but then realized “painters” masking tape was much more appropriate — it’s supposed to come off easily, and the effect provides a cheery stigmata of defect, which is much more in the silly camera spirit. ... Specifically “Scotch-Blue Painter’s Tape for Multi-Surfaces #2090”. ... First I used it on the QVR4’s battery door which isn’t actually under any pressure; but then I found that it would withstand springey batteries, too! — particularly after abusive screwdriver treatment. ... For cameras with broken doors where the film is in the same compartment as the batteries, it’s particularly klujey — but even then, the point is, the tape comes off and goes back on pretty good!

Googling “fixing broken battery door” I actually found a seemingly-useful & obvious suggestion, which is to use the tripod mount fixture to screw a metal plate there ... & it would look so admirably bailing-wire/chewing gum. ... But in most cases, the blue tape is obviously superior, and my one tripod mount attempt was not inspiring....

... So I’ve used it on the qvr4, the second Coolpix 3100, and the designed-defective but also a little broken battery door Olympus C740. And, in a miraculous resurrection, the laboratory Nikon L22. ... It is beautiful. ... On the actual broken doors — the Nikon L22 and the 2nd 3100 — the tape came off after a day, but I still consider it an improvement: it’s nearly impossible to take L22 pictures while I’m holding the batteries in; the tape definitely makes it possible — today, but, if not tomorrow. ... And of course there’s no earthly reason to take any L22 pix — but what availeth such reality-based trifles to the devoted silly camera collector? ... And then the abusive screwdriver technique seems to make the blue tape last weeks.

... But then again, as the world turned and owenlabs technologies marched on, the ultimate dodgy trick seems to be the cable-tie....

6/2/17. The endearing 5/04 Kodak “EasyShare” CX7530 5mp $12 camera lit right-up fresh from the junk store, when I added batteries + 2Gb SD card. Of course, the junk store tag did proclaim “it works”. ... ~$250 used @ amazon! ... 17,345 rupees I believe @ an indian site, ~ $270, new? The ebay prices were nearer $25....

... On the back, the CX7530 has a prominent “share” LED/button, denoting the unspeakable menace I’ve already encountered with fear & loathing on my Kodak Z990. The estimable dpreview.com in a “Throwback Thursday” article about a silly Sony camera admits Kodak was there first with this icky-poo proprietary share c--p, although the Sony system is doubtless even more idiotic/fraudulent. ... But the CX7530, like my dubious zoomer Z990 for that matter, is amazingly free of Sony’s typical proprietary battery/film scammery, although I admit I’ve only come to appreciate that fully in my senescence, with the beloved silly cameras....

6/5/17. My pitiful 1999 Kodak Advantix F600 film camera does not qualify for membership in the silly camera collection, which membership it is decreed in holy writ will not include these pitiful analog film atrocities. Although I have of course preserved my own antedeluvian SLR. ... The advantix was what I heartlessly call a dead-husband deal, wherein some presumably-sad person offers some junk with a high gloss of ignorance, usually priced ridiculously high from survivor delusion. The F600 was not canonical in that respect, since it was only $3 for the remains of somebody’s presumably-brief/stillborn venture into snapshotting.

It’s a film camera with computery features: motorized zoom, LCD, auto exposure etc. — a popular format, at least judging by the drifting wreckage in the junk stores. ... It was gershtunk; not that I could tell before I tried it, but I actually paid my $3 ’cause the generic soft case looked like it’d be a good fit for my beloved A650, and so it was, but the plastic bag also included some presumably-stale lithium 3 volt batteries which might come in handy someday — not the CRV3 of the scammy sp310 below — and an unopened 3-pack of the presumably proprietary advantix film cartridges, sell-by 2013, which will never see the light. And an incoherent instruction manual. ... Kodak actually advises us to use a little plastic something on the camera strap — not included in my pitiful remains — for pressing some of the very teeny tiny buttons.

But the film door wouldn’t open until I pried it out, and it still was jammed for the duration. It’s supposed to rewind the film magically at the press of a button, but it seemed electronically dead to the world and I didn’t try very hard. Despite getting no results googling “jammed kodak f600” I am confident that many of these cameras left this vale of tears in just this wise, like that triumph of murican engineering the 8-track tape. ... I did find a guy who paid $110 for his F600 new in 1999; he complained about the picture quality. He was gonna get a real digital camera. ... But I could buy a used one today for $9.90 at amazon....

6/7/17. I bought (another!) 8/03 Nikon 3mp Coolpix 3100 for $10, but too quick: the battery door was broken. As usual. ... It is amazing the number of broken camera battery doors. I imagine the great Japanese camera laboratory minions slaving through the days & nights and years trying to contrive a battery door that won’t break, but apparently without success. So I will while away my idle hours trying to figure-out how to crudely fix a broken battery door. I mean, it lit-up beautifully when I held the stupid door closed with two genuine Kodak rehargable batteries in there. ... After pondering the tripod mount strategery, the blue tape solution seemed to work good, providing that all-important fashion accent. ... And worked even better, once I applied the magical abusive screwdriver....

1/10/18. And then another! With a broken door, but only $2 ... but probably too much; not quite dead as a door nail — the power LED lights, but nothing else. ... Ah well; perhaps the "Time of Plenty" is only the time of closet-cleaning....

The Dead

6/8/17. The 7/02 HP Photosmart 620 2mp is charming. ... Overstock.com has an out-of-stock $140 refurbished one; probably ~$200 in 2002? ... And it came with an adorable lens cap. And is completely without function. ... If I were actually trying to get a cute golden age camera, I’d go to amazon and buy a Canon from some ancient day. But it’s no fun going around the junk stores with batteries — well actually I suppose maybe I could, in a little handy plastic container. ... Anyway, the beloved Photosmart is one with the angels, even after abusing-off the green spots in the battery compartment left from some ancient catastrophe, and toothbrushing with deoxit....

