Space, 1999

[imomus]

Ten years is a long time in digital camera design, so when Hisae decided to refurbish her old Nikon Coolpix 950 it felt more like time-traveling back to 1969 than 1999 -- especially with the optional fisheye lens adaptor screwed into place.

A camera that, ten years ago, seemed light and expensive now seems heavy and cheap, and its 2 megapixel sensor doesn't seem anything like as spacious now as it did back then. But there's no denying the quality and quirk of the images you can get with this Nikon, once you've slipped in four AA batteries (they'll last about 30 minutes before they need replacing), screwed the lens adaptor into its mount, and twisted the rugged swivel-body into action.

Here's a fisheye documentation of our living space via the kind of lens usually reserved for Apollo capsules and Stanley Kubrick (or, for a more 1999-era reference, Chris Doyle) films.

Comments

[obliterati.livejournal.com]

There is this place called Renn Fayre, completely different than the more well-known Renaissance Fayres that happen all over, and at this other Renn Fayre in 2005 I came into the possession of a stolen Nikon Coolpix 800, and against better judgement held onto it for quite a while. Because the camera changed ownership during the Renn Fayre event I was partially inclined toward thinking that it was always there forever, and that the camera would take pictures of Renn Fayre no matter where you were when you pressed the button. This became a pretty handy feature eventually.

In December 2005 I traded it for a laptop, with a person who wanted to completely escape both the town and the internet, and who wanted to take pictures during her wanderings. She was gone for five months, reappearing again for some reason just after Renn Fayre 2006.

I went to her house to show her what I'd done with her laptop in the five months, and to retrieve the camera. The laptop crashed immediately upon arrival, and all my work was lost. I got the camera back though, so conservation of gadget mass was conserved, I could only have one item but not both.

When I got the laptop back many months later (dealing with zero dollars here), the traveling lady had the camera again, and I wanted it back one night so badly that the conversation turned into an argument (which often happened with her), and when everything was done I was pretty much no longer on speaking terms with her. I was able to take a few pictures before the batteries died minutes later and then I couldn't even afford new batteries for months. The laptop died again the day that a friend appeared from out of town with a giant pack of AA's.

I located the original owner of the camera, a Mr. Ben Salzburg, and tried to return it, but he wouldn't accept it claiming it wasn't his Nikon. He says that the identifying marks on it were not there, which was how he knew for sure it wasn't his. He said his name was scratched in on the bottom panel and that was absent on the camera I showed him. I tried to explain that I personally had rubbed his name off the camera a year before, which was how I knew it was his, but he would not be convinced. So I was still stuck with it.

When I went to the east coast in 2007 to attend my grandmother's funeral, I brought the camera and the dead laptop with me, and before leaving Albany convinced a relative to pay the repair fee at the local Apple Store. I then took a bus to Boston to meet some friends.

I very happily got to see your show at the Boston ICA my last day in Boston, and I thought the museum was very thoughtful about my bringing all my luggage with me, everyone else was checking coats but I was checking a bunch of big bags. At one point, tired of carrying all my crap around, I threw my jacket onto my pile of bags near the cafe area and heard the horrible bang sound of the camera hitting the ground hard. I went to inspect and the camera screen just said ERROR ERROR and I knew that I had finally killed the thing. I then had the very nice evening watching you guys drink Mojitos out by the water.

The next day I got to Northampton and my laptop was waiting for me. Of course.

Then, about six months later, the laptop died again and was stuck on the shelf while I figured out if I wanted to repair it once more. Did I still want this creepy haunted laptop? Aren't there better ones around by now? The machine stayed dead for about a year, and I fell very far behind on everything and am still catching up having just got the thing back not quite two months ago.

Around April or so, going through my stuff, I tried the Nikon again with new batteries and discovered that it actually worked. This meant that I owned both the functioning Nikon AND the laptop at the same time, for the first time, and this responsibility became so much that the brain started malfunctioning. I still often forget to finish taking the photos I've reserved entire days to finish. I will try again tomorrow I think.