Maggie's Holiday Season Scientific Survey: Obsolete Things

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Saturday, November 30. 2019

Maggie's Holiday Season Scientific Survey: Obsolete Things

I can quickly name three: Cameras, coffee cups and teacups, and CDs.

I happen to love CDs because I can listen to what I want to. Hundreds of 'em. I have a large vinyl collection too, mostly operas. The thing is, great speakers to fill ye olde homestead with each tiny detail. Pop music doesn't need that. I have the best speakers ever. Nobody buys them anymore.

Coffee cups do not hold enough coffee, and the coffee cools off too fast. American coffee needs mugs or styrofoam. When did anybody use their china coffee cups and saucers, eveh on holidays?

Cameras seem sort of peculiar nowadays except for professionals. Even Asians don't use them anymore, and they used to be the camera fanatics. Is Nikon still making money? What about Kodachrome?

Posted by The Barrister at 14:06 | Comments (25) | Trackbacks (0)

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As far as my kids are concerned, TV is obsolete.

#1 itsatax on 2019-11-30 14:21 (Reply)

Landlines. Public pay phones. Taxi cabs. Bookstores.

#2 Jim on 2019-11-30 14:59 (Reply)

The loss of Kodachrome breaks my heart. I have several boxes of Kodachrome slides that my father took in the forties and the color is still just as vivid at the day they were developed. I actually have several unopened rolls of 35mm Kodachrome in my refrigerator, just in case someone starts developing it again... Yes, I still have a 35mm camera.

#3 snopercod on 2019-11-30 16:28 (Reply)

Ask, and the internet provides. It's not the K-14 process, but it's something...

https://shootfilmco.com/blogs/shoot-film-co/kodachrome-processed-in-color-seriously

#3.1 Jlawson on 2019-11-30 16:57 (Reply)

Thank you! I appreciate it.

#3.1.1 snopercod on 2019-11-30 20:00 (Reply)

You are fortunate, because Kodachrome (like all film) could deteriorate or even get moldy.

When I was a kid (60s) there was a huge fire in our town. A major archive of Pathe celluloid (highly flammable) was irreplaceably destroyed.

#3.2 jay on 2019-12-01 08:59 (Reply)

My Fuji X-100s has a Kodachrome emulation emulation mode although they don't call it that for legal reasons.

I imagine Photoshop will pop out the colors to a reasonable facsimile too.

Still, you're left with a file and not a real slide.

#3.3 Whitehall on 2019-12-02 06:21 (Reply)

Kodachrome invented fall colors.

#4 rhhardin on 2019-11-30 16:37 (Reply)

I like my Nikon. I have a large DSLR and a small camera that I can carry everywhere. I assume you say the camera is obsolete because of cell phones. Ironic (or strange, not sure which) I don't carry a cell phone. I used to have an old flip phone but AT&T told me that they weren't supporting it anymore and gave me a free smartphone. But unlike the flip phone I couldn't just put it in my pocket. It's too big and too fragile. So I leave it safely on my dresser at home. Now, if only my camera could make phone calls...

#5 OneGuy on 2019-11-30 16:46 (Reply)

We used my wife's grandmother's teacups at Thanksgiving. She takes the DSLR out driving at every opportunity.
The last 35mm I developed was a pair taken with a stereo pinhole camera.
Ceramic coffee cups work fine for milk or juice too :-)

#6 James the lesser (Link) on 2019-11-30 16:59 (Reply)

The only place I know that has good thick coffee mugs is Waffle House.

Also, my favorite coffee mug is one someone stole from Waffle House. I didn't steal it. I bought it at a second hand store.

#7 Bill Adams on 2019-11-30 20:28 (Reply)

You don't have to steal Waffle House mugs -- they sell them.

#7.1 Griffin E on 2019-12-01 09:21 (Reply)

The best mugs were made by a ceramic electrical insulator manufacturer. No one seems to have been able to replicate them. I suspect they used a process that added air as part of the heat insulating specs for the electrical insulators.

#7.2 JK Brown on 2019-12-01 15:55 (Reply)

I love those paper-thin china cups (and saucers) because they DO let the coffee cool quickly. And you can drink extremely hot coffee within seconds of pouring it into the cup. And I use a dainty china cup at the breakfast table, almost every morning.

I prefer to buy CDs, because I read the liner notes, because I want to know who is playing the drums, or the bass, or who wrote the music.

I loathe, abhor, and despise cell phone cameras---for all sorts of reasons, but mainly because they distort the depth of field, making objects in the foreground unnaturally large. So all my grandchildren have noses and hands that look too big. (In my memory I can still smell fresh Tri-X Pan.)

#8 HH on 2019-11-30 23:01 (Reply)

Ahhhhh...Tri-X. I shot a lot of that, but never thought to smell it. Did you develop it yourself? I've got my Grandfather's Besseler enlarger down in the basement. I suppose it will end up in a landfill some day.

#8.1 snopercod on 2019-12-01 08:06 (Reply)

Fresh Tri-X Pan has a distinctively sweetish odor, but not alluring. But I called it my perfume because I had rolls of it in every pocket of clothing I wore. I was a newspaper photographer, so I rolled my own ;-) from 100 ft. rolls.