6/14/17. Another DOA was the 1999 Polaroid PDC 700 0.8mp with rust and corrosion in the battery compartment which no deoxit could cure. I scraped some of it off with a dental tool, but it was doubtless water-logged long ago in a flooded basement of antique doom. ... I suppose I should try to avoid these things, but so far I feel I’ve got my money’s worth; there’s something about these artifacts even when they’re stone dead that moves me, in this case the fabled pitiful Polaroid brand name which has stumbled on zombie-like for decades. ... It seems fitting that their dubious digital camera offering should be gershtunk, as all the Polaroid film-age cameras were so, essentially — I can’t remember any occasion when someone’d get a polaroid picture with the first try. The flash would fail, or the stupid thing would develop wrong, or something. The inevitably-embarrassed enthusiast would hop about trying to make it go and maybe eventually succeed, after wasting numerous expensive polaroids. It was a costly and low-rent gadget for people too silly to put up with the boring round-trip delay involved in getting pictures developed in a mature professional way. Although of course I too on occasion tried to take the wily polaroid, and failed, like all the rest....

6/9/17. Well at least the battery door isn’t broken on a 3/02 Olympus C-740 3mp “Ultra Zoom” xD camera — $24 at the roadside junk store. ... The door’s injured, but the thing still lights up (and benefitted from blue tape & abusive screwdriving). ... Unlike the beloved C-720 however, it doesn’t use the proprietary Stupid Media but instead a presumably even-more proprietary “xD Picture Card” of which the laboratory, in our continuing quest for the silliest camera debris actually had a sample! Which worked! But not until it wounded me while I was extracting it from its plastic womb.

... Then I thought the ultra zoom was bad, but apparently I just wasn’t patient enough when I told the fully-extended zoom to go back; it seems to return after I hold the thing for two or 3 seconds, and always works @ power-off, so I assume it’s just some super-talented Olympus design/programming. And this guy complains about “Occasionally sluggish zoom response”. ... But I have taken a picture! After dousing the tiny fingers of the xD card with deoxit and rubbing it a bit, but at last I have done so and could read it with my xD-qualified multicard reader, and another silly camera triumphantly joins the fray. ... This review says it had a “$499 Est. Street Price”, so I obviously made out like a bandit anyway....

Aquisition Policies

The acquisitions policies of the silly camera collection may need review. ... The truth is, I buy Olympus cameras because they’re so scammy, at least the proprietary digital film is outstandingly so. ... But I get Canon cameras, & some others, ’cause they’re so cute, and so cheap in these degraded latter days. ... Both, of course, make beautiful pictures. And surely it counts for something that the silly camera collection now has two generations of Olympus film scammery!

Renunciation

& then one bright junk store morning — well, really, it was drizzling — I actually passed-over a 1.3mp Olympus. Which, to be sure, was priceless, but I didn’t even inquire, even with its enticing original box. ... And if Olympus is scammy — well, one of the sparkling highlights of the entire silly camera cameras, especially the grand DSLR itself, is the relentless decades-long scammery. ... Which leads-in perfectly to ...

6/10/17. The next ridiculous camera to pop out of the box is the (orig. $333?) 8/05 Olympus sp310 7mp with its permanently pre-broken battery system. The AA batteries it came with and some used-about-10-times rechargable NiMHs would only produce the solemn BATTERY EMPTY message — every time, and every time it would manage to tumesce and detumesce the lens without fail! — whirr, whirr, BATTERY EMPTY ... and then it’d stay tumesced until I turned it off with the power button, and whirr, whirr again, as the empty battery retracted the zoom. ... So I figured it was some kind of scam promoting the proprietary “CRV3” batteries — but wrong; apparently the CRV3 is an industry-wide scam — so everyone can sell a cheaper camera with hidden battery-replacement costs. And of course a blindingly bright LCD....

But all is not lost; the camera does use proprietary xD film, and I examined it and discovered four typical junk store pictures, suggesting an obviou$ solution to the BATTERY EMPTY problem: brand new batteries. ... Every 3 or four pictures, no doubt — well they’ve lasted a few weeks at least. ... The web was full of Olympus BATTERY EMPTY stories, and one fellow had a video where he poked-up the little tabs on his battery door, which supposedly made his Olympus behave. And I tried that, but no dice. ... 7/17/17: BATTERY EMPTY again. Eleven pictures, 5 weeks. Olympus scores! ... And now I get to try out my rechargeable CRV3! ... Which worked great. Although the date/time of course required setting; maybe I wasn’t fast-enough....

The remaining puzzle for the silly camera enthusiast is, how’d Olympus work the scam? Since the CRV3 isn’t proprietary? ... Right, they must've supplied the camera with two low-rent alkaline AAs wrapped in cellophane, what’d eke out a picture or two. And the joyous retailers’d sell a “pro” “kit” with a CRV3 recharger, and maybe somehow Olympus horned-in on that?  You know, “Official Olympus Rechageable CRV3”? — but no, probably not in 2005. ... But after all, the pitiful camera enthusiast’s getting ripped with the xD film; why shouldn’t he have to buy an expensive battery a week after the purchase? ... And there's even more! — DPreview explains the sp310 shipped without film; it has built-in memory for a few pictures. Which, actually, might've required less power. ... I remember in those distant days I would be so furious when they expected me to buy digital film also — and my innocent ignorant outrage wasn’t so spurious.

... But oh golly, the sp310’s got raw! ... Be still my heart. ... And then I realized I’d neglected the olympus viewer program, which I downloaded from here — search for “olympus viewer”; they wanted my camera’s serial number. Although the free Rawtherapee sees ’em good. And the sp310 takes forever to record the raw. ... But while I was perusing the dubious raw images, I noticed for the first time the seller — or perhaps some innocent passerby — had recorded a tiny movie, of a girlfriend presumably, hiding her face. Touching, really....

But be still, anyway; my heart is glad when the pitiful little machines light-up, even Olympii. ... No matter how stupid/fraudulent. ... And at least it was only $24 (?) at the Purgatory Emporium.

7/8/18. On the occasiona of the successor maybe-working-battery SP320, I turned-on the 310 — which, in the interim, I had equipped with a rechargeable NiMH CRV3-style battery — and it was working great, full green battery. Yesterday. Today, I took the battery out to check what it was, put it back in, and the BATTERY EMPTY mesage marched on. Until I gave it another fully-charged CRV3. I suppose it "works" ... just the battery indicator is certified c--p. And probably neither 310 or 320 actually works with alkaline AAs....

