Reviving an old digital camera

 A long time ago, 2006 in fact, we bought a Panasonic Lumix in Schiphol airport's duty free store.

When we had been to Laos the year before we had noticed that the world had suddenly gone digital, something, that as we both had good quality film cameras, had passed us by,

So we bought the Lumix as an experiment, and never looked back.

In time, we acquired other, newer, more sophisticated cameras and simply stopped using the Lumix, and it languished in a cupboard.

Yesterday, I found it at the back of a cupboard. Now, I’ve been thinking about getting a small light DSLR for survey work, rather than the waterproof/drop proof point and shoot Nikon I use at the moment, and I wondered if the Lumix might do the job.

First of all could I charge it?

At some point we must have replaced the battery as it was a third party unit, so after a scratch around in my box of e-stuff I found a charger from the same people that had supplied the battery, and a check on their website showed that I had the correct charger for the battery.

The original charger had a European style two pin plug and at some point we must have bought one with an Australian plug - I have no memory of this or why we did so, And then, at some later date we must have bought a replacement battery from the same people.

Anyway I could charge it.

The SD card had long since disappeared, and that’s a problem. The maximum size that the old Lumix can handle is 2GB - obviously later models can take higher capacity cards.

However ebay was my friend, it turns out there’s a trade in either recycled or discontinued stock smaller SD cards and 2GB units are relatively easy to get  - 1GB are a bit more tricky to track down.

However, first things first, did the camera actually work - well in my box of e-stuff I found a 16MB SD card - that’s right sixteen megabyte that had obviously been living in my old Cool-er e-reader judging by the content.

A quick wipe of the contacts with some isopropyl alcohol - being married to an artist who has a slightly frightening array of solvents in her studio has its advantages - and a reformat.

Then into the camera, and a quick picture

I’m sure that no-one’s really interested in my work backpacks but it proved that the camera worked.

So, I ordered a 2GB SD card still in its original packaging from ebay. It’ll be here at the end of week and will give me an opportunity to put the camera to work.

[Update 30/07/2024]

Well, the 2GB SD card arrived a couple of days later than it should - more due to AustraliaPost's inefficiency rather than any tardiness on the part of the supplier.

I popped the card in, powered up the Lumix, and it recognised the card, and said I had space for 652 images, which sounds about right, so I reckon we're ready to rock ...