Patience Will Win The Day

It's not the most popular of positions, but my stance on doing things technology-wise is to be patient and plan. Now, that doesn't mean that I don't do anything "spur of the moment". Buying that Minolta Rokkor-X 50mm lens is a good example. But really, even that thing is part of a greater picture of something I've been wanting to do for some time, but waited till the opportune moment.

I guess you could characterize me as a pouncing cat, waiting for it's prey. Lucky for me, that didn't equate to be an errant rabbit or squirrel!

Not too long ago, I wrote about finding a Drobo Mini at an excellent price. However, not only was the price good, but this one was pre-populated with 4 Western Digital 320Gb drives and a 256Gb Crucial M4 mSATA SSD. This item actually created an entire series of sub-moves within the original deal. Although, I have yet to sell off those 4 drives which I think are too small, but the SSD has already been installed into my ThinkPad X1, upgrading it from a 160Gb Intel 320. It also frees up the 2.5" drive bay for me to put in a 7mm drive for purely storage purposes. I've also put in some of my random stack of SATA drives in that Mini to both upgrade it's storage (one of the replacements is a 500Gb), but that frees up the WD 320Gb for sale. My plan was to slowly replace the installed drives (3 320Gb, 1 500Gb) with 1Tb Hitachi drives which I think are the best combination of price and reliability. Note the WAS.....

Then this happened. You've probably noted that the label on this drive is a little odd. Basically, all the current high capacity (1.5Tb & 2Tb) 2.5" drives have a little bulge on their covers. This necessitates that the label have a cut-out to accommodate it. This trend started with the 1.5Tb drives of which, this is one, then on to the current king of capacity, the 2Tb Samsung/Seagate drives. Well....actually, that's not completely accurate, in that most of the 1.5Tb drives which are 12.5mm in thickness don't have to have the bulge; only the ones that conform to the standard 9mm drive height. In fact, it's a bit more complex than that: there are 3 drive heights for the 2.5" (often called laptop) drives. The 9mm being the most common and therefore considered "standard", the 7mm as extra-thin (which perversely is "standard" for SSDs), and the 12.5mm which are considered non-standard as very few notebook computers have a drive bay that will accommodated a drive of that thickness. Generally, these are made to go into those external "portable" external drives that you see out there. If you see one that's 1.5-2Tb in capacity (and it's not a Seagate or Samsung), then chances are good that it's of that thickness. So there!

Why am I going on and on about this minutia regarding 2.5" drives, you ask? Well, these little bits of information mean something and can impact your purchasing decisions. Obviously, I'd like to outfit my Drobo Mini with as big of drives as I can for as little money as possible. Also, you throw in there, my little personal bias against using Seagate drives as a rule. This leaves out the current capacity champ of 2Tb. But, what about the 1.5Tb non-Seagate drives on the market? Well..... the majority of them are like the Toshiba you see above; 750Gb at the standard thickness, and 12.5mm (which does not fit the Drobo Mini) at the 1.5Tb capacity! The only exception being the VERY difficult to find Hitachi Travelstar 5K1500. I had resigned myself to using the 1Tb Hitachi which are common and can typically be found at about $50 a-pop, when my routine of checking ads bore fruit!. On Thursday, I came across an eBay listing for a Hitachi, 3.5" "Desktop". I wasn't very surprised by this since I actually have 2 of those things in my main workstation, but I decided to open the link anyway and look at it. Yes, the description was for the 3.5" "DeskStar", but the photos were of the 2.5" TravelStar! So I messaged the seller immediately and when he replied that the description was wrong, but the photos were right; I bought the thing at the $45 after-shipping price IMMEDIATELY!!!

So yeah...... this is what I was doing..... inside that is, since it'd have been a little weird for me to do this at work!

The 35 Year Reunion: Camera Style

Roughly 35 years ago, Yashica (which is actually the Yashima Seiki Company founded in Nagano, Japan in 1949), introduced the Contax RTS; it turned the photographic world on it's ear. Not only was it a tour de force of industrial design with none other than F.A. Porsche handling the ergonomic and styling aspect, but the ultimate coup, which as the collaboration of Carl Zeiss for the optical end of this amazing product. It was the ultimate marriage of Japanese electronic know-how with German optical and design engineering. As a 15 year-old aspiring photographer, the feeling it gave as indescribable! I remember being in a camera store the first time I saw one "in the flesh" and not even asking to "see" it. Merely standing there and staring at it on the glass shelf was enough.

Around that same time (1974), Minolta, which had started cooperating with the other German optical giant, Leitz, introduced the XE-7. This camera would be the basis of which Leitz/Leica would create the R3 SLR camera which it sold into the 80's.