6/12/17. I got a 9/02 4mp Canon PowerShot G3 for $45 used @ amazon, inspired by DPReview’s “Throwback Thursday” article about how it was a watershed camera what induced many film shooters to cross the digital divide. The Amazon vendor “RCH Mercantile” included a charger and two batteries and a 64Mb compact flash card, and it’s really quite lovely. Some fellow out there on the web says it was $550 in 2003!

The google images I found seemed to minimize its “cameraness”, but I think my picture gives an idea — to my eyes, it was intended to attract the gadget-smitten film hordes — it reminds me of one of those intricate expensive range finders of yore, as if I knew. ... As promised by dpreview, the viewfinder is notably bad, with the lens poking into the frame except at the telephoto end of the range. But it takes lovely pictures, like all the silly cameras. ... And that’s a genuine “Canon PowerShot” strap there....

But it doesn’t really warm the heart like my smaller less-threatening Canons. The Canon “G” series was apparently intended to be the next-to-the-DSLR camera, which is positive in itself inasmuch as it doesn’t have the ridiculous mirror & mechanical shutter. But it was supposed to be a $tep up from the crummy point ’n’ shoots, and I am anti-fancy and pro-cheap; I want reg’lar hum-drum cameras what the commoners use. ... In summary, the G3’s a fine historical addition to the silly camera collection, but maybe not silly enough. ... Although lookee here in the "Shutter type" it says "Mechanical and Electronic" my emphasis, and I've apparently missed this exciting detail on some other early silly cameras and I am covered with shame....

6/13/17. The only defect in this 3/03 3.2mp Kyocera Finecam L3v is its scammy CR3V battery, like the lamentable Olympus sp310. And this one came with a working CRV3! ... Which does suggest however that it has the same 4-pix-per-AA set disability as the sp310. ...The L3v was missing its SD, which is a common fault, but odd when someone’s gone through the trouble of installing a working battery. Perhaps they just took the SD to those pitiful department store digital photo kiosks that linger-on and lost it there or on the weary way....

It was $449 retail in 2003; it was probably $12 (?) at the Buchanan VA Purgatory Emporium where, oddly, I apparently also bought the sp310 — I’m just guessing the wretched sp310 is the $24 one on the Purgatory receipt , ’cause it’s got more megapixels — my latter-day scribbled blue notes are probably wrong. And really both cameras are wonderful, even ’though they both use CRV3 batteries, which annoyance I am fixing with resupply and rechargeables. And I must admit the sp310 is the more amusing silly camera, despite its sins which are very possibly shared by the L3v. ... And of course the sp310 does look more like a real camera, i.e. like one of the Canons....

6/13/17. The label on the 2/06 6mp Panasonic Lumix DMC-F27 12x zoom was not inspiring, but I went & bought a $23 Li-on recharger + CGA-S006 batteries — note how the label covers the battery compartment — but that must’ve just been trying to prevent a stolen battery. ... “From $489” on amazon it says at DPreview — I assume that’s a lingering retail price, but still; the amazon page’s got much more reasonable prices, and bad reviews ... actually, perusing them they’re not so bad. And the 2006 reviews mention a ~$350 price. ... Whatever. ... Gee this is the same vintage/megapixels as my pitiful broken A540. Which indeed had a lower price, but was of course totally wacko. ... The “420” over there is probably what the seller paid for it so long ago?

6/17/17. And it is whole again. The old battery — which was a replacement, like mine — I thought was dead, but the new battery seems to work fine and the camera lights-up and everything. It is wondrous & dubious: a perfect silly camera. ... Some web chit chat alleged low light was horribly noisy, but I’ll never tell. ... On the other hand, the camera politely demands that I take the lens cover off when I’ve left it on, unlike my zoomer which rudely complains when I stupidly leave it on, and shuts down. ... The F27’s great claim to fame was the fabulous Leica lens which us pitiful photo fan children were supposed to drool over....

So the seller must’ve lost the charger, ’cause the dead Li-on battery it came with seemed to charge up eventually in my replacement charger, ’though it took longer than the two Li-ons that came with the charger — which presumably still had some “factory” charge. ... Subsequent endless turmoil revealed the original battery was defective — it recharges to green OK, but does it in 20 minutes or so, and in the camera shows a low battery. ... Thus the “AS IS” is just honesty, not a cry of scorn at the discarded treasure. ... And I got a wondeful bargain! ... Although it’s true the amazon used page today has the f27 with a charger and original box for $22.04; the next item is the same price without a charger or anything. 

& TIF!

... And after months, I noticed that while the F27 doesn't have raw, it's got TIF, giant uncompressed images even better. And it is vast: a 6mp picture is ~18Mb of TIF — 'jes like like the holy raw!

6/22/17. Inspired by my G3, I wasted $30 on the 10/00 3.3mp Canon Powershot G1 @ amazon and was not disappointed — it was $1100 in the day! ... Ultra-classy point ’n’ shoot. ... The kindly amazon merchant included a charger and a battery which, to be sure, took 4 or five hours before the charger light’d turn green. But it took beautiful pictures although not, it’s true, quite as beautiful as later silly cameras....

But the intriguing part is how, according to dpreview, the G3 inspired the film children at last to cross the dark digital divide. ... Could it be the battery “bump” on the left of the camera — completely absent on the original G1 — increasing and reaching its final glorious prominence with the G3? ... It’s not real clear why this should be, other than scurrilous psychological character defamations. ... But none of the olden 35mm film cameras had the bump — except those equipped with a motorized film drive, a well-known stigmata of the Holy Way of the super-professional camera meister....

6/23/17. I gave up on the modern point & shoots with their exorbitant prices and perverse features, but then in a wild frenzy of frivolous spending I splurged $115 on a practically modérne-but-used 9/09 12mp Canon SX20 IS 20x zoomer @ amazon, and it is beautiful beyond the recall of words. ... However it had no lens cap so I retrieved one for $7. ... Amazon claims it’s $480 but I assume that was before it was discontinued & I had to buy it used from “these sellers” as Amazon snootily puts it — and then again, this guy says it was supposed to be $400 in the day — or even a squalid $380, says the “user report” which alleges it’s the “budget alternative” to the $580 SX1 — which is probably untrue, since that’s a previous year’s camera with less megapixels. ... But really, it’s almost as big as the holy DLSR — it barely fits my beloved DSLR neoprene form-fitting case; but then the DSLR only fits a little better. It’s a bit shorter than my pitiful Kodak zoomer, but still about as bulky, and only a 20x zoom as opposed to the zoomer’s 45x! ... And somehow it hasn’t forgotten the date/time! ... Must be a date/time battery in there somewhere — yes, my old canon buddy, the cr1220.

