Wallace Koopmans Artlog

While I primarily concentrate on blogging and using film cameras, from time to time I will come across a digital camera of interest. Some years back Samsung made a couple of models of camera that had an interesting analogue touch. They had gauges with needles to indicate their battery and memory card capacity. I know I know its a gimmick and completely unnecessary but at the same time it was kind of cool and an even more retrograde touch than film. So when I came across the online listing for a Samsung TL320 I bought it. The camera itself is in great condition and it has those gauges but here is where things take a turn.

When I tried to charge the battery after a few moments of apparent operation it would quit and indicate an error. No amount of fiddling or retries had any impact. As a last resort I charged the battery outside the camera with a current limiting power supply like you would find in an electronics lab. This is not a long term solution but allowed me to test the camera and ensure it was otherwise okay. Ultimately I did find a charger for a Canon point and shoot that was the correct voltage and had its pins in the right place. With a little effort this can now be used to charge the Samsung battery. After this let down it made me think more about what cameras I wanted to have and what cameras were worth keeping. The primary problem with older digital cameras are their proprietary batteries and keeping them charged or working. It’s okay for a couple cameras but for any significant number the work and expense of dealing with batteries begins to out way the benefits. And what are the benefits? Unlike film cameras which have the film itself in common old digital cameras just get left further behind every year. So the odd one may have been a landmark in design or operation but the bulk of them are better suited for recycling. Time could prove me wrong but I am betting that the 3rd of 7 iterations of some plasticky 3Mpixel camera just is not going to be of any interest in the future. As a parting note here are some images shot with the TL320 to show that despite its gimmicky nature the camera does take pictures.