132 lines
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7.8 KiB
HTML
132 lines
No EOL
7.8 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
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<html>
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<head>
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<title>Pablo here</title>
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<meta charset="utf-8">
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<meta viewport="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
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<link rel="stylesheet" href="../styles.css">
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</head>
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<body>
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<main>
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<h1>
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Hi, Pablo here
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</h1>
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<p><a href="../index.html">back to home</a></p>
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<hr>
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<section>
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<h2>When new is not better</h2>
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<p>
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One of the hobbies that has stuck with me for many years is photography. I've shot a few hundreds of
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film rolls, and some unaccounted amount of digital pics.
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</p>
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<p>
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It all started out when I was a slouchy teenager. One day I was diving through old cages at my parents
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house when I stumbled upon their old Pentax P30n, which had been dusting away for years, perhaps
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decades.
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</p>
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<figcaption>
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<img src="../static/pentax-p30n.jpeg" alt="">
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</figcaption>
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<p>
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This little bad boy caught my eye and I started shooting with it for a bit. My father noticed the
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passion building up and intelligently promoted it by making sure I would have as many film rolls and
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print services as I needed, within reason.
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</p>
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<p>
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This kickstarted a long passion which has walked with me for most of my life, with some high and low
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activity periods and some brief adventures into digital photography which never quite worked out into
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anything. I've ended up being an analog guy.
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</p>
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<p>
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A couple of years ago I stumbled upon that same Pentax P30n. It had been dusting away for another
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season, this time shorter and in a shelf of my own instead of my parents. I took it out one day for
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some fun and sadly found it not working at all. I tinkered a bit with it back at home, but nothing
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seemed to fix it.
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</p>
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<p>
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Beaten down by my ignorance in guerrilla camera repairing, I brought the camera with me to a local shop
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with a technical service. They diagnosed an issue in one of the electronic components of main board, and
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provided me with a budget. The budget was not expensive at all, but it was dramatically close to the
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price these type of cameras will typically sell for in second hand markets nowadays. The heart told me
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to just fix it, the brain to evaluate other options.
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</p>
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<p>
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I started an interesting discussion with Sara, my favourite film dealer, about my options. At some point
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in the conversation I asked her about the nature of the fault, and she explained how electronical
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components of these cameras will always end up failing and are rather hard to fix, because the part and
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knowledge slowly disappear from the market as the cameras grow older and put more years being
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discontinued.
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As we covered this, she pulled out a Minolta SRT-101 out of a shelf and put it into my hands.
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</p>
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<figcaption>
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<img width="75%" height="auto" src="../static/minolta-srt-101.jpg" alt="">
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</figcaption>
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<p>
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She tend proceed to just say: "This doesn't happen with cameras like this one", referring to the
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unbelievably-for-its-size piece of metal that had just landed in my palms. I innocently asked why, and
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she proceeded to explain how that Minolta was purely mechanical. Not only it didn't have electronics: it
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simply didn't need electricty at all to work. It did have a small battery which would operate a
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rudimentary lightmetering system, but that was completely optional. The camera could operate fully with
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no battery in it. This was very different from my old Pentax, which would call it a day if its battery
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died.
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</p>
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<p>
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I then looked back at the Minolta in awe. I knew enough about photography to know you don't need power
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to take pictures. If you're not familiar with the topic, let me fill you in: all you need to take a
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picture is to place something sensitive to light (like film, or a digital sensor) inside a dark box. You
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then proceed to open the box through a small hole for a short period of time. And that's it, picture
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taken. There's obviously much more to it in terms of picture quality, ensuring you get the right amount
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of light, avoiding mistakes like a hole in the box, etc. But the core is as simple as that. </p>
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<p>
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So, why was I in awe with this Minolta? Well, I knew you could take pictures without power, but I didn't
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know you could have a camera as sophisticated as the SRT-101 work fine without power. Except for the
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lack of automatic speed selection and detection of the film roll's ISO sensitivity, it had every single
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feature my father's Pentax P30n. It felt like as if I had some piece of alien technology between my
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fingers, which I had stolen from a time and place where things we couldn't even imagine were possible.
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</p>
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<p>
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The discussion with Sara turned then swerved towards the Minolta. Sara told me about how the SRT-101 was
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much simpler to fix than my old Pentax precisely because of the lack of electronics. Even though the
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Minolta did have some very sophisticated mechanisms in its guts, the mechanical nature of it made them
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easier to understand and patch. The lack of electronics also meant simpler parts sourcing.
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</p>
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<p>
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I was instantly sold on the Minolta, which has become my workhorse ever since.
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</p>
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<h3>
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When new is not better
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</h3>
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<p>
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Now that I've delivered my long rant on how I fell in love with my Minolta and it's simplicity,
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I want to jump into the lesson that I learned from this whole story. Well, actually, I don't think
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I've strictly learned it from the Minolta only, but from many other similar situations when dealing
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with human engineered things. The Minolta is probably just an incredible example.
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</p>
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<p>
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The lesson is simply that new technology and features are not always better. Just like there is no
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silver bullet for complexity, there is no silver bullet for adding fancy stuff into a camera without
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sacrificing something. And I want to argue that not all of the combinations in the feature
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richness/complexity spectrum make sense.
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</p>
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<p>
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Let me focus on the example of my two cameras. Again, the features that the Pentax provides and the
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Minolta doesn't are (1) detecting automatically the sensitivity of the film roll and (2) having an AUTO
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mode for the shutter speed, which adjusts itself to the aperture and film sentivity to get the right
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amount of light.
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</p>
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<p>
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The Minolta doesn't detect the film itself. Instead, this is solved by... you setting it. This is done
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in a second by simply adjusting it on the same wheel where you select the shutter speed.
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</p>
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<hr>
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<p><a href="../index.html">back to home</a></p>
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</section>
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</main>
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</body>
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</html> |