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13 September 2023
The concept of a "digital dark age" has been around for a while and some of us have gotten to experience it first-hand, as I did with an old Nokia cell phone earlier this year. To be precise, I found a MultiMediaCard (MMC) memory card which had been used in a bunch of different gadgets, two (or more?) digital cameras and a Nokia 9210i Communicator cell phone — at least. Converting merely two .mbm image files into regular .jpg files was, depending on how you look at it, all too easy or simply excruciatingly painful. The FOSS utility of choice, psiconv was and is somewhat bitrotten and no longer shipped in repos with most up-to-date Linux distributions; and even after building it manually, it wouldn't really render the files as-is. The Nokia 9210i Communicator allowed convering them to .jpg files easily enough. Of course to begin, I didn't even know those two extensionless files were .mbm files, I had file tell me that.
All's well that ends well? Not quite.
In this case, a visually identical (but not identical on a binary level) version of one of the images was already existing elsewhere as a .jpg; the other file only existed as a greyscale physical print, so having the "colorful" original image back, even if it is a mere 640 by 640 pixels, was wonderful.
But the "digital dark age" I want to talk about is a bit different from the conventional usage of the term.
My personal digital dark age takes place in the early 2000s, when film cameras were slowly dying out, camera phones were slowly emerging and cell phone technology in general was not just primitive but expensive (that's why the Nokia 3310 with its MSRP of ~100€ was so revolutionary; nobody spoke of the durability back then, that's a thing the latter generations came up with).
As the Finnish Wikipedia, citing Mitä missä milloin 2005 ("What where when 2005"; page 385), notes, digital camera sales in Finland surpassed film camera sales in 2003. The aforementioned MMC memory card was used in my mom's early digital cameras before it found its way into my Nokia 9210i Communicator. By that time it had seen hundreds of pictures...pictures that are no longer recoverable and which are essentially permanently lost.
"But how come?", you might be wondering. Allow me to elaborate.
Besides the aforementioned MMC card, the images probably existed on the family computer's hard drive. Sadly neither said computer nor its HDD is around anymore. In fact, a key reasoning for getting rid of that computer (presumably circa 2009-2010) was that not only was it unused and had been for years, its HDD had failed. This, I thought at the time, was something that wasn't fixable. Was I right? Maybe, but maybe not. Fixing it would not have been economical or otherwise reasonable, that much is for sure, but of course I would've paid ridiculous amounts of money if it'd somehow have been possible to recover those files.
From the family computer, a smaller subset of said images made it onto my very first laptop. That laptop taught me quite a hard lesson. You see, it was sold with Windows Vista; at the time, the newest version of the bafflingly popular 1990s legacy operating system that, for some reason that is beyond me, is still around in late 2023. ICT professionals and hobbyists alike thrashed Vista at the time for a wide variety of reasons. I thought, "well, let's give this thing a chance" — and what a mistake it'd turn out to be. That would be literally the reason why, some months later, I'd be looking into data recovery options and the like. Vista had somehow fatally crashed and taken down basically all the files on the hard drive. With the help of some woefully proprietary data recovery system, the name of which I can't recall for the life of me, I was able to recover at least most of my files; with music, I figured that re-ripping CDs would at least be an option so I was less worried about those than about my images.
This probably explains why I have only resized, ant-sized versions of some 2004-2005 era images, instead of the 2+ megapixel originals. See, two megapixels doesn't sound much and objectively it's not, at least when you compare such images to the images produced by newer cameras which have a sensor capable of producing double-digit megapixel images, but it's surprisingly much. And back in the day, it sure was—from a storage point of view. Memory cards weren't cheap; hells, storage in general wasn't as dirt cheap as it is in late 2023.
