End of Summer

The end of Summer is a sad thing. The shadows are getting longer. The days are shorter and the beach chairs are empty and overturned.

Cash For Clickers!!!

There should be a "cash for clunkers" for old junky cameras program. Lets face it, old cameras use up too much film and batteries. Film contains precious silver, which I think I recall back even 25 or 30 years ago talk about recovering silver particles after development in order to preserve the precious element. Also, dumping chemical developers, stop bath and fixer into the water system is really bad for the environment. Since we moved into a house with a well and a septic system I no longer develop film.....but mostly I'm too lazy. Actually I gave it up long before we moved!

Point and shoot or "idiot" cameras which seemed to be ubiquitous during the 80s were big battery guzzlers. The reason is because everything was controlled electronically: autofocus, autoexposure, autowind (that was a big power drain) and autoflash, another battery guzzler. Cameras in the older days, prior to the 80s, had more manual controls, so they were less battery dependent or not dependent at all. Many of them used the button batteries, which were originally made with mercury...not good for the ecosystem, especially fish and anyone or anything that eats fish. Most, if not all of these cameras can still be used today with silver oxide or some other non mercury battery. The nice thing about the Rollei 35 cameras is that not only they are a well constructed, classic design but they will function without a battery, as long as you can guess or otherwise determine the proper exposure. Believe it or not, the little sheet of paper that used to come with the film with the pictures of sun and clouds is really quite accurate! Some old cameras used a selenium meter which requires no battery. The drawback with the selenium meter is that it is supposedly not as accurate as the CDS (cadmium sulfide) meter which replaced it, however I have not noticed any difference with the selenium meters and cameras that I have. In fact, I think some of them are more accurate and even more importantly, more consistent than some of the CDS meters. The other bad thing about selenium is.......you guessed it, it's bad for the environment. But that's only if you throw it out. I'm saving the environment because I refuse to throw out my very nice Minolta Autocord twin lens reflex with a working (the last time I checked!) selenium meter from about 1959.

Getting back to the "cash for clickers" program as I would call it if I could be the camera czar (I'd rather not)....there really are a lot of 1980s vintage idiot cameras. They seem to show up mostly at tag sales and Goodwill stores. Gone is the day when you might find a Konica C35 or maybe a Pentax K1000 at one of these places, I've all but given up looking. The 80s is the new retro, but as far as common point and shoots it is in bad taste. That is not to say the 80s were bad, only the real cheap throw away products of that decade were ugly. Most of the music of the era was actually great except for "throw away" songs like Disco Duck. The ugly ducklings illustrated in this post are, yes, I'm afraid to say, from my own collection. Almost all of them were given to me by friends or relatives and they are the Disco Ducks of cameras! In fact, I think a Donald Duck camera would be more interesting and collectible than any of these. Check them out below along with my comments:

This Keystone 126 cartridge camera actually dates back to the sixties. In fact, I could dig out some of my old Ansco, Agfa and Kodak Brownie cameras from the 1940s and 1950s if I really wanted to do a history of ugly point and shoots, but I don't think I could stand it!

I don't know if people had trouble seeing back in the eighties, but these type of cameras with big viewfinders were quite common. By contrast, the digital cameras of today either have very tiny peephole viewfinders or none at all. Notice these also lack any other features like a zoom lens and were really quite simple. Were people with poor vision also simple?

As the 80s progressed toward the 90s a zoom lens was often added to the point and shoot for a few dollars more as evidenced by this Minolta Freedom Tele. This helped contribute to the camera's clunkyness and bad looks in general.

Canon has always been a big player in any camera market be it consumer or professional. Here is a slightly smaller more pocketable point and shoot which is almost not bad looking.......for the 80s.

Nikon, a big camera name, famous for its great SLRs had to get into the point and shoot market, although the One Touch was really pretty decent and not bad looking. It had a nice lens too.

Even early digital cameras such as this one from HP in 2001 were not immune from the ugly duckling syndrome!

Eatin' Good in the Neighborhood

This is a short post about a photograph that I did not take. The photo you see here (left) is a surrogate. I wish I did get a picture, kind of like

Ivan Albright's painting "That Which I Should Have Done I Did Not Do" (right)!

Maybe I still can, but in the meantime, had I taken the photograph you would be able to see a rather healthy, handsome, large coyote which lives in our neighborhood. To quote the sales pitch from a well known chain restaurant I would say he's "eatin' good in the neighborhood"!

There are plenty of turkey, jack rabbits and deer in the area to feast on.

He prances around in broad daylight, rather nonchalantly, like he owns the place. It drives our dog, Dexter, absolutely nuts. Is he jealous of Mr. Coyote's freedom or just mad because he is on our property? One day the coyote slowly walked along the driveway about 12' from Dexter's window as if to purposely let him know he was there. I thought the glass would break from Dex's ear piercing bark!