Rockaway and Gadgets
Mr. and Mrs. Base10 are spending the day in Rockaway today, which is really the starting point of today's rant. You see, Base10 has acquired some gadgets recently: namely, the new Toshiba Libretto U105 (which absolutely rocks), and the Verizon Audiovox vx6600 with the high-speed EVDO plan (which also rocks but somewhat less absolutely), but mainly, this is about digital cameras.

Base10 originally had a Sony Mavica that used floppies to store photos. Base10's logic in getting this was, "Hey, they still don't have a standard for digital storage and there'll always be floppies." Now that there are cheap 1GB memory sticks and PC's don't have floppy drives, it seems that Base10's logic may have been flawed. In any event, Base10 acquired a Concord 4 megapixel point-and-shoot about six months ago. It's a good machine, but I have been eying other, more sophisticated devices.

So I did a little research. I don't want to go professional because the costs are just too great. A top-of-the line Hasselblad goes for $22,000. That is not a typo. Even the pro Nikon D2X DSLR is something like $5000 for the body only. Let's just say that unless Base10 is generating income from these devices, that is not going to happen. I do have it narrowed down to the Nikon D70 or the Canon 20D. The Canon appears to be the better camera, but I have several Nikon lenses that are compatible with the D70.

Which brings us to today's rant. Base10 used to be quite the photo afficionado back in the olden days of film and developer and such. He even did his own B&W processing and printing. But this stuff seems to be going by the wayside these days. So, in anticipation of maybe a DSLR purchase, Base10 dug out his cameras and lenses. Base10 has a Nikon FM2 and 50mm, 80-200mm 35-80mm and 28mm. But wait, Base10 also experimented with medium format. He has a Yashicamat 124G.

A few points are in order, the Nikon is a completely manual camera. It was one of the last of its kind when I bought it in the mid-80's. The Yashica is a twin-lens reflex camera, another oddity today. The weird thing is that these cameras cost about exactly what I payed for them back then. The Nikon largely because it is used to teach photography students and the Yashica because it is a relatively cheap way to experiment in medium format. The Yashica was a great camera. Now you can't compare it to a Hassy or even a Mimaya, but talk about high quality images. While this is more a function of the 6x6 format than the optics, the optics are pretty good and the camera is just plain fun to use.

Which brings us to today's rant. The Yashica takes 120/220 roll film. I tried to find Tri-X B&W film yesterday with high hopes to take some shots at Rockaway today. No luck, although I went to several 1 Hour photo labs. Don't get me wrong, 120 film was never something you could get at the corner store. But I was surprised to see that it was imposswible to find now. Which brings us to the reason film photography may be on its last legs. The film itself may be fairly cheap--about $3-4 a roll, but you only get 12 exposures. Fair enough you say, but the processwing costs are huge. The cheapest mail order place I found was in the range of $17 per roll for processing and contact sheets. Prices are higher in Manhattan walk-in labs. Think now, every time you shoot a roll film it's at least $20 out of you pocket. This is an expensive hobby!

So photographing Rockaway is off for now. One of Base10's life goals is to publish the definitve guide to Rockaway bars. There will, alas, be no photos to that end today.
- posted by Base10 @ 3:08 PM