That probably is why some "genius"—likely me—decided to "save" a bit and have the camera output 640x640px images instead of the full-sized 2.1 megapixels (1600x1200px) that at least one of these earlier cameras were capable of outputting. This is presumably why, unlike the legendary Ken Rockwell for example, I still feel that digital cameras simply should not have the option of outputting non-full-resolution images. There simply isn't a way to use the "choose resolution of the saved images" feature correctly. As much as I'm against post-processing of (digital) images in general, this is one of those few exceptional situations where it's OK. Want a 640x640px version of your 1600x1200px image? Resize it in GIMP (or a proprietary image editor of your choosing). Even though my image editing skills are pretty much nonexistent (which is one of the many reasons I'm usually very much against post-processing), even I can resize an image, and if I can, so can you!
What can you learn from my mistakes?
Finally, as a bonus tip for when you need to try to recover deleted files off of a storage medium: PhotoRec. It's a wonderful piece of Free and Open Source Software for recovering deleted files and just seeing what was on a storage medium after the files were deleted but prior to the medium being formatted. It's the best thing since sliced bread, even if it wasn't able to help me out with my MMC card.
10 September 2023
As mentioned in my earlier photography-related post, I bought a Canon EF 100 mm f/2.8 Macro USM lens for my full-frame DSLR body, a Canon EOS 5D Mark II, back in August. Whether it's due to the superb image quality that this macro lens is capable of producing or something else, that I do not know, but regardless, this lens helped me to uncover quite a significant issue with the aforementioned DSLR body: so-called "hot pixels", small but annoying (especially when there are more of them) zones which have, for whatever reason, the wrong color compared to what they're supposed to have, such as black hair having a glowing red spot, for example. Here is the macro image of a 3.75" (~10 cm) Hasbro Star Wars The Vintage Collection Doctor Aphra action figure that I took which helped me to identify the issue. When viewed at 100%, you'll notice some red as well as off-white spots in the figure's black hair, as well as in a few other places. The shutter speed used was 1/5th of a second and the aperture was f/8; the reason why the image is somewhat blurry is obvious: I held the camera in my hand (as I still don't own a tripod...) and due to the rather slow shutter speed, of course my hand moved at least a bit, and since the lens has no Image Stabilization, it's somewhat merciless in that regard.
At first I didn't even know what was going on and I searched quite a bit. My initial thought was that the sensor had gotten dust into it as I had been swapping lenses quite a lot recently; the 100mm is a lovely lens that can be used for non-macro photography as well, but I prefer the 50mm for most (non-macro) shoots. Plus, let's be honest here, I can't fit the camera with the 100mm lens into my storage cabinet.
Canon DSLR cameras, at least these "higher-end" ones, have both an automatic sensor cleaning function (which I've had switched on ever since I received mine) and a manual cleaning one. I had never used the latter but I was about to find out what, if anything, it did, though I was intimidated: it's possible to mess up this in a way which'll end up costing you a lot. Not necessarily super easy, but well within the realm of possible outcomes here. Imagine my surprise when this...did nothing, apparently. Granted, my blower isn't exactly state-of-the-art by any means, but come on, it's a blower, it blows out air, it's not that complicated of a device.
Further research revealed some interesting facts, such as that hot pixels are more or less inevitable, even if this was my very first time encountering them. Also, despite being labeled "manual sensor cleaning", Canon DSLRs' "manual sensor cleaning" is actually "pixel remapping", allowing you to essentially mark out hot or otherwise problematic (e.g. dead) pixels so that they don't mess up your image. Canon apparently chose not to label it as such because in their arrogance, they seem to think that, contrary to what other people have reported and what the laws of physics mandate, their sensors are perfect. No, they're not. They most certainly aren't. They're good but they're not above the laws of physics and phenomena affecting technological devices, like overheating and such.
The thing with hot pixels is that they aren't always visible and especially not when viewed at whatever zoom range the camera's LCD has by default. Your pics may not be perfect but if you trust the camera's LCD, you might as well be fooled into thinking that they are. Who views all their photos at 100% in the camera? Nobody does, that would be not just all too time-consuming but overall just exhausting as well.
However, a greater ISO value, combined with a slow shutter speed, can (greatly) increase the likelihood of hot pixels showing up — as was the case for me. Upon closer inspection, the hot pixels were also present, but less visible, in some older pictures taken with the non-macro 50mm lens.
