Author: Balders

Passionate hobbyist, restoring the past, one old camera at a time. iPhone14 Max Pro - Sony A7II and about 80 others from the days of silver halide 📸 Main aim in life - Retirement

Nikon Coolpix L27

Circa 2013

Inspection

Nikon Coolpix L27
Nikon Coolpix L27
Nikon Coolpix L27 case
How the camera looked on arrival

The problem with this camera is that it had a focus issue and currently it is dead electrically. Quite looking forward to getting into this one as it maybe quite a simple fix. That said, it could be that the whole internal circuit needs replacing which will mean the camera could then be added to my ever growing spare parts collection.

On receipt this camera cosmetically is in excellent condition. Even the normally broken battery door catches are in fine condition on this model. The unit is very dead though and it looks as if a battery has leaked inside causing some corrosion. I suspect some of that leakage may have travelled a little further as it seems the wide/telephoto switch on top feels a little rough when it should be a smoother movement. I’m going to have to get inside this one and have a look around.

Battery leakage evident

I’m afraid it’s disappointment with this unit. The battery leakage is so severe it has pretty much dissolved a number of components, ruined the board tracking in a number of places and corroded the wide/telephoto switch beyond use. The trusty multimeter confirms that the main circuit board is about as much use as a chocolate fire poker – useless. I’m afraid this unit is resigned to use as a spares donor for another day.

Severe corrosion from batteries evident

As you can see above, the batteries have been allowed to leak causing a catastrophic amount of damage to the circuitry. I have cleaned tested used a specific cleaning solution and scrubbed the circuit to no avail. My friendly multimeter has confirmed the circuit is beyond economical repair.

Wide/Telephoto switch totally corroded

I have stated in earlier posts that there needs to be a greater awareness of the frailties of cheap batteries. There is a particular brand I know of that has adopted the name of a large photographic company I used to work for, and to be blunt their batteries are utter crap. They start to leak very soon after their demise and the acid/alkaline leaks everywhere, they should be avoided at all costs and I very much suspect this specific case is due to such advice being ignored. High use items such as cameras require an adequate battery, please do not cut corners here as it is a false expenditure.

Damage caused by corrosive substances

The saving grace from this unit is that I have a few items that will be put to use at a later date. The body shell with its intact battery locking mechanism will probably earn me more than the whole camera cost originally and that will still leave me more as spare parts. It’s just a shame that cost cutting on the power supply has damaged so much of this unit. I cannot impress on you enough, do not use cheap batteries, you will potentially pay the price of permanent damage if you do.

I have had to seriously clean and decontaminate my work board due to the immense amount of contamination that came from this unit, I’m glad I wore protective gloves whilst attempting to clean this unit.

What I have managed to salvage

I have salvaged a complete body shell with working battery locking door, a lens focusing unit, a rear screen and holder, a number of screws, a flash unit cover and a 330v 100uf photo flash capacitor. As well as a nice leather case.

Unfortunately not every unit is salvageable, however we have parts to assure the next unit may not go to waste. A healthy spares store is always welcome and all I can say is…. Onwards and upwards, bring forward the next repair.

Day trip to Southampton

Tickets for todays game – Saints v Foxes

“We’re on our way” 😂

Being a Leicester City fan is a crazy ride of unimaginable highs and dark and gloomy lows, at the moment we are on the low spectrum and todays long coach ride to Southampton for todays game is not a journey I am looking forward to to be honest considering our dire performances of late, again after a couple of high scoring games we have collapsed…..spectacularly.

The journey down from Leicester was a pleasant enough one with no issue’s regarding traffic, for a Saturday it was good, most unusual.

Our coach to Southampton

St Mary’s is a similar ground to our own and has a capacity of around 32 thousand. On arrival my wife and I made our way to a local hostelry to indulge in a couple of swift ones. On completion of this task we made our way back to the ground to meet with a friend coming down from London and then went into the stadium ( for another swift one) and to taste a local sausage roll. Suitably fed and watered we made our way to the stands.

Our view from the stands

And that’s where it all started to go wrong. To say we played poorly was an understatement, our second game in succession without a shot on target. The game was awful, but that’s part of the “joy” of being a Leicester fan, god we couldn’t be consistent if we tried. I love the away days though as there is some good banter between rival fans, unfortunately the yob elements are still there but that’s just down to a few knuckle draggers who try to ruin things for others, thankfully though it’s only a minority and not seen as an issue overall.