... One of the charms of the silly cameras is walking around the palatial estate with one no matter how sizable, and deploying it without damage or personal injury & with fair ease. ... This is not so likely when traveling with the things, hence their iphone etc replacements all over the world. ... Still I manage to take a silly camera or two on my wanderings, but only the smaller cuter kind, originally the a1200 and the a650 and even the latter sometimes seems too unwieldy — although a svelter case fits better, now I’ll have to keep the thing’s LCD screen closed, but that’s OK since I hardly use it anyway, almost always preferring instead the shamefully-automatic-only a1200.

Progress

Then there’s the technology. Like all computery devices, the silly cameras are endlessly infuriating, but I believe wild success and general competitive frenzy made the sx20 menus specially ornate. Or, on the other hand, the obvious existential threat of the iphone, soon to dampen camera sales. ... At least I certainly got a bad feeling when I couldn’t get the fancy articulating LCD screen to light-up again — it seemed to be always on when the LCD was turned out, and off when it wasn’t, and I thought this was limiting but kind-of good/simple-minded — but of course not, the elusive DISP button can adjust it any which way, but I was fearful and anxious when it wouldn’t turn-on even ’though I turned the LCD screen round and round. ... Although subsequently the sx20 does appear to try to light-up the LCD or not depending on how the screen is turned? ... Apparently by random preference; I think I've figured-out the control which is of course the DISP button, but sometimes one has to press it twice. Or maybe seventeen times. 

The Broken Wheel & Exposure Compensation

Far more disastrous is the malevolent Control Dial. ... I got into dire contretemps trying to adjust the exposure compensation with a button whose icon I though I knew (), but I couldn’t guess it was supposed to be adjusted via the fancy wheel feature instead of the good old arrow buttons like previous more-functional canons, and using the wheel has a tendency to randomly activate the good old arrow buttons’ numerous additional functions (as dpreview also complained, indicating a major fault amidst such dedicated puffery), so I had a high old time with stuff flashing off/on and turning things on/off I didn’t want, and/or will never know. Finally, after liberally dousing the wheel with deoxit — presumably for its gentle lubricating qualities — and spinning the stupid thing around a lot, I was able to adjust the exposure compensation by carefully rotating the wheel, holding it with two fingers. ... But then again, it took me at least a half hour to figure out exposure compensation on the beloved a1200. 

Silly Camera Dreaming ...

And then yet again (7/21), I'm considering ignominious retreat from the sx20 to the pififul no-dumb-wheel plain-old-non-X ~2007 S5, with its pitiful 8 megapixels. ... After all, the golden age of silly cameras ended around 2008 with the introduction of the iphone and its unfair-competition working camera, so the 2009 sx20, for all its charms, is in response to the iphone threat and, hence, has stupid pointless broken features, a well-known totally failsafe mechanism for dealing with competitive challenge — well, really, it's like they all knew the game was up, & so they put the B team on the sx20. ... And, now that I recall, the stupid wheel's on the 2008 sx10. ... But anyway, the S5 looks like a real camera just as much as the sx20/10, & what else matters? the laughing hobbyist asked. ... So I bought another....

The SX20’s not only a little bigger, it’s ridiculously complicated advanced. Which of course warmed the cockles of the foto fan boys’ hearts once upon a time in those golden days — and my heart in these latter degraded times, when the fan boys have probably switched allegiance to the iphone or worse. ... And it's why I got the “I complain, therefore I am” t-shirt. ... And when I accidentally pressed another button, it seemed to take a very nice movie, with stereo sound.

... When I tried to take this lovely picture of two overly-large Canon cameras, DSLR & powershot together at last, the first two attempts — with the Lumix F27 and then the Kodak z990 — were blurry! And the z990’s supposedly got image stablization or something. ... It took a genuine Canon A650 IS to get the power & beauty of not-so-blurry overly-large Canons. ... Although recollected in tranquility, I realized the a650 cheated and used flash, which the other two didn't I think unless I gave them a direct order — well the Lumix is like that; the Z990 I had actually forbidden it, 'cause of my art photo baryta paper delusional pretensions....

A Camera Bag!

In a revolutionary readjustment, I’ve been trying-out the sx20 as an a650 replacement — it’s so monstrously cute and real-camera looking! And the fabulous zoom of course. ... So I bought a new $9 camera bag for it, to replace my usual ingenious stapled-together bubble-wrap, so I can carry it around and not look so silly — and my beloved bubble-wrap only works inside some other bag-like container, but my chic new camera bag’ll keep the sx20 out of the rain on independent foto fan missions. ... In the weary months passing, I eventually got even another bag, slightly smaller. But I was leaning towards just carrying the thing around in an attache case, with bubble wrap again.

... But no!  In a flash of insight and dćmentia, I realized the size of the camera bag is not so important if it's light-enough. What's really important is how easy it is to get open — i.e., velcro instead of a maddening zipper. And so I purchased for the laboratory a "bagsmart" unit for an opulent $30 with three closure technologies including velcro, and it fondles my beloved sx20 in no-doubt deathless comfort. ... Of course the entire exercise is a kind of historic re-enactment I conduct for the sake of art & culture & the vanishing fotofan tao. ... The annoying zipper bag is in the precious artifact style, where the pitiful fotofan worships the sacred object, so rare so beautiful — and these days with the ≥$1000 zoomers, they are ridiculously expensive and precious and perhaps should be worhipped. ... But not by me....

But then in the wandering ages I dreamed new dreams....

12/21/17. The sx20 was so much fun, I went and splurged on a 9/10 14mp Canon SX30 IS with a ridiculous 35x zoom for only $110 used at amazon! ... Aside from the zoom, it has a rechargeable battery instead of the sx20's good ol' reliable AAs, but it will help me celebrate the new year or not, and the next-in-line 2011 sx40 is still a minimum of $260 amazon used and only a crummy 12mp! 