Some will tell you that the solution to hot pixels is "post-processing". Without getting too much into the debate, I'll say this: I'm a(n amateur) photographer, not a photo manipulator. Most of my image editing is just cropping and/or resizing. Yes, this is because I don't know how to use the software (e.g. GIMP) well enough, but also because it is my belief that the images should be "straight out of the camera", they should reflect reality as it is, not as we'd want it to be. Plenty of outlets already over-edit all the images and then some; I refuse to do so.
So that's not just an awful "fix" for a very real camera-level problem, it's a fix that simply won't do for me.
But fear not, there is a real, functional fix for this very real problem!
The fix for hot pixels was posted on DPReview forum well over a decade ago. Basically, here's what I did, as per the linked post:
Prior to this process, a long exposure photo shot with a 2-second exposure time would have quite a few of those red dots and one shot at a 13-second exposure time would have a whole bunch more of them. I'll attach the pictures here at a later date for your viewing pleasure once I've transferred them from my camera to my computer, but suffice to say, the hot pixels are gone and I'm a happy camper now!
4 September 2023
Over the past 9 months I've spent a lot more money on camera-related gear than I ever thought I would. And frankly? I have no regrets and I think I've made sensible deals, and if you were to calculate averages and whatnot, you'd likely come to the same conclusion. After all, camera stores (at least in Finland) are mostly a rip-off and they charge a premium, whereas buying used gear from regular people saves you more than a bit compared to your local camera store. It's a shame, really, as I believe in supporting local, smaller businesses but they often make it so hard to do so.
That said, over the course of this summer I "splurged" some 30€ or so on getting a bunch of old film rolls developed. It was a combination of two fun things: solving a mystery, but also gambling. One of the rolls turned out to be empty, the other one had a few low-quality pictures and the last one had a nice bunch of good-quality pictures from over 20 years ago; that, in my view, alone justified the cost. Good memories from way better times, and in digital form (in addition to the negatives, of course).
Speaking of 35mm film negatives, I've a whole bunch of those, as I'm sure a fair number of people my age and older do. For almost that same 20-some years, these negatives have been laying whereever, collecting dust—or worse in some cases. Indeed, a few negative strips had some sticky gunk as the lab had applied this sort of an "archival tab" to them, a small strip of paper with punch holes in it, meant to ease archival. As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and this case is one more testament to that. But this is still somewhat of an isolated incident, luckily. What is way more baffling is how and where some negatives have been stored: I discovered four strips of negatives in pristine condition that had been stored inside a relatively unused early 1990s calendar, and that's hardly the strangest place.
Some negatives didn't get that lucky and instead they were found on the bottom of various boxes containing all sorts of random, unsorted things. Goes without saying that these are unbelievably dusty and scratched. So far I've not done much to these kind of negatives out of the fear of damaging them even more. My research has turned up some options for cleaning them, but I'm not yet sure which one I should go for...
For digitizing (or scanning) the negatives, there are basically two approaches: a dedicated flatbed film scanner, or the DSLR scanning method whereby you digitize the negatives by essentially taking a picture of them with a full-frame DSLR camera and a macro lens. I opted for the latter, for mainly three reasons:
Now, as noted, some more post-processing will likely be needed for the scanned files. This is largely new territory for me, and on a more "political" matter, I believe that "photographers" and "image editors" are not the same thing, even if and when there is significant overlap. A friend of mine did cleverly point out that back in the film days, the lab did the post-processing for you; thus doing the whole scanning yourself enables more creative control over the end result and can even result in (re)discovering seemingly "lost" treasures! H P Birkeland's blog post on rediscovering old film era images has some nice visual comparisons to see why doing the scanning yourself instead of letting a lab do your brainwork for you might be the more preferable option.
The precise lens I picked was the Canon EF 100 mm f/2.8 Macro USM lens for my full-frame DSLR body, a Canon EOS 5D Mark II. (Spoiler alert: the lens is tack sharp at f/8, as they say.) The important thing here is that the lens is able to achieve a 1:1 reproduction ratio. Photography websites and experienced photographers can answer the question of "well, just what does that actually mean?" better than I can.