We lost 1-0

Game over thank god and now for the journey home, it’s been a lovely day. I got to spend valuable time with my wife who is a devout supporter and as I’m working so many different shifts it’s good to get some valuable down time.

Days out in this household are rare, so when they do occur they are treated as mini breaks away. The score could have been better but that’s not going to change the way the earth turns for us so it’s just a case of onto the next game.

Good company, plenty of laughs and time with the one you love. Who could ask for more?

Painting the Bob Ross way

Bob Ross Golden glow

In many ways and forms, no doubt about it, the Covid lockdown had people looking for other things to do for numerous reasons, for me it was to preserve my sanity.

I always enjoyed painting, however I was unsure of just what I wanted to use for subject matter, that’s when I looked for local painting groups in my area and stumbled across a lovely chap called Ray who offers tuition in the Bob Ross way of painting.

Ray states on his site that you can turn up at one of his classes and go home with a masterpiece and to be fair he’s not wrong, I have seen many attempts from his classes and all are of a very good standard.

I enrolled on Tays “Golden glow” course in Jan 22 and the result is below, I’m happy with this to be fair. Not fantastic but hey it was my first attempt.

Bob Ross Golden glow
Bob Ross Golden glow
Bob Ross Golden glow
Bob Ross Golden glow

The pictures are in stages from start to completion. When I took this home the wife didn’t believe I’d painted it and even contacted Ray via Facebook to check with him… what a cheek 😂

I booked a second course “ Crimson tide” with Ray and the results are below, I wasn’t so pleased with this one but I know where I made the mistakes. That’s the point of learning you learn from your mistakes.

Bob Ross Crimson tide
Bob Ross Crimson tide
Bob Ross Crimson tide
Bob Ross Crimson tide
Bob Ross Crimson tide
Bob Ross Crimson tide

A session with Ray is about 6hrs and the peace and tranquility is fantastic, it’s quiet the tuition is second to none and doing your own thing is actively encouraged when adding your own touches to your painting. For me I have found the distraction I wanted and now book in a session with Ray when the world is starting to get on my nerves. I’m overdue a session and must get another one in soon….

River scene charcoal on paper

Thoughts 3/3/23

Do you enjoy your job?

I’ve been in my current role for the last 12 years, it’s the longest I’ve been in a position throughout my so far 42 year working life. Management pretty much leave me alone however the job does have some pretty horrific outcomes both personally and privately. No one told me that in my 12 years I’d experience 17 horrific seriously disrupted fatalities, or that I’d be regularly abused verbally and sometimes physically. Despite all that I love my job, I work on the Railway trying to keep people off the tracks and trains on them. It’s a shame that the railway seems to be the first place to go to in times of desperation and loneliness. I’m trying to help this not become the norm. But I also need that help, I’m currently undergoing treatment for PTSD so it has affected me personally. But I still love my job. Here’s a question for you, how the heck am I still able to enjoy this job when there is so much heart ache around it?

Sometimes, someone just has to step up to the plate, maybe this is my calling. Who knows?

Thoughts 2/3/23

If you could permanently ban a word from general usage, which one would it be? Why?

The word Impossible.

Though we all use it on a regular basis, is anything really impossible? If we just look at things in a different way and from a different point of view you can see that absolutely everything is the polar opposite…..it is possible.

Thoughts 1/3/23

Who are your favorite people to be around?

Family really. Really drilled down to the basics probably just my wife and my dog. I’m not much of a social animal but I do enjoy the family company. And the dog is just an absolute gem of a lad. Oh the wife, she is a wonderful human too ❤️😂

Vintage Camera figures

Bilora Bella

Cameras go back a good few years since the first photograph was taken back in 1826 – 1827 by Nicephore Niepce. Back then he used a bitumen substance on a pewter plate as his light sensitive base for his photo of a rooftop in France, the exposure was somewhere around 8 hours, oh how things have progressed.

I’m putting this piece together to give the reader an idea of just how many cameras were produced between then and now if I can pull sufficient data together. The issue here is that cameras took many forms, from boxes with holes punched into them through to disposable items that were popular throughout the eighties and that are now seeing a resurgence in popularity due to people wanting physical prints rather than trawling through many thousands of images they have stored on their electronic storage devices.

What defines Vintage?