... Along with its beautiful original box, the vendor supplied my SX30 with an assortment of lens caps, none of which fit; Amazon's replacement cap was a pricey $11, showing how the silly camera collection is movin' on up. ... But, as usual, I am deeply charmed; the 35x zoom seems tremendously talented. So as well as $18 of extra charger/batteries, I bought a smaller case for $20, perhaps to facilitate dragging the thing around. And/or the still beloved sx20. ... But I have discovered that even bringing the A650 along on the morning walk is too annoying: only the A1200 is small enough. ... But hope springs eternal, and perhaps the svelte new camera bag and the strangely attractive zoom will win me over....

And then I was rebelliously murmuring it had no flash shoe — but not so! The manual explained about a plastic thing I could get off with some difficulty, revealing a lovely perfectly formed hot shoe underneath! And explaining a peculiar accessory included along with the 4 or five non-fitting lens caps in the vendor's box, a little leather case into which one is supposed to stow the hot shoe cover, attached to one's camera strap! ... The wonders never ceasing. ... And this comports with the general understated look, as compared with the sx20: there's a little less writing on the sx30, it's a little less bulgy, & the hot shoe's hidden. ... I think I hear the cold winds of the iphone whistling 'round, as the poor innocent camera purveyors figured their market wanted less camera / more EZ appliance....

Ugly CMOS Fault!

And then it made an evil line in a picture — Oh Canon Oh Shame! ... In my innocence, it seemed it didn't make a habit of it otherwise, and for all I knew many silly cameras did the same on full-moon odd-numbered Tuesdays. ... Well it was an even numbered Tuesday 1/2/18, but still, a full moon. 

... 3/4/18. Oh Vanity! Oh Jejeune Optimism! ... At last I looked, and I saw another vertical mark of shame, and then examining all the pictures at last — well, many — closely, it's on all of 'em, although it's thoughtfully greyish so it doesn't show-up a lot, but anywhere there's a dark background it's easily seen. ... I will excoriate further....

I fear the warranty's run-out a while ago. ... But it does confirm my silly cameras decline & fall crackpot theories, as the swarming smart phones ate the pitiful cameras' lunch around 2010 and the vendors strove for ever more featureitis, in this case the seemingly megapixels-too-far 14mp, which size indeed didn't persist — the sx40 went back to 12mp. All of which makes the beloved sx20 the pinnacle of silly zoomers. ... So I bought an sx10. 

Pitiful Excuses & Fabrications

Well, I never liked the sx30's proprietary rechargeable anyway; I consider it a leading scam feature. ... And this is the first Canon with a visual defect; in fact the first silly camera — that I know of, anyway, for truly, it is not the way of the enthusiast fanchild to pick-over the faults of the beloved toys. ... But even my store-bought broken Canon A540 took good pictures; no stupid lines in its 6 megapixels.

But now I wander in my domains with my herds of computers & their screen savers & sx30 pictures with the same vertical line, which has become miraculously visible. And it's not a single pixel, although the added width is probably an artifact of the jpeg necromancy inside the camera....

7/4/17. The 9/98! 0.3mp (VGA!) Sony Mavica FD71 (list $799!) (a mere ~$45 from amazon dealer “betmul”) is a silly camera, but still obviously a kind of stranger in the collection, as it was not a pretentious pretend-camera-looking gadget, but instead a harmless sizable thing that used floppy disks — that is, mortals could get the pictures into their computers, and many did, as dpreview’s Throwback Thursday article recounts; a commenter notes it was the Ebay camera back in those halcyon days. Real estate agents were also enthralled, as I dimly recall. ... I mean, the FD71 was an actual product! You didn’t have to be a photo-meister-aspiring kind of guy; actually the exact opposite. Women bought them! ... And it’s at least as big as the DSLR, the SX20, and the zoomer....

My FD71 pictures are kind-of dim — nothing my PSP9 one-step photo fix can’t deal with, but I suppose I’ll tinker with the thing a bit and see. ... So there’s a “brightness” control and turning it all the way up makes the LCD look bright, but the pictures remain the same. The admirable FD71 might be defective; but I doubt it — Sony defects tend to be much more noticeable/destructive, like my video camera that, if you were foolish-enough to turn it off without removing the battery, would rise up in the night and attempt to destroy your 8mm tape cartridge, if not the camera itself, by peremptorily ejecting it. ... Ah but it’s the foto fan who’s defective! I broke down and read the manual, and the brightness control’s for the LCD of course! If I want to change the exposure, I do something with the arrow keys....

Ease

But I must admit, cavorting here with my FD71, I just take a picture and then pop the floppy and look at it on my USB floppy drive — it’s really much more convenient than most of the other cameras. Although I suppose leaving an SD reader plugged-in — i.e., like the floppy — and dealing with the camera’s SD/CF card is almost as good — although only if the camera has a separate door for the film card. ... Like the FD71 has, of course, for its floppy drive.

Darkness & the Ćsthetical Mac

And even with an EV (exposure value?) of +1.5 the FD71 pix aren’t that bright — but this was as it was of old, even with the Canons — same symptoms, bright OK on the LCD but image actually darkish. ... And now in these latter days it occurs to me that it could’ve been the Macintosh, which once upon a time had a ridiculous gamma setting or something — the age of the internet cured them, because you’d see these dark pictures on our Winders PCs, and they were inevitably the fault of MACs, the favored computer of the arts & foto fans & their ilk. ... And actually that might unriddle the ridiculously-overwrought raw cult — I mean, aside from manufacturer greed and natural disinformation tendencies, the pitiful “creative” Macintoshers would desperately try to make their expensive camera pix “work” outside their macs. ... And oh yes, there's also the clipping! ... Ah ... what a tangled web....

9/7/17. And then like a complete hobbyist idiot, I got another Mavica, the newer 2/01 0.3mp Sony Mavica FD75 which is doubtless a thing of beauty and cheaper ($400 retail!), but its installed Radio Shack battery was not copacetic: like some other broken thing I had, the charger'd go orange for about 10 seconds, and then dark; I have come to believe this is something like the universal so-easily-understood code for "broken Lithium". ... But the also-included original Sony battery charged-up good, and the camera lights up and everything! 

