DoN. Nichols wrote:

But if you take two cameras for which spares are no longer readily
available, one a mechanical film camera and the other a digital camera,
the mechanical film camera will always be easier to repair when
something goes wrong.


That depends on the nature of the "something" which "went
wrong". Sometimes (in a DSLR), it is something as simple as oxidation
of the contacts which connect the battery to the camera -- or oxidation
in the connectors between subassemblies. In either case, the fix is
usually cleaning and reassembly.

True, but dirty contacts could be a problem in either a digital or film
camera. And you can still take pictures with a mechanical film camera
when the electrical system is not working. You just lose the metering.

A long used film camera can have problems like worn bearings in
the timing gearchain -- which requires the abilities of a watch repair
person to re-bush the mechanism.

Which the right person can repair, without too much difficulty. The
point I'm making is that in general a digital camera with a major fault
and no spare parts is much more difficult to repair than a mechanical
film camera with a major fault and no spare parts. But as I say, that's
a generalisation, and many digital cameras haven't yet reached the point
at which spare parts are no longer available.

I think computers are way ahead of cameras in terms of ease of repair,
because standardisation is so widespread.


That depends on whose computers. For the typical desktop PC,
yes. For some brands, such as Dell, they use custom parts which are not
interchangeable with other systems.

And for computers like my Sun Blade 2000 -- some things are
interchangeable with PCs -- the PCI bus cards. But other things -- as
simple as memory DIMMs -- are custom to The Sun Blade 1000, Sun Blade
2000, and the Sun Fire 280R (which all use the same system boards), and
they are not even usable in other Suns. Certainly things like the power
supplies are very different from what you would find in a typical
Desktop PC.

I have never really seen the point in Dell computers. But Suns are a
different story. My Sun knowledge is probably a bit behind the times,
but I would say that with a Sun, they are still more readily repairable
than a digital camera. Some parts are very widely available (disks and
CD-Roms, perhaps with the exception of FC-AL disks). Others are specific
to Sun machines, such as RAM and graphics cards, but are not specific to
a single workstation. Only the system board is really specific to a
single machine. And there's quite a lot of documentation available
regarding spares, their part numbers and how to fit them. Personally I
would much rather try and fix a Sun workstation than a digital camera.

Actually, my Sun Ultra 2 (which I am using to type this) looks like it
needs a repair of some kind. The clock doesn't keep time when the
machine is switched off. I had this problem with another Ultra 2 and
thought it was the NVRAM battery. So I bought a new NVRAM and within a
week or so the machine died completely, presumably of a fault on the
system board. So this time I think I'll wait a week or two. Actually, I
might just buy a whole Ultra 2 for spares, as they're so cheap now.

One of the things no longer available from Nikon (and the supply
from the people who bought the stock from Nikon is small and dwindling)
are the aperture rings for many of the lenses. The old Nikon F used the
half-moon clip on the aperture ring to couple to the Photomic
meter/pentaprism assembly. Newer cameras instead require special cuts
in the raised ridge at the back of the aperture ring to couple such
information into the newer cameras -- or to clear sensor levers on
cameras like the D70 which use it to check whether the aperture ring is
set to the smallest aperture (numerically largest), so the auto aperture
control can work properly with the chips in the later lenses. There are
a number of replacement aperture rings for older lenses -- but not for
the oldest, so you have to set up to machine the ridge in the proper
places to use the lenses on newer cameras -- including film cameras such
as the N-90 -- a rather nice film camera with lots of features. I have
two of them which were modified by Kodak to serve as digital cameras for
the AP (Associated Press). This is where I first learned about the
modified aperture rings.

Someday I plan to make a fixture to allow marking of aperture
rings so I can mill the rings in the proper places, so I can use my
older lenses -- including many of the fluted focus ring design.

It sounds like you have owned your Nikon F system from new, or fairly
new. I got into Nikon manual focus cameras when they were already fairly
old, so I've chosen lenses that are AI or AI'd using the official Nikon
replacement aperture rings. AI conversions vary quite a bit in their
neatness, and I know that the Nikon conversion rings are perfect, so I
go for them. But maybe I'm just fussy :-).

I presume that High Street is a location in London where there
are many camera stores -- as you can find in locations in New York City.

In many English towns, the actual name of the main shopping street is
"High Street". So it has become a generic term for the main shopping
district of a town. I think your equivalent term is perhaps "downtown"?

I was referring to buying film from pharmacies, not camera stores. There
are very few camera stores near me. Some camera stores have good prices
for film, but pharmacies are always overpriced.

Perhaps you can still buy it *because* it is still there -- as
new-old-stock. Have you checked the expiration dates on the boxes of
film? :-)

I don't know. I've never used 110 film and probably never will. I just
read somewhere that Kodak are still making it, as of a few months ago.

A very nice shot -- and the scanning is at a level which makes
the grain typically a bit larger than the pixels -- though JPEG
artifacts do show up in places like the illuminated windows, and there they
are larger than the grain.

Thanks. But I'm not sure that what you're seeing are JPEG artifacts.
With a scan of that resolution, you can see all kinds of detail which
you would never see in a regular print. I think some of the fine detail
around the edges is the result of diffraction, scattered light from the
film surface and noise due to variation in grain size. The only place
where I can see what look like JPEG artifacts is around the top of the
building in the centre of the picture. Even there, I'm not convinced as
there are edges elsewhere in the picture with higher contrast where I
can't see such artifacts. I don't suppose I'll know for sure without
looking at the negative under a microscope.


O.K. Can your computer zoom in to small areas of the image? In
a building to the right of the image there are seven illuminated windows
along the top floor which have a bluish tint. Select an area which
includes the central window, and the walls to either side, but stop
before the windows to either side. Now expand that selected area to
fill your screen. You will see pixelation of the illuminated center of
the window which appear to be larger than the surrounding grain. this
is because the JPEG algorithm is trying to minimize the number of zones
in which it needs to keep track of unique colors. Crop out a similar
area of the midway between lightest and darkest of the sky and I seem to
find smaller artifacts there -- perhaps because of more grain in that
area.

Are you talking about a pattern of squares in which the squares are
larger than the pixels? I've seen this in highly compressed JPEGs
before, but despite looking several times cannot see it in the area you
mention in this image.

That's funny. I didn't know that. Where did the name "Coolpix" come
from, I wonder?


It came from the CoolScan -- except not because of heat, but
rather because it sounded like a name to attract consumers.

Sort of like the Dodge trucks called "Ram Tough" with images of
two mountain rams crashing into each other. The original appearance of
the word "Ram" in the Dodge line of automobiles was in the days of
"muscle cars" (too large an engine with too much horsepower marketed to
people too young to have common sense). Many of these cars had a scoop
connected to the top of the air cleaner poking through the hood and
pointing towards the nose of the car. Dodge pointed it towards the
windshield, where a zone of higher pressure air builds up when the car
is in motion. This they called "ram air", and the system the
"Ramcharger" (not quite a turbocharger, but intended to sound like one).
It has been decades since Dodge made such a car, but they carried the
name over to their truck marketing division. :-)

I knew a guy in high school whose dad had a Dodge Ram. It looked rather
out of place alongside the smaller English cars. But it had no air
intake on the bonnet. Probably a later truck I guess. I'd say 1970s.

Best wishes,

Chris