Hasta La Gadget!

You have to admire Vivitar. The company has the cojones to sell an all-manual, 35mm film camera in a world where film is pretty much dead, at least as a mass-market product.

I got mail from the Vivitar PR people earlier this week asking me to take a look the V3800N, a 35mm SLR with manual focus, manual exposure and a manual film winder. In short, a camera much like the one I used to use all through school and beyond. So of course I said yes.

The camera comes in a box with everything you need to start, except the film. Along with the body there is a 50mm lens, a pair of button-cells to power the light meter, a strap, a faux-leather never-ready case, a lens hood and — remarkably — a double exposure mask for blacking out sections of the frame.

Which brings us to the surprisingly high-end specs. I won’t say high-quality until I have run a few films through it, but on paper the features are impressive. The lens is a 50mm ƒ1.7 manual focus model with the once-ubiquitous Pentak K-mount (hint — you’ll find lots of very good cheap used lenses for it). That wide maximum aperture means you can throw backgrounds out of focus with ease, as well as shooting in low-light.

The shutter speed goes up to a good 1/2000th second and down to anything you like as long as you hold the button down. Focusing is done by twisting the lens and matching up the split screen and microprism collar in the viewfinder, a very accurate and fast way to do things once you’re used to it.

But there’s a lot more, which shows that Vivitar is aiming at the creative end of the market. There is a self timer (twist the lever to set it), a depth-of-field preview button to stop the lens down and check just what will be in focus, a multiple-exposure button which disengages the film-winder but lets the lever still cock the shutter, a hotshoe for a flash and a PC socket to fire a flash off camera. Finally, the all-mechanical nature of the camera means that you can use a cheap, standard cable release just by screwing it into the shutter button.

The camera body is pretty cheap feeling, but the extensive use of plastic means it’s very light and it does feel solid enough. Looking through the viewfinder is not such a pleasant experience, though: it is small and cramped and — despite the bright lens — quite dark. There is also a distracting reflection of the image off the bottom floor of the box — think of Apple’s wet-floor effect in Cover Flow view and you’ll know what I mean.

This is a shame, as the advantage of a full-frame camera is that it has a big ‘finder. Vivitar nailed the exposure meter, though — it is a center-weighted design with “traffic light” indicators: a red plus and minus sign guide you to the correct value and the green light in the center tells you when you have it right. Easy and fast, and probably my favorite manual meter design ever (it’s pretty common in older cameras).

I’ll be running some film through this weekend, and I’ll have a full write up on it when I get the pictures back from the lab (I didn’t think I’d ever be saying that again). I’m totally looking forward to getting all old-school, though, and dusting off my Zone System skills. The price for this retro experience? Around $170, plus film and processing every time you use it.

Product page [B&H]

You thought that the iMac G3 was the first see-through Mac? So did I, until I saw this stunning, transparent Mac SE/20.

It is only one of 10 clear-cased test models, run out of the mold before the rough texturing was added. They were used to make sure that all the internal parts fit properly before signing off on production.

True to Apple form, this isn’t just some half-baked internal test run — look closely and you’ll see that it has a colored Apple logo on the front panel. This particular Macintosh was owned by a Charlie Springer, and was sold back in 2006 for an undisclosed sum. You can bet it went for more than an old iMac G3, though: I saw one on sale yesterday in the local Cash Converters for just €50 ($66).

Product page [Regnirps via Retro Thing]

By the time you lazy-bones, time-zone-challenged North Americans read this, the hot new Kindle Magnum should be all over the news. It has many hopes pinned upon it, from the ludicrously optimistic wishes of the newspaper industry to the rather worried expectations of the chiropractic industry (no heavy textbooks equals no spinal injuries to treat).

One thing is sure, though. Tech rolls in and out of fashion, and today the turnover is faster than ever. It won’t be long before many seemingly permanent gadgets disappear and become mere curiosities. Here are a few things that will seem as retro to the kids of tomorrow as the steam ship seems to us today.

VCR

Just last night I asked the Lady “When was the last time you taped a TV show?” It was, of course, years ago. In fact, the only reason she still has a VCR is because the TV remote is lost, so the VCR is effectively a giant channel changer.

Does anybody out there still have a video under their TV? You can’t rent movies, recording is both a pain and low, low quality and even buying a machine is tricky.