Date/Time

... But I suppose if I'm becoming a Mavica specialist I should buy a spare battery. And so I did and got a vast 2500mAh replacement which accordingly took more than four hours to charge! And during all the excitement I discovered the charming Mavica date/time cannot be set to an afternoon time! So I must set the clock in the morning! ... Just another crack quality feature of what was once ballyhooed, in a time beyond recall, as the wonderful Japanese-American company. ... Judging by the diskettes left with these things, nobody ever bothered anyway ... but perhaps this's why. 

Further joyous investigation revealed that it's far worse: it somehow remembers it was set to the wrong am/pm, and retains the error! Or something. ... When I tried to reset the time in the morning, it insisted on pm time! No choice! And note that somehow I managed to innocently set the FD71's time OK.  ... So I tried removing the battery for the ritual brain wipe, and the FD75 woke-up with the world-standard 12:00 am, but then when I tried to alter it, it reset itself to pm! 

But I was able eventually to get it right; I think it has something to do with the direction I try to alter the hour, i.e. when I used the up arrow that worked? And maybe it flipped to pm when I offensively used the down arrow to go from 12:00 AM to 9:00? ... But who knows? That's the wonder of stupid broken software, the magic & trembling mystery. ... I note the manual claims if the clock isn't right it'll insist on you setting it, but they apparently clobbered that early on; it must've been truly infuriating, which is something Sony has achieved amazingly in my life more than once, with ingenious & astonishingly-creative slipshoddery.

... But now I can cavort with two Mavicas! ... What joy.....

1/10/18. And the last shall be least, when beyond hobbyist idiocy I gathered unto the silly herd the oldest (?) FD7 Mavica zoom 1997 0.3mp Sony Mavica FD7 which is so ancient & obscure it's not even listed @ dpreview, which stops at my FD-71. But nevertheless I got it out in junk store America, and it's cute as a button and will fill-out nicely my FD-7 assembláge although there's still a few models left. And its proprietary battery charged-up grudgingly in my genuine brandx charger, never turning green but apparently topped-up according to the Mavica display. The buttons were cranky too, but squirting a little DeOxit seemed to pacify 'em a bit.

7/11/17. Another pitiful visit to the amazon kindly kamera klub and $23.47, and I got the 2/04 3mp Canon A75 — a mere $394.50 in the day. ... And the poor thing is shaky ... it’s LCD quivers and flashes. I was anxious ... But it was just start-up jitters, I suppose, and after some switch exercising, eventually it seemed to settle down — although relapses have occurred. ... Actually figuring-out what the switches did was, as is frequently the case, at least part of the problem....

It’s a little banged-up, and is missing its “ring” cover — presumably mislaid by the owner when he installed some cunning add-on gadget in the misty past. ... But my 52mm “for Canon A510” attachment gadget — I didn’t own the camera yet, but presumably the adapter fits others in the herd, including now the beloved A75, and I can attach wide-angle and telephoto gadgets with wild impunity! ... What fun we’ll have....

7/18/17. The 4/05 3mp Canon A510 was only $20 at amazon! And once I got its date/time battery straightened out, it works like a charm; beautiful pictures, + the amazon vendor “Salahhussein” supplied the camera with a super-chic skin-tight 3rd-party accucase, obviously designed to form-fit this camera and no other. I am so thrilled....

The case suggests a pricey cute little gadget, but dpreview gives a $190 “street price” — compared to ~$400 for the same megapixels in the 2002 A75 above. ... And $200 is about what I paid @ 12/06 for my pitiful a540, a more splendiferous six megapixels camera (’though mine, sadly, was a fraudulent lemon). ... So it seems the tragic camera biz collapse may have predated the 2010 peak, inasmuch as that year saw the maximum units, but the prices were obviously going south long before....

Cheap

The Kamera Kult was amazingly like the PC racket where, with the astonishingly coincidental help of microsoft, every year saw PCs with enhanced capability and approximately the same prices as last year’s, but requiring the new capabilities so Windows’d run “right”. ... Just like the escalating megapixels in the cameras, otherwise undetectable by human sensory apparatus. Just like the windows “features”. ... The tragic commonality was that, despite industry-wide herculean efforts at restraint of trade, things got cheaper — leading to the tragic denoument — really, in both cases, PCs and cameras — of the all-conquering iphone and the tag-along mob of other cellphones....

9/4/17. The 1999 VGA 0.3mp AGFA ePhoto780c was pretty cheap in an American junk store, and worth every penny, even 'though it was $199 back when. ... With, of course, the ever-scammy StupidMedia — but a 2Mb card was supplied, but not of course in my junk store rendition. My SmartMedia sample failed ("format failure") — but not to worry, I was just trying to cram in a 16MB StupidMedia card; dpreview describes its preference as "2MB", but an 8MB sneaked by....

And I mustn't fail to note the totally-bogus "XGA 0.7mp" resolution it was advertised with, which was what they call "interpolated" — i.e., "bogus". But it's apparently better 'n' that: the "big" pictures actually have more bytes in them — ~167k versus ~82k for the smaller non-bogus — but, I assume, would only appear larger in the bogus scam software supplied with the unit which of course I don't have, never will, and it wouldn't work anyway. In my numerous browsers & paint programs, the pictures appear to be the same size/resolution — 640x480 aka VGA....

... And then the proud Germans got out of the silly camera biz in 2001; so sad....

9/8/17. Moving from the scammy to the sublimely scammy, we have the appalling 2006? Vivitar ViviCam35 obviously designed to snare the pitiful & ignorant and it got me, and probably for even less than it was in the stores in its bubble pack prime. I actually bought for real one of the comparably-slimy Vivitar "video" cameras, while in mourning for the flip. Although it must've had actual electronic film...

The ravishing vivicam35 does not — in the golden early days of foto fun scammery, merchants sold cameras whose "film" was volatile built-in memory: battery dies, pictures disappear. This was quite common in the bubble-pack products of Walmart & Target and I try to find some excuse in my heart, but it's hard. ... The Vivicam35, as was typical, included monstrously awful "picture" software, some of which I actually downloaded from somewhere and which of course didn't work, although the usb connection beeped a bit, and the software actually sprang to life in my PSP twain "scanner" thing with some kind of hopeless error — it probably worked for 15 minutes in Vista or something. ... But essentially the camera is a paperweight ... but a very light paperweight, at least without batteries. ... Perhaps I'll try revving it up in my beloved virtualbox XP someday — but no; I've learned sadly VBox doesn't really do XP USB. But it's true I've acquired an actual XP laptop and hope springs eternal, if not real swift.

