counterweight/pablohere
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull requests Projects Releases Packages Wiki Activity Actions

stuff

Browse source
This commit is contained in:
counterweight 2025-01-19 23:18:42 +01:00
parent f47f60ade9
commit d9f9ef4fa8
Signed by: counterweight
GPG key ID: 883EDBAA726BD96C
5 changed files with 115 additions and 0 deletions
Download patch file Download diff file Expand all files Collapse all files

108
public/writings/when-new-is-not-better.html Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,108 @@
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
<head>
<title>Pablo here</title>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta viewport="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="../styles.css">
</head>
<body>
<main>
<h1>
Hi, Pablo here
</h1>
<p><a href="../index.html">back to home</a></p>
<hr>
<section>
<h2>When new is not better</h2>
<p>
One of the hobbies that has stuck with me for many years is photography. I've shot a few hundreds of
film rolls, and some unaccounted amount of digital pics.
</p>
<p>
It all started out when I was a slouchy teenager. One day I was diving through old cages at my parents
house when I stumbled upon their old Pentax P30n, which had been dusting away for years, perhaps
decades.
</p>
<figcaption>
<img src="../static/pentax-p30n.jpeg" alt="">
</figcaption>
<p>
This little bad boy caught my eye and I started shooting with it for a bit. My father noticed the
passion building up and intelligently promoted it by making sure I would have as many film rolls and
print services as I needed, within reason.
</p>
<p>
This kickstarted a long passion which has walked with me for most of my life, with some high and low
activity periods and some brief adventures into digital photography which never quite worked out into
anything. I've ended up being an analog guy.
</p>
<p>
A couple of years ago I stumbled upon that same Pentax P30n. It had been dusting away for another
season, this time shorter and in a shelf of my own instead of my parents. I took it out one day for
some fun and sadly found it not working at all. I tinkered a bit with it back at home, but nothing
seemed to fix it.
</p>
<p>
Beaten down by my ignorance in guerrilla camera repairing, I brought the camera with me to a local shop
with a technical service. They diagnosed an issue in one of the electronic components of main board, and
provided me with a budget. The budget was not expensive at all, but it was dramatically close to the
price these type of cameras will typically sell for in second hand markets nowadays. The heart told me
to just fix it, the brain to evaluate other options.
</p>
<p>
I started an interesting discussion with Sara, my favourite film dealer, about my options. At some point
in the conversation I asked her about the nature of the fault, and she explained how electronical
components of these cameras will always end up failing and are rather hard to fix, because the part and
knowledge slowly disappear from the market as the cameras grow older and put more years being
discontinued.
As we covered this, she pulled out a Minolta SRT-101 out of a shelf and put it into my hands.
</p>
<figcaption>
<img width="75%" height="auto" src="../static/minolta-srt-101.jpg" alt="">
</figcaption>
<p>
She tend proceed to just say: "This doesn't happen with cameras like this one", referring to the
unbelievably-for-its-size piece of metal that had just landed in my palms. I innocently asked why, and
she proceeded to explain how that Minolta was purely mechanical. Not only it didn't have electronics: it
simply didn't need electricty at all to work. It did have a small battery which would operate a
rudimentary lightmetering system, but that was completely optional. The camera could operate fully with
no battery in it. This was very different from my old Pentax, which would call it a day if its battery
died.
</p>
<p>
I then looked back at the Minolta in awe. I knew enough about photography to know you don't need power
to take pictures. If you're not familiar with the topic, let me fill you in: all you need to take a
picture is to place something sensitive to light (like film, or a digital sensor) inside a dark box. You
then proceed to open the box through a small hole for a short period of time. And that's it, picture
taken. There's obviously much more to it in terms of picture quality, ensuring you get the right amount
of light, avoiding mistakes like a hole in the box, etc. But the core is as simple as that. </p>
<p>
So, why was I in awe with this Minolta? Well, I knew you could take pictures without power, but I didn't
know you could have a camera as sophisticated as the SRT-101 work fine without power. Except for the
lack of automatic speed selection, it had every single feature my father's Pentax P30n. It felt like as
if I had some piece of alien technology between my fingers, which I had stolen from a time and place
where things we couldn't even imagine were possible.
</p>
<p>
The discussion with Sara turned then swerved towards the Minolta. Sara told me about how the SRT-101 was
much simpler to fix than my old Pentax precisely because of the lack of electronics. Even though the
Minolta did have some very sophisticated mechanisms in its guts, the mechanical nature of it made them
easier to understand and patch. The lack of electronics also meant simpler parts sourcing.
</p>
<p>
I was instantly sold on the Minolta, which has become my workhorse ever since.
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="../index.html">back to home</a></p>
</section>
</main>
</body>
</html>