For me, it was pretty much like having Farrah Fawcett, in your class, but you're not being in her class! They were absolutely the most beautiful cameras of their time. Sure the Nikon F2 and Canon F1 were amazing and to be lusted after, but where as those were 4-Wheel drive military vehicles, these were Ferraris and Porsches. 

So, 35 years or so later, even the most stunning girls turn into twice divorced middle-agers with some mileage on them. Virtually the entire Contax line ended up struggling with a covering that didn't wear very well! And what I came across a few months ago was the "little sister" of that Prom Queen. The Contax 139 Quartz. Same genes, same looks, more compact body. Actually what happened was this: of course I've always wanted to add an RTS into my collection of old film cameras, and to that end, I'd periodically look at them on eBay and other places.

What I came across was this; the Contax 139 Winder, complete with the little vinyl case for just a few dollars. Obviously, you can imagine what happened: I bought it, then proceeded to find a Contax 139. For around $15, I picked up a condition "untested", but of course, ugly (skin blight) Contax 139. After new batteries, it turned out that the camera worked fine. It felt great, but a quick survey of Contax/Zeiss lenses showed that they were still ridiculously expensive (at least for me)! So, for the last several months, the 139 has adorned my office bookcase lens-less, while my digital life went on with computers and digital cameras.

Then last weekend happened. If you've been following this blog, you're already aware that I found a Minolta MC Rokkor-X 50mm/f1.4 lens for around $10 bucks at the computer flea side-walk sale. You may ask yourself; what does that have to do with the Contax 139!?! Well, it started me down into the analog photography rabbit-trail.... that's what! First came, the search for a suitable Minolta body for that lens, and of course, this awakened the distant memory of my high school crush on the XE-7. While in pursuit of that, I realized that maybe I should chase down an Adaptall 2 mount for my Tamron lenses. Then, while doing that, it occurred to me that maybe I should go ahead and pick up an Adaptall mount for the Contax as well. A trip to the KEH Cameras website netted me both of those at a very reasonable $11-12 apiece. On Thursday, they arrived on my doorstep while I was away for a school function. But that night, for the very first time, I was able to handle my Contax the right way, complete with a lens attached! Wow!!! It was an epiphany. The sound of it even got my 8 year-old daughters attention, who wanted to know what "that was"! I think I'm going to take her out with me to shoot some photos with it, this weekend. 

This afternoon, the XE-7 is going to be delivered, and for the first time, after a 35 year wait; I'm going to take that girl out for a dance.

 

Hope Springs Eternal..... At the April Flea Market

Even though the Dallas 1st Saturday Computer Flea Market no longer looks like this (times 10) and is reduced to one section of the area under Woodall Rogers Freeway, I still like to go every now and then. The fact is, you never know what you will find there!

This time, checking a "junk vendor's" tables turned this up. Yup; it's a MInolta MC Rokkor-X, 50mm/f1.4! One of the Holy Grails of old glass. Yes; I'm aware that it's not one of the uber-rare f1.2 lenses, but I'm not sure what I'd do if I came across one of those! Back to the f1.4. For those who care about such things, this chunk of glass is well know for not just being fast, but ultra-sharp as well. Of course, being from a "dead" system makes it all the more mythological, however with the current crop of short back-spacing mirrorless cameras, virtually ALL lenses of this type have become highly sought after and the prices have gone up accordingly. What do I want with it since I have the Nikkor version, "chipped" for my current Nikon DSLR system? Uhhhh......a week of carrying it around Disney World has caused me to consider down-sizing. NO; this is not the same as my long-running series of wanting a smaller/lighter secondary camera to go with the main D300. I'm considering completely changing out of the big heavy Nikon system all-together. This will become a separate post (possibly a series) by itself. Anyway; to cut to the chase, I got this lens for $15 total including a ThinkPad power adapter!
Anything else interesting at the Flea Market? 

This..... What is it? That is a Sony Vaio PCG-N505VX of 2003/4 (there-abouts). Yes, that'd be a smoking hot PII/333 running with 128Mb of RAM on a 6Gb PATA hard drive. It's also one of the thinest notebook computers ever made....still. The case is completely of magnesium. It was complete including the floppy drive, power adapter AND dock. The only thing it didn't come with was the optional PCMCIA external CD-ROM drive. Yes; it does indeed power up, although there's no OS on it. What are my intentions for it? Mostly just to let it sit there and look at it for now, but I might get around to putting some version of Linux on it like Puppy. It was $10. It was a pretty nice morning!