... These things are still for sale in Walmart @ 9/17 — i.e., scammy cameras with no removable film and still bearing the Vivitar ViviCam mark, although I assume the supplied/required "upload" software has developed considerably in malwaresquery.

9/4/17. The ~1965 Gossen Luna-Pro Electronic light meter is not a silly camera but is nevertheless achingly beautiful, and I got it for a pittance somewhere in America. But in a harsh lesson of degradation & humiliation, my beloved Komposer html editor discarded my initial encomium — but actually of course the poor senile camera fan was totally at fault yet again, executing one of his patented moves-instead-of-copies with which I seem to be enchanted without limit or reason. So I did it all over again.

And well worth it: the Luna-Pro definitely has the treasured silly taint — I never had one back in the day with my vivitar which, of course, had a built-in meter, and I wasn't going to pay $70 for something — $510 in real money! And my built-in was almost certainly more accurate. 

... But I did buy a light meter once upon a time, not so grand and probably used even then, what I think I imagined would improve my beautiful cinema verité super 8 films. I pasted-in an extra scale marked in pencil, probably supposed to deal with the latest (400? 200? ISO) super 8 film of the era — although of course the beloved Minolta XL400 Super8 had automatic exposure. ... My Gossen Scout's provenance is obscure even from google, but it says "GERMANY [WEST]" on the back, so it's before 1990, and I'd guess it's from the '80s sometime, like the vivitar....

So I'm making up for light meter neglect by buying bunches wherever they show-up across the fruited plain cheap, and putting most of them in a box in the garage — they take-up so little room! — but back in the day the thronging foto fans would get a fancy meter to show how super-pro they were, and still even today — the scammy mags suggest how wonderful it'd be, and take your foto fun to the next level — and for whatever you want to pay, obviously the more the better — the Sekonic Speedmaster @ amazon's $600! ... But the beautiful Luna-Pro is undoubtedly the fanciest meter I ever got. ... And it is lovely. It has a battery (2xPX13 or a single PX14) to better sense the light; but then, so does my vivitar.

Destruction

And then @ 6/18, in a fit of geezer rage I threw the light meters on the floor. ... Actually, they leaped at me, the plastic display steps I had them on convulsing in some kind of materialistic fit, flinging them about. They all came through great, including my beloved Scout — except the sensitive Luna-Pro. Needle stuck forever. ... So, to succor my wounded self-respect, I bought another for $40 @ ebay, which will work perfectly. ... Well it works better. Obviously a later unit; it says "Germany", instead of "Germany (West)". And the meter is clearly smoother, and it may work wonderful if I ever put some newish batteries in. ... It's not as if I knew or know how it's supposed to work, but it looks like it works good. Particularly, as the enthusiast reports, the needle swings exuberantly even in low light....

But then I must say the Luna-Pro has an amazing propensity for flinging itself onto the floor; at 10/18 that'd be 3 or four attempts by now! Although despite arduous effort, it hasn't managed to hurt itself, again; yet. ... I'm funtaking it to the shelf now, in a desperate attempt to curb its sky-diving tendencies....

9/16/17. The pursuit of silliness is not all beer and skittles and for another non-silly-camera item I had to give up $30 for a new Neewer Adjustable LED macro light and even then I must pursue its wily ways in ignorance and relative darkness. ... I first saw the ravishing device in a Polaroid puff at dpreview, so naturally I went looking for the Neewer rendition, which was $10 less. And actually, operation was pretty straightforward except the tiny pamphlet nor the loquacious amazon commenters would admit the device could be triggered from the flash shoe of the aspiring hobbyist's camera. Which, of course, is where it mounts, making the resultant camera/flash assemblage look like a prop in an antique scifi movie.

... So I got a mini alligator clip out and touched bits of metal and indeed it got set off. It would've probably got triggered from my proud 'n' looks-just-like-pro DSLR, but that seemed like a lot of work to try, especially since I've more-or-less graduated to the arguably sillier sx20 and perhaps, if I don't forget, the quest'll keep me busy for a little while in paradise. ... There's some kind of flash menu lurking-away in the sx20, and I'm guessing the helpful canonites would not have been so harsh as to make it impossible to fire a 3rd party non-auto flash from the flash shoe — Sony, or Olympus, of course, but not the kindly canonites. ... But that's what makes the silly camera calling so exciting and pointless — who can tell? ... And who cares?

... And it turned-out to be really simple; no stinkin' menus need apply. When I mounted the silly LED macro flash, the Canon flash menu disappeared, it went gray — 'cause of course there were no settings for my pathetic manually-adjusted flash! But it flashed when I pushed the shutter button oh joyous day. ... It's quite possible e'en the scammy brands might do the same, what with competitive pressures 'n' all. ... We understand of course that the picture's appearance is determined by setting the flash's controls/effect, and digital film is cheap and reusable, so all is for the best....

10/23/17. The 8/02 3mp Kodak DX4330 was a mere $40 at the Ebay Salvation Army including shipping and an exciting scammy EasyShare Dock. ... This fellow says it was $350 retail! But I see from his review the precious ($80) dock is a whole 'nother can of NiMH worms — hope the Salvation Army did me right. ... But Behold, The Halloween Camera:

• PRO: The Salvation Army promised Halloween, but sent it quicker @ 10/25/17.
• CON: They packed it in green peanuts, so I had to take it out to the dirt room — the outside trash can with a plastic liner — to carefully dispose of the pernicious things, although I expect the street to be full of them eventually. And they didn't include a Kodak NiMH battery pack.

The supplied alkalines were of course all but dead, but it works great with two charged-up standard NiMH AAs. But I already had a Kodak NiMH KAA2HR double-AA pack which came with the glorious Z700 which, however, was bereft of a sharing dock and, therefore, was without any way whatever to charge the thing. So, after dremelling-off some battery decay I gave it a whirl in the DX4330+dock, and it's supposed to complete in 2˝ hours and — behold! he cried in rapture — the 2nd of the three charging lights at last lit up! No doubt the 2˝ hour completion rumor in the (still available online) manual may've been for whatever pitiful capacity the DX4330 came with, greatly increased no doubt in the super-modérne Z700 whose battery I was charging. ... And the third LED at last lit, after a few hours....