Well that’s a good question. Even good old digital is classified as a vintage if you go back to the 80s and observe what was around then. Camera companies pump out version after version of cameras each one supposedly better than the last, I should imagine almost every family on the planet has an old camera of some sort in their possession, those old Kodak Brownies et al were absolutely everywhere. Truthfully I’d expect anything over 10 years old to be vintage, they are also reducing in popularity now due to the appearance of the smartphone….. as I have said previously, everyone is now a photographer.

Some figures then..

It’s pretty much impossible to compute the really old lines of cameras as there were so many brands and very little in the way of monitoring output, sales of the big brands were immense as we know, the likes of Kodak monopolised the photographic arena for decades and they absolutely flooded the markets world wide.

Digital cameras peaked in sales of 121 Million individual worldwide unit sales in 2010 deemed to be the height of camera demand pre Smartphone arrival on the scene. Since then sales worldwide have decreased to about 8 Million units a year in 2021 and continue to decline, that said there are an awful lot of units out there more than likely stuck at the back of a drawer or hidden away elsewhere within the household.

The big number is this though. According to Visual technology and investor LDV Capital the numbers of cameras around the world will have risen to at least 45 Billion by 2022. Ok, that does include the smart phone and almost 770 Million CCTV cameras as well. Think about that figure for a moment, there are currently 8 billion people on this planet and this figure equates to there being 5.5 cameras available to each and every one of them. A phenomenal number you’ll agree.

So…

The sole purpose of this page to me is just to highlight the amount of cameras out there, I want to do my little bit to repair, recycle and repurpose a small number of them but I also want to point out that there is no shortage of stock….😎

See a further post on DSLR figures: More Camera statistics

Why Foxes Den

I’m starting to ask why I even chose the name. To be honest I’m from the East Midlands of the Uk and Foxes are rampant around this area, I support a football team who are known as the Foxes (Don’t hold that against me 😂) and to top it all during lock down we built a pub in our garden that is also called the Foxes Den.

Our garden pub with the same overused name..

As I have very little creativity in thinking up suitable names I tend to stick to what I’m familiar with, looking at the number of Foxes Den sites on the web though I think the chances of me getting noticed are next to zero. Lesson of the day guys is to do your research before you take the leap, don’t just jump in gung ho like I did. The word idiot comes to mind ….

First steps

So most of my adult life I have convinced myself that despite having a hatful of interests there was nothing that I was particularly any good at. It’s strange really how you always knock yourself back if you don’t have that much confidence. In truth it really is quite the opposite. I started out in Photography way back in the days before digital when you had to get your hands wet to produce results, for me the old Silver halide era of photography cannot be matched or equalled and personally I think anyone can be a photographer these days, however give them developing tanks, print dryers developers and fixers an enlarger and then ask them to dodge and burn prints and then retouch them and the result might be slightly different. I remember days when I used to photograph weddings and shoot maybe 6-8 rolls of film, a friend of mine in the digital arena shoots maybe 2-3000 exposures per outing! Wow, she will never experience the fear of having a blank film post processing.

On top of this I’ve had an interest in electronics from an early age, I used to visit jumble sales as a kid, buy old radios and repair them and sell them on to get some pocket money. I obtained a city and guilds in electronics back in 2000 as well as an “A” class Radio Amateur qualification (M0ESB) so yes I’m a Radio amateur as well. I could have ventured into a job role utilising this however I preferred to maintain it as a hobby as I didn’t want to fall out of love with electronics.

I also enjoy arty stuff, I love painting both pictures and stuff, tarting stuff up – you know what I mean. I have recently had lessons in the Bob Ross method of painting with a local tutor and I really enjoy this. I’ve always enjoyed making models and painting them and I like building small dioramas as well so I can be quite crafty when I put my mind to it.

So to return to the start when I was searching for my worth as such, I have decided to combine a number of these hobby/experiences and I will be purchasing old unloved equipment, making it good “Tarting it up” and hopefully moving it on either for decorative purposes, for use as props or even returning it to its original purpose.

The site is new and I’ve kind of jumped the gun by getting this up and running before I have any projects on the go or even stock to use in those projects. Hey ho, that’s the way I roll is anyone else as ass about face at doing things as I am?

Hopefully I can record my progress through this site that is a new venture for me as of Feb 2023.

Maybe you as a visitor will follow my journey, maybe you will pass on through, however please feel free to feedback any constructive advice as we can all learn from that.