The Power of Nostalgia - old digital cameras back in vogue?

[JDMvW]

for proof of this see

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64512059

 

I suppose it was only a matter of time -  vinyl records and tube amplifiers are, I am told, at "peak popularity" among the "devant garde".

(is still video digital?? though I don't think it matters)

Edited February 6, 2023 by JDMvW

[ericphelps]

Another example of the lure of lemming life -

[AJG]

Can glass plates be far behind?

[Sanford]

My fourteen year old Panasonic GF1 is starting to feel like a classic. Get asked all the time "Is that a film camera?"

[samstevens]

Nostalgia can be such a warm feeling, one worth photographing or finding in photographs as much as in cameras. Count me as much less cynical about nostalgia than Frank Zappa, but he does have a point ... 😊

"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice -- there are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia. When you compute the length of time between 'The Event' and 'Nostalgia For The Event,' the span seems to be about 'a year less in each cycle.' Eventually, within the next quarter of a century the nostalgia cycles will be so close together that people will not be able to take a step without being nostalgic for the one they just took. At that point, everything stops. Death by Nostalgia."

[Rick Helmke]

Interesting, I still shoot film simply because I enjoy it. I play vinyl records and enjoy that too. I haven’t gone back to 8 track and vhs yet. I use tube radios of different kinds, I even have a Zenith Trans Oceanic I can use to listen all over the world. Lemming life? Such nonsense. Old doesn’t mean useless.

 

Rick H

[Dustin McAmera]

The article was about people being nostalgic for the early 21st century, and using cameras from then as talismans of their youth. Time moves so fast for the young; when you're twenty, ten years ago is like the stone age. Then suddenly you're thirty, and you realise you remember your dad being as old as you are now, and the ten years between those moments went like nothing.

I have my family's 620 Brownie box camera which I remember from holidays in my early childhood, and my grandparents' slightly more upmarket model. I'm glad to have them, and I'm glad I know how to use cameras like that. There might be some element of nostalia in that. I have my own Canon AE-1 too, and still use it from time to time. But nostalgia can't explain why I seek out older cameras, and ones that were never familiar to my parents or grandparents.

I can see how an early digital would be interesting for someone who has got used to (say) an iphone. Imagine not having a rear-facing camera too! Imagine dealing with that slow autofocus all the time! My current camera is an EOS M50 from 2018. My second oldest digital is a Fuji from 2002 - I spent the intervening years on film cameras. I still have that Fuji though, and it takes AA batteries, so I'm fully equipped for some digital nostalgia. Not looking forward to that slow focus though.

 

[rodeo_joe1]

I have no nostalgic feelings toward it, but I have an old Kodak digital 'bridge' camera that delivers SOOC colours that I would love to get from a more sophisticated camera. I think it's fitted with a Kodak OEM CCD sensor. The Schneider-made lens is pretty good too. 

OTOH, I would still use my old Minolta A2 if it didn't lock up and take about 30 seconds after a shutter-press to save every image. And the Fuji 'Finepix' that was my first foray into digital was utter garbage, both optically and in it's digital output.... not helped by Fuji just plain lying about its sensor's pixel count! (2mp interpolated to 4 and claimed to be a 4mp camera.)

[Dustin McAmera]

Dude, that's my funky* retro Fuji you're dissing. Mine has a respectable history. I used it in the lab for a piece of work where I used an image-analysis extension of SPSS to measure things in the image. At the time it felt pretty advanced. I had no budget to buy me a camera, and this was the best one I could afford.

*Seriously: it has a 1GB IBM Microdrive: a one-inch wide hard disc!

Edited February 7, 2023 by Dustin McAmera

[za33photo]

Old can be quite good , just remember to have backup , (Batteries of course) 😁😁😁.

 

[Ricochetrider]

Hmmm.

A friend of mine fell into a rabbit hole recently with ”vintage” digital cameras and bought a handful of them and some lenses. 
Seems there are a few that have gained a following. Cult status, as it were- or something very nearly like it.

Meanwhile I’m getting on just fine with my film cameras and my turntable & mono block tube amplifiers… oh, and my 1960s & 70s motorcycles too. 
 