Easyshare Away...

But the share dock picture trickery may have to wait for another life, since in this one the required Kodak software will run no more forever, at least on any of my equipment — but wait! ... How can I be so bleak? ... I, of a hundred derelict computers as well as cameras? ... I've got some Kodak easy-scam share software what I got in connection with my Z990 around 2011 which'll probably work somehow 'n' I could install it on a derelict crate and see what explodes with destruction & brilliance. ... Of course there's still the Kodak USB mystery cable; I have at least one Kodak mystery cable for the Z700 but it doesn't seem to be the one. ... So I bought a specifically Easyshare Dock II cable from an amazon vendor, which sadly failed to arrive apparently due to impaired mail problems — alcohol in the ink, as we used to say in the print biz. Also I got some dubious NiMH batteries, Kodak-style — which, sadly, turned-out to be not Kodak-style enough: the DX4330 has a tiny switch in the battery compartment so the charger won't try and do alkalines and burn the house down, and also of course to make it difficult for amazon vendors to counterfeit the precious things. ... But then another amazon vendor "Insten" managed to supply a working rendition, and the LEDs lit with joy.

What Charge

In my dotage I seem to be pitifully-attracted to the Easyshare obviously-scammy universe: it's so pointless! ... It's so cute! ... I will plug it into my derelict HP desktop and my pictures will appear magically, just by plugging in the camera! Or pressing the button! ... Or something. ... Oh the thrill! ... One of the many fascinating things about this Kodak scammery is a relatively widespread availability of supposedly-Kodak-compatible KAA2HR battery packs — some actually are compatible — but no chargers! Even the docks are scarce on the ground. ... I imagine the pitiful geezetariet yearning for their docks & cameras to work on into the dim fading misty future with their XP-or-worse computers....

Around the block again

But I was perturbed when the DX4330 lost its date/time — but of course that was when I put the totally-dead Kodak battery in. And then when I turned it on, it would instantly turn-off — and that was the old remove-the-lens-cap-first trick. And then it embossed each image with the date, no doubt 'cause I told it to, but all fixed after a quick pdf manual consultation. ... So all is perfection as I wander on into the lurid & wondrous Easyshare sunset with my geezetariet cohorts....

But then, sorrowfully, it is not to be. My Z990 software scorned the Easyshare Dock II; the USB booped, but no pictures xferred. And the beguiling internet is awash with various broken useless things, most bountifully install_easyshare.exe, which happily calls-up a Kodak web site dead and gone long ago beyond a bankruptcy or two. And complains with fine incoherent fury. ... But a golden dawn may yet come, in some dusty junk store in America, where a Kodak dock and/or installation CD will wink at me from the shadows, and all will be made anew. ... But then again, googling for "easyshare CD" turns-up numerous dubious and doubtlessly scammy offers; perhaps a refined google'll turn-up something good. ... Oh and look Ebay seems to be crawling with the stuff; I bought a few pounds which appears to include some CDs & que será será....

The Keeping of the Kodak

But for now, the dock hides in a corner, with its LEDs all lit, keeping the DX4430's power up-to-snuff. ... But then I took it up in the night, to document its shadowy environment in a subtle self-referential way, and the poor witless thing complained about its SD card! Claimed it needed formatting! — i.e., heartless failure & destruction — Oh Darkness, Oh Despair, Oh Kodak, thy name is frailty! ... But really, it was like so many silly camera sorrows, even sacred Canons, and all it really needed was a little tender loving Deoxit on the SD metal fingers, and then to be pushed in and out a few times — actually, the latter treatment'd probably've been enough, but I feared it in the dark threatening night, but in the bright morning it fixed it right up, and now it lurks once again, copacetic and shiny, in its shadowy corner. Of course, first I checked the card with an SD-reader @ a PC, and it read fine, except for some average seasonal DST annoyances....

No Easy Scam Docking

1/18. But in the fullness of time I got some 2004 software in the Ebay EasyScam Store, what installed OK in Windows 7 but got no pictures from the beloved DX4330 no matter what buttons I clicked or pushed or rebooted. The only PDFs on the CD were for the "printer" dock, presumably the scam sacred destination for 2004, and no doubt my poor little DX4330 was left in the dust by then. ... So I uninstall and quietly mourn. ... I'm afraid the cameras/docks/software were each like a snowflake, so unique and beautiful, and they weren't supposed to work with each other! ... Exactly wrong idea, from the giant corrupt stupid scammy US corporation point of view. ... So I'll retire this poor EZ dock, software-pining, awaiting perhaps its own special individualized program in another year, or life, and I'll take the precious little camera back to the herd, with rechargeable NiMHs, and retire its only-dock-rechargeable KAA2HR battery to the archives....

12/10/17. The 2001 4mp Canon G2 acquisition was inspired by the seattle camera lady and she was apparently inspired by its precious raw capability.

I can report that neither DPP 3.14.40.0 or DPP4 canon raw programs can read the G2's ".CRW" raw files. Probably DPP 3.something can but callously Canon embargoes old versions. But not to worry: Rawtherapee reads 'em good, and the beloved PSPX. Also the antique silly Canon "zoom" program I scavenged can browse the things, but insists I need Digital Photo Professional to edit them, which of course won't. But all my free browers see CRWs, or at least the little thumbnail "previews" they come with. And my inspiring $99 Photomatix does 'em good, producing transcendent magical HDRs. Or something.

... But I had some trouble taking out the "type II" — aka "thick"? — CF I put into the G2, and when I did, a tiny bug crawled out! ... These are perilous times in which to indulge the silly photography obsession. But eventually I discovered my father's parallel pliers were the ideal tool for the job, and all is good. ... I hasten to note that this is after I pushed the little stud that the CF receptacles are equipped with and which, when pushed, ejects the CF a bit. The parallel pliers were still helpful to get the CF all the way out....

But of course the G2 makes beautiful pictures, and even raw!