Price-wise, it's about half the price of the newer, image-stabilized L series version, the one released in 2009. There is no Image Stabilization, and more experienced photographers will argue that it's not needed either. I feel like they have a rather valid point here, though in general having IS is preferable over to not having it, but I was also on a budget here. In addition to the lens and the caps, I did get a few extra goodies as well, which is always nice. Hey, what can I say, I like "free" things, okay?
Unfortunately a (full-frame) DSLR body and a macro lens isn't all the gear you need. You'll also need a light source and probably a few other things...but I've been eyeing the Valoi easy35 system instead. It is a bit overpriced but at the same time, it seems like a rather convenient package: it's a light source and a negative holder that plugs into the macro lens and also blocks stray light from messing up the process. I do think that the duster should be included in the base package, though. All that being said, supporting small local businesses and their innovations is important and I'm more than happy to participate in that. However, the easy35 system is currently on pre-order and I won't be able to place an order before the next batch ships, so I guess my negative digitizing project will have to wait a bit longer...
4 March 2023
The Nokia 5140i, released in 2003 (according to Wikipedia), was one of the very first commercially affordable (Nokia) cell phones featuring a built-in camera; something that's since become a standard in pretty much all cell phones.
It was quite a revolutionary thing back in the day, even if by all means the camera was not great, only capable of taking VGA pictures (640 x 480 pixels).
Still, the difference between a proper camera and this phone was the same as it is now: you might not always have a proper camera with you, but you'll probably have your phone with you.
My 5410i had a bunch of pictures from 2004-2005, as well as certain sound files I wished to preserve. The question was simple: how?
The problem is surprisingly modern: like your fancy {{CURRENTYEAR}} Samsung flagship Android device or Apple iPhone, the Nokia 5140i does not feature a memory card slot, so you can't easily just pop in a memory card, copy the files over and remove the memory card.
The first thing I tried (which did not work for me) was a seemingly obvious solution, which does require a separate SIM card: send the files as MMS messages to myself. Besides the obvious potential privacy issues, this simply did not work out for me: the message(s) never seemingly arrived to my modern phone. Not sure why, but it is what it is.
Luckily both Nokia phones discussed here, the 5140i and the 9210i Communicator, support infrared communication. It's the older and even less intelligent cousin of Bluetooth. Bluetooth, as I'm sure you know, is great when it works.
The basic principle is regardless the same: files are transferred wirelessly from one device to another.
MultiMediaCard (MMC) and Secure Digital (SD) cards are supposedly electronically compatible and all, but I noticed that my Nokia 9210i Communicator did not recognize a SD card, whereas it had no issues with an MMC card. Of course in the current year it's a lot trickier to find a MMC card than what it was some two decades ago. I just happened to have a spare 16 megabyte one that originally shipped with a Canon point-and-shoot camera.
Pop in the MultiMediaCard into the Communicator. Ensure that both phones are charged or plugged into a wall outlet so that they don't run out of power in the middle of the transfer operation.
Place the phones so that their infrared ports are facing each other. (Refer to p. 38 of the Nokia 5140 User Guide for more info.)
Open up the Communicator in the Communicator mode (ie. so that you can see the QWERTY keyboard).
Boot up the 5140i, navigate to the file you wish to send and go to the "Send" menu and choose "Infrared" from there.
You may need to try it several times with some files, and it's not the fastest protocol there is, but it works.
As a nice bonus, the Nokia 9210i Communicator allows you to save the files directly to the MMC card and, if you so wish, even rename them before saving! Neat, huh?
Addendum 6 March 2023: Note that Exif is either not supported by the Nokia 5410i or at least not transferred correctly when transferring files to another device. That means you should manually rename the files after transferring should you wish to preserve the date/timestamp of when a particular picture was taken or an audio recording created; and it's probably a good idea to do so nevertheless, given that Image001.jpg isn't the most descriptive file name out there.