I did recently do something of a “return to digital”… I bought a Fuji X Pro 2. Not quite “vintage”, I have mixed feelings about it so far. But maybe it’ll spark a nostalgic “return to film”?
 

Stay tuned. 

Meanwhile, just for fun
My 66 BSA Thunderbolt; Hasselblad 500cm, Kodak Portra 

 

 

[za33photo]

16 minutes ago, Ricochetrider said:

Hmmm.

A friend of mine fell into a rabbit hole recently with ”vintage” digital cameras and bought a handful of them and some lenses. 
Seems there are a few that have gained a following. Cult status, as it were- or something very nearly like it.

Meanwhile I’m getting on just fine with my film cameras and my turntable & mono block tube amplifiers… oh, and my 1960s & 70s motorcycles too. 
 

I did recently do something of a “return to digital”… I bought a Fuji X Pro 2. Not quite “vintage”, I have mixed feelings about it so far. But maybe it’ll spark a nostalgic “return to film”?
 

Stay tuned. 

Meanwhile, just for fun
My 66 BSA Thunderbolt; Hasselblad 500cm, Kodak Portra 

 

 

Nice , those old Beesa's were once the "Cats Whiskers".

 

[rodeo_joe1]

On 2/7/2023 at 12:19 PM, Dustin McAmera said:

Dude, that's my funky* retro Fuji you're dissing.......

*Seriously: it has a 1GB IBM Microdrive: a one-inch wide hard disc!

It can't be the same model Dustin. Mine took SmartMedia cards - anyone remember them? 

I don't see any newbie retrophiles bothering to source a long obsolete medium for their digital nostalgia fix. But then there was an early Sony camera that used floppy disks for its storage. "Hold that pose a minute love... your feet have been saved, just changing the disk and waiting for the rest of you to upload now."

On another vintage note: I was slightly bemused to see in an auction catalogue, what was obviously a collection of fairly common 33.333 RPM 12" vinyl LPs described variously as '78s', '10" records' and 'rare'. Are the youngsters of today so ignorant of such things? Especially when it's supposed to be their job to know about what they're offering for sale. 

Edited February 8, 2023 by rodeo_joe1

[glen_h]

Last year, I got a D1X for $40.  (I already has a battery and charger.)

New, they were over $5000. 

Uses CF cards, which I already have, to use with the D200 and D700.

And 6MP is plenty for most uses.

So, that is my digital camera nostalgia.

 

There is a FB group on "Antique and Classic Cameras", which requires

them to be at least 25 years old.  A few more years to go.

[hjoseph7]

I saw the heading for this article while browsing the web on my phone and thought it was a typo ?  

[Dustin McAmera]

I took my old Fuji to town and photographed nothing in particular for a couple of hours. They were setting up a fair for St Valentine's.

 

 

The focus is annoyingly slow; the EVF doesn't have enough pixels, and the screen is tiny; the camera doesn't handle scenes with a wide range of brightness very well. Colours are quite bright. Details are poor when you look close. I'm not sure what sharpening is set here: maybe too much.

I will take it out again, and try a wider range of settings. I expect it to be worse at high ISO; I had plenty of light here.

I will say this for it; it has sat unused for a long time without its body going sticky.

 

Edited February 10, 2023 by Dustin McAmera

[rodeo_joe1]

On 2/10/2023 at 2:19 AM, Dustin McAmera said:

... the camera doesn't handle scenes with a wide range of brightness very well.

A bit like slide film then. 

On 2/10/2023 at 2:19 AM, Dustin McAmera said:

Details are poor when you look close.

Just like 35mm colour print film! 

Add a bit of grain noise, limit yourself to 400 ISO and you're back in the C20th Dustin.

Anyone fancy living in the dark for a year or so and getting rickets? Eating Spam and lard on toast on a regular basis, washed down with Camp coffee? Or taking paranoia-inducing drugs to emulate the fear of cold-war nuclear annihilation? Casual racism and mysogeny anyone? 

I guess it's easy to forget the less enjoyable points of living in the past.