Gallery of retro German cameras, sawn-in-half
Wired's notorious Charlie Sorrel — who was the only one of us who managed to bicycle home from boozing on Friday night without being detained and breathalyzed by German police officers — nursed his weekend hangover in a most wonderful way: he spent all day Saturday at the Deutshes Technikmuseum Berlin, photographing the many magnificent specimens of retro German cameras that were on display, thoroughly vivisected.
He also encountered a staircase for horses. I suppose this is the sort of productive weekend a gadget blogger in Berlin can have when he's not huddled in the corner of a Prenzlauerberg drunk tank, shaking in fear and silently dry retching. I hate you, Charlie.
Gallery of Sawn-in-Half Cameras [Gadget Lab]
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Ich bin ein Barfer.
Pferdetreppe
more of a question than a critisism but when does stuff stop being retro and start being just plain old?
I'd say one (harsh) categorisation would be something that was styled to look old but was new. or maybe it's something that is old(ish) but still in use... but not buildings or anything that was supposed to get old.
....
As an "old camera" collector I must say:
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
But those nice clean cuts are pretty too.
With guitars, to heard the old-timers talk about it, sometime around the British invasion (1st...?) the old/used guitar market became the vintage guitar market. I suppose the same thing exists in all categories of consumption. The pros know that the only way they can get rid of their old stuff is by retelling the old stories of classic building techniques, etc.
There's no doubt that pre-CBS Fender guitars were generally better, but most of the design decisions of that era were simply based on economics of a small company. CBS based their moves on economics of a larger company. After that the economics of guitar selling became all about target demographics, etc etc.
So yeah, this stuff is old...
As a materials scientist, I wonder how well they worked out the tolerances of the different little pieces based on coefficient of thermal expansion...!?
-Rich
Is Prenzlauerberg completely gentrified yet or are there still pockets of retro-Ostalgie ripe for hipster exploitation? ;-P
Edutastic!
These are delicious photos. I design machines, including lens assemblies, and to answer Nutate in #5, thermal expansion issues are certainly considered, but unless you are lensing high power light sources you don't have much to worry about - and if most or all of your parts are aluminum you have little to worry about even then!
I think the cops that picked you up were leather boys in disguise. Clearly your beer goggles were in full effect.
Also, it turns out the horse stairs lead down to a Catherine the Great exhibit (not true).
charlie