Praktica woes

 I took my old heavy Praktica MTL 3 to Tasmania and it worked perfectly.

However, when I used it last Sunday to photograph an old wooden church, I noticed that the image in the view finder was on an angle.

To try and capture the effect I took a not particularly good mobile phone picture  looking through the viewfinder at some venetian blinds. If you look at the angle of blinds in the view finder compared to the actual blind in the background, you can see that the viewfinder image has developed a bit of a slant, which is a trifle disconcerting.

In film SLR cameras, the light is reflected from a mirror through a clever prism system into the viewfinder. In Praktica cameras the prism is typically held in place against a little bit of shock foam by a spring.

I'm guessing, and it is only a guess, that the shock foam has stopped doing its job properly and the prism has moved slightly out of alignment due to vibration on the journey back from Tasmania.

Given that the camera body only cost me forty dollars - it's the reconditioned lens that's the pricy bit - and I have two other old Praktica bodies compatible with the lens, the answer probably is that the MTL-3 ends up in a display cabinet.

Sadly, it's probably not worth repairing ...

I thought I'd bricked it ...

 Well, despite my worries about installing Linux on an eMMc based machine I bit the bullet and installed Ubuntu on my Lenovo IdeaPad 1, which I'd been using as a lightweight travel computer until it started running out of swap space.

I deliberately chose Ubuntu due to its particularly good hardware support and user friendly graphical installer. While debian based distros are as good if not better, when you run into technical problems they tend to require some advanced technical knowledge that I no longer possess.

The installation went well and Ubuntu recognised the system and the disk but when it came time to restart after installation  it  simply didn't work.

The machine kept looping on boot, flashing a message, shutting down and restarting.

However, after some frantic googling, it turned out that the fix was nothing to do with it being an eMMc based machine, but to disable Intel platform trust technology  in the bios, as in this post about installing Mint on related hardware https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=395951.

following the bouncing ball gave me a working machine,

Up to now I've only ever installed Linux on older machines that lacked the security chip. I'm guessing that was we start to see ex Windows 11 machines - all of which have the security chip turned on by default - being sidegraded to Linux, this problem will become more common ...

[update 22/03/2024]

Since the intention is to use it as an alternative to the lightweight machine, this afternoon I installed Notable, Ristretto, Focuswriter and Kate,

As Ubuntu's backup utility is in fact Deja Dup, it only required to be configured. As always I located the Notable data directory in ~/Documents.

Rather than my One drive account, I decided to back it up to my Google drive account to see how that worked.

Unlike the lightweight machine I also configured Thunderbird to make the machine that little bit more general purpose.

Tasmanian retro photography

 Over on one of my other blogs I've periodically posted about my interest in retro photography.

Before our recent trip to Tasmania I put together a retro photography kit. We were taking the car so weight was not an issue

I bought an old style canvas three compartment camera bag from ebay which allows me to pack my big old Praktica MTL 3 in the middle compartment, the half frame Olympus in one of the end compartments and things like a light meter, spare film etc in the end compartment.

(The cat is not part of the setup, he's merely intensely curious because of all the odd smells in the bag.)

As a solution it works for me - while the bag is quite heavy, its of a size to be easily carryable and with everything in one place makes it simple to take along as an addition to any out door trip.

I did take quite a few pictures with the film cameras, but I've not yet had any scanned. If any are any good, I'll post about the experience ....

Technology and Tasmania

 We're just back from a trip to Tasmania.

As always I took along a computer, but not the lightweight computer I bought back in 2021, but instead a second hand refurbished HP pro book. Ever since the lightweight Lenovo had started complaining about disk space when we were in Tuscany, I realised its days as a travel computer were probably numbered, so I bought myself a refurbished 11" ProBook which worked perfectly, allowing me to upload images from my camera, plus online banking and all the checking of things and booking of restaurants online that is part of travel these days.

While it might seem extravagant, the cost of ownership of the Lenovo - purchase price divided by years used was around the same as my previous refurbished MacBook. The HP cost me less than the Lenovo, so I reckon if I get two years out of it I reckon I'm ahead.

That does leave me the problem of what to do with the Lenovo - I suspect I'll end up installing Linux on it - the machine has a nice keyboard and  decent battery life so I'll probably end up configuring it similarly to the distraction free machine.

I also took along the dogfood tablet.

This wasn't quite so successful - not because the dogfood tablet doesn't function well as an e-reader, but due to mission creep on my part. I started using it to read my email, check online news sites etc in the mornings with a cup of tea simply because it seemed more sociable to do that with J while she looked at her iPad than hide behind a computer.

The dogfood tablet simply wasn't up to it - not enough memory and basically too slow, which is a shame as it still makes a great e-reader.

A little bit of searching showed that the various big box retailers were selling off the last of their stock of the Lenovo Tab M8 - basically a lightweight 8" tablet that has been discontinued.

So I bought myself one as a sort of birthday present.

It's pretty good, and of a size and weight that's just as easy as the original dogfood tablet to slide into a work bag as an extra device.

Unlike the Chromebook Duet, which has some limitations as a computer replacement, the M8 is unashamedly a supplemental device.

 I've only had it for a day or so, but so far I feel positive about it, although it does seem slow to boot, but once it's up an running, its reasonably responsive ...