A chance to bring film cameras out of retirement

If you’re not using it, you might like to consider popping the X100V on eBay - they are in huge demand from the hipster crowd, are perpetually out of stock at retailers.

List price on WEX (out of stock) is £1349 - MPB are selling used ones for up to £1739!!

Well, yes.

Pixels certainly don’t tell the whole story - optics remain hugely important even though it is now convenient to fix many optical problems in software.

That said modern pixels are (or at any rate can be) more performant, than the now 13+ years old sensor in the X100 - today’s CMOS sensors have lower noise, increased sensitivity and improved dynamic range compared with devices of that era - it’s one of the reasons that phone cameras have come on in such leaps and bounds over the same time period.

There’s an old adage that the best camera is the one in your pocket - which for most people, most of the time these days is your phone.

To be honest though a modern flagship phone can produce mages of high enough quality to rival all but the best film SLRs

I also have a spare one that bought to repair as it needs either new battery contacts or is having software problems with version 3.0 software, the problems started after the owner upgraded from 2.14, it’s on my to do/fix list, seeing as they are making good money it might move up that list :yum:

Searching through old forgotten camera gear I have to my surprise Nikon’s last mechanical film camera (FM3a) in almost mint condition, but it reminded me of the days of dropping rolls of film into the local supermarket and waiting to see the printed results. Not got the patience for that anymore, and lining up the FM3a viewfinder split image to focus is now tiresome. Give me automatic focus every time and images I can play with on the computer toute suite!

I’ve been through the days of a dark room, developing film, setting up the enlarger, developing prints etc and the familiar chemical smells - all long gone now.

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When I lived in S Africa I frequently made 35mm slides for art history lectures. This entailed finding the source images in the University library then, after dark, driving a stack of books up to the Art History building (where the copying stand was kept in an office without blackout) and laboriously framing and copying lots of different sizes of illustration. The following morning one of my departmental messengers would take the film to the local chemist. From there a gentleman on a Honda moped would take it 125kms to the lab in Port Elizabeth and bring it back again the same day for the messenger to collect and bring to my office. Then I had to cut and mount each slide, masking off the paintings with special silver slide masking tape that came from Germany.

Whatever PowerPoints many shortcomings, its arrival made life much simpler. Type the painting’s title into a Google image search, specify minimum size, download and drop into PP.

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