Death Rating 5/5

Books

This one will take a while, but paper books will eventually be the written equivalent of the vinyl record — loved, collected and sold in small numbers, but really just a niche market. The e-reader isn’t nearly ready enough yet, but if the Kindle Magnum (or DX, or whatever) makes its way into schools and colleges, the formative experience of reading will be electronic, not paper, and that will be the beginning of the end.

Death Rating 2/5

Letters

More paper, and more words. A letter that comes in the mail is so rare these days that we can probably declare it extinct, with a few unsubstantiated sightings every year — much like Bigfoot. It’s a shame — writing a letter was a longer, more considered affair than banging out an email, an act which itself already seems out-of-date in these days of the Twitter. And receiving one from a friend or loved one is magical.

This romantic, personal method of communication has also formed a good chunk of history, something that will be lost — can you imagine the collected e-mails of a famous person being published after their death?

Death Rating 5/5

The Newspaper

The news isn’t going anywhere. The opposite, in fact — it is now possible to consume news from an almost endless supply, from amateur video to local blogs to forward thinking magazine-based sites (like Wired.com, for example). But the newpaper? Dead. Or at least on life support, begging to be put out of its misery.

The reason is, of course, the internet. Gutenberg’s legacy might limp on a little longer, but the internet does the exact same job — dispersing information — much more efficiently. In fact, the jump from printed paper to electronic delivery makes the original move from handwriting to movable type look like a mere historical blip, and that isn’t to put down the printing press in any way at all.

Death Rating 5/5

The Desktop PC

What? Yes. The beige box is headed the way of the mainframe. Notebook computers already outsell desktops, and for good reason — the performance of a portable is close enough to the desktop for everyone except Pixar. More importantly, computing is so ubiquitous and essential that anyone who can afford a computer wants their own machine, and they want to take it with them. A laptop is no longer a luxury, it’s the norm.

But even these are going to disappear, or perhaps be consigned to remain, ironically, on the desktop. Take a look around you: What do you see in everybody’s hand? That’s it — a cellphone. And the cellphone is fast becoming the only computer most people will need. It will probably also be their book, their newspaper and their VCR.

Death Rating 4/5

See Also:

• Large-Screen Kindle Won’t Mean Squat if Apple Tablet Arrives …
• Will Anybody Buy The New Large-Format Kindle?
• Textbook Error: Large-Screen Kindle Photos Leaked

This is the “Cyclone”, a chainless penny-farthing-alike which proves that odd bike designs are far from a modern phenomenon.

Or rather, it’s a serving tray with an old Cyclone ad on it, which itself proves that there is no corner of Catalonia I can enter without finding a Gadget Lab-worthy object. This one was found in a village in the depths of Penedés (and yes, we know that this poster is in French).

The Cyclone solves one of the main problems with the penny farthing design — a very high “gear” ratio — with an extra cog. Imagine a single turn of your pedals equalling a single turn of the wheels and you’ll immediately see the problem, a problem which gets bigger with such huge wheels. The intervening cog, which should step down the geas somewhat, doesn’t appear to be large enough to be very useful, but it’s better than nothing.

This picture also, we think, has something to do with the origin of the term ”moustache handlebars”. Take a look at the similarity between facial hair and steering device.

See Also:

• unboxes an electric blanket from the ’70s

One place where film can still score over digital is in the medium format realm, especially for hobby photographers. With the fairly specialist, big-sensor camera bodies going for $1,500 and up, savings on film only become apparent if you shoot a lot of pictures. The best way is to pick up a cheap, second hand model, but if you can’t stand pre-fingered goods, you could try Voigtländer’s new Bessa III, due in stores in May. 

The camera can switch between two aspect ratios, 6×6 and 6×7, on either 120 or 220 roll film. The most obvious feature is those bellows, which fold out to put the lens in place but also allow a fairly compact box — compact for medium format, at least, as this thing won’t be fitting in any regular pants pocket.

The specs are decidedly old school: a shutter speed of 4 – 1/500 sec, center-weighted metering, manual and aperture priority modes and, and that’s it. You even have to turn the dial to wind the film yourself.

The lens is also fairly pedestrian, at ƒ3.5 and 80mm (the “standard” length for this film size), but, as with any decent medium format cam, the pictures will be stunning. The price will be around £2000 in the UK, €2000 in Europe and ver likely $2000 in the US.

Product page [Voigtländer via AP]