Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Silly Tech - The Rolleiflex MiniDigi Retro Digital Camera
If this one sounds cool to you, then I bet you have one of those 1940's and 50's-style radio consoles that hides an actual digital FM radio and CD player, or a hand-cranked Victrola turntable that instead of spinning records, now plays CDs and tapes. Retro tech is the weird world where the technically old and the technically new collide. How quaint, the too-young-to-remember-the-radio-only-days says one camp, how-comforting, says the oldsters just nudged into the high tech age with an analog safety blanket. On the block today is the "Rolleiflex MiniDigi, a digital camera unlike any other--it's a vintage replica of the famous, coveted Rolleiflex 2.8F of 1929. Just as with the original, you hold the camera at waist level and look down into the pop-up viewfinder. No longer ground glass, the viewfinder is an LCD. This camera positioning puts subjects at ease-- all old-time Hollywood stars had their portraits taken with the original Rolleiflex."
OK, OK, so we admit it, we want this %&%$ camera too. But funny how they never mention a price. If you have to ask.....
Small note from Bill: Apparently they've forgotten that anyone familiar with such a camera would be older now than they were then and, of course, have become somewhat gravitationally challenged in their later life. (Except, of course, Alice, who has yet to reach her later years and will not do so for decades to come.) Assuming the hands holding the camera in the picture are those of your average Japanese adult, I'd have to hire a 17 year old to use it because my big old hams would be all over places that shouldn't be covered. (Unless I was really into thumb shots.) Manufacturers really have to rethink "clever" retro creations along the lines of practicality (like Chevy's SSR...).
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