I do appreciate that modern cameras mean faster turn-around and greatly reduced production costs, but I loved being in the dark room, listening to jazz or opera, and making every print a work of art.

As for that Besseler enlarger, I'd buy a pedestal plant stand---something substantial and handsome---and display the enlarger in good spot. No point in leaving it in the basement. It's a work of art, too.

#8.1.1 HH on 2019-12-01 11:03 (Reply)

I don't like the wide angle lenses either, but fortunately some of the phones are now coming with medium effective lenses (which they call 'telephoto'--all frame of reference I suppose)

I picked up a mint (never used?) Argus C3 for cheap in a second hand store. I'm planning soon to put a roll of film through it.

#8.2 jay on 2019-12-01 09:02 (Reply)

That's a great camera. I hope you hang on to it. I greatly regret not keeping all of my assorted cameras---and typewriters, and radios, and computers, and telephones. I could have opened up an electronics museum!

#8.2.1 HH on 2019-12-01 11:28 (Reply)

I still buy CDs but I have no player. The is just so much still only available on CDs still.

What I do is rip them off my laptop and then store the files on a pair of music serviers (by Sony) that playback per directions over my cell phone. Very convenient and the Sonys upgrade the sound quality a tad. But I prefer high resolution files I can buy and down load, and vinyl.

Just bought a pair of great big speakers from Klipsch, made in Hope, Arkansas, powered by a new vacuum tube amplifier made in China. I don't think President Trump will have cause to complain about the Chinese stealing 120 year old Western technology.

#9 Whitehall on 2019-12-01 10:01 (Reply)

mmm. . .for me it is that old electric typewriter. The one with the ball for the fonts and the small role of white correcting tape. Vintage 1974. It was so advanced at the time, not only did it correct, but you didn't have to reach up with your right hand and throw the roller/carrier back to the left side of the page every time you came to the end of a line of type.

#10 Apple Pie on 2019-12-01 10:02 (Reply)

Nikon is still in business. My daughter carries a couple of their boat-anchor D750 DSLRs when she's doing a wedding (she uses her Iphone when she's not being paid to make pictures).

CDs are not obsolete to me. I listen to classical music and have hundreds of them. MP3 turns an orchestra in full roar into sonic mush due to the compression it employs. Good speakers and a ballsy amp are needed to get the best out of them as The Barrister notes.

I still have a couple hundred vinyl records, but they just don't have the sound quality of CDs.

Kodak did discontinue Kodachrome, which many including I thought had the very best color rendition, but it was tricky to process and the demand for it cratered when digital cameras became popular.

But, Kodak (now "Alaris") still releases new films occasionally. The TMax B/W films are the best ever made, IMO. I use Tmax 400 exclusively and process it myself. No digital sensor comes close to its dynamic range.

Speaking of retro, I use a 4x5 field camera that is made out of mahogany, leather, and titanium. It has no batteries, lights, menus or buttons. It is slow but I can make great pictures with it.

Also not obsolete are revolvers! I shoot my Ruger GP100 better than any of my other guns except my Springfield 1911 (which was designed in... 1911).

And I bought myself a Model 64 Henry side-gate lever-action rifle in 30-30 for Christmas. Just because.

Take that whippersnappers.

What is obsolete? Tube testers. When our old Dumont was on the fritz (a monthly occurrence when I was a kid) I'd take a bagful of tubes to the electronics store and try to find the dead one. I often did.

They used to have tube testers in auto parts stores, as I recall.

#11 Hungry Joe on 2019-12-01 11:28 (Reply)

Tube testers: Memories!

#11.1 snopercod on 2019-12-01 19:10 (Reply)

My dad worked in electronics. We were always the family with the oldest model TV because my dad knew which tubes to replace and where to get them.

#11.2 Ben David on 2019-12-02 02:46 (Reply)

I’m not that old but I am old fashioned. I don’t trust mega- digital companies as far as I can throw them. I want to really own my books and music. As for cameras, I own a Nikon 35 mm, a Nikon DSLR, a Sony mirrorless, and a smartphone. Phones are fine for social media. No way would I primarily use one on vacation. I did an experiment a few years ago. I took the absolute best/cleanest/sharpest photos on my phone and the best untouched photos from my DSLR and sent them in to Shutterfly to make memory books. The phone memory book was mostly awful. Distorted, dark, fuzzy photos. I would never give it as a gift. The DSLR book was good to great. It made a great Christmas present. To upgrade my iPhone 8 to the new iPhone with multiple lenses would set me back $1000. I bought my mirrorless camera as a kit with 2 lenses, an extra battery & charger and UV filters for less than $600.

#12 Janet Stemmer on 2019-12-01 11:41 (Reply)

"I have the best speakers ever." Great! Which ones do you have? And since you also mention detail, and vinyl, I'm guessing you might be some level of audiophile, a very rare bird these days. So, what's the rest of your system?

#13 Drew458 (Link) on 2019-12-03 10:35 (Reply)

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Saturday, November 30. 2019

Maggie's Holiday Season Scientific Survey: Obsolete Things