I recently got a Minox 35 GT of a bidding website. It was priced below market value from what I see online so I bought it. It was an impulse buy so it was after I got it and saw the battery was dead that I went researching about the battery.
Originally the Minox 35 GT uses PX27 style battery which has been banned for years now in the U.S. and in Europa. There isn’t a same sized replacement. There are a few solutions to this.
The most nicer one and also most expensive one is to buy the Minox 35 GT Power Pack. It is made by Minox to replace the battery chamber. You can put 4 LR44 type batteries in it. I wanted to order this from Adorama but they and other stores in the U.S. charge like 45 dollars just to ship that piece of plastic to the Netherlands, I mean I get books price and shipping together cheaper then that from Amazon…talk about being ripped off.
The next option will contain a few DIY but will cost way less. After some Googling I read that most users dismantle an old PX27 type battery and use the plastic in it as a case for the 4 LR44 type batteries. Now I’m a visual person I need pictures along with instructions and none of them provided clear instructions. So I took photos of my DIY to make it easier for others who might need a battery hack for their Minox.
The first photo shows the dismantled old PX27 battery. The plastic tube contained 4 mercury cells glued to each other each in a small aluminum encasing. Dispose the batteries correctly as they are hazardous. Next the idea is to fit 4 LR44 batteries in the plastic tube, respecting polarity so: -+-+-+-+.
In my case those batteries where to big for the plastic case. So plan B next:
I got some isolation tape and taped the batteries together as seen on the second photo. Now just put the battery pack you just made in the battery chamber “-” down and “+” up and done.
Now to do a battery check, my camera doesn’t has any film in it yet as I want to be sure the battery works before wasting film. So advance the “film” and now look in the viewfinder and press the battery check button. The needle should drop and then jump to more then 1/125 as the manual says, but that is okay. This means your camera has power.
The old mercury batteries where of 5.6V and these 4 new batteries make a total of 6V but the camera can handle it. So there you go, basically all you need is isolation tape and 4 LR44 type batteries.
You can read more on the battery check and working of the camera with this Minox 35 GT online manual
These last weeks I have been trying out different photo print service. At the photo lab in town, at Pixum and postcards at MOO. The challenge is to get the colors right, currently only two photos I want to hang on the wall still need color correction. But most of them turned all right and I will be framing them to hang on the wall.
This experience made me realize I should shoot with film as much as with digital. I always shoot in RAW format with the Nikon D70. I have no idea why but I’m starting to like film more, I think because you can’t see right away how the photo will come out. And there is something about just pointing the camera and only worry about the composition. With the Nikon I use manual mode 90% of the times and it gets to technical.
I dusted off my Olympus Trip 35 and do my best to carry it around all the time to take mostly street photography. I have been reading interviews on PetaPixel and what keeps coming back is how difficult it is to just get out there with your camera and not let the people around you intimidate you and just shoot your photos.
Also it’s not the equipment that takes the photo but the person using the equipment. Taking photos is like reading a cosmo or maxim(she/he) magazine and after finish reading your self esteem lowers a few points.(This was proven in a research). So when you see your own photos result it’s hard not to compare them to others. After all we all are our own worse critics.
So after reading these interviews with various photographers I have decided to just stick to the Nikon D70 and not worry to upgrade to D90, costs too much anyway. And for film I will use the Olympus Trip 35 which is a manual camera and I recently got a Yashica T5 which is automatic and has a good lens. These three cameras will be my main equipment for now.
My next project now is trying out different film to see which one I like best. I already shot B&W with the Kodak T-MAX 400. And the photos came out all right. This is my best BW photo yet, shot with the Trip:
In any case back to prints, I framed a couple of them and handed them as gift. A few examples:
I like matte prints more then glossy, but the opinion is that glossy comes out sharper. I haven’t decided yet if I find that true. Since the MOO mini cards I haven’t used their service anymore, so I ordered a pack of 20 postcards. Besides the two photos with color issues, they are too yellow although it does give them a vintage look. But that was just me doing too much photoshopping on them, the rest came out good.
With the best one being this:
A preview of the the rest:
In any case bottom line is, when I’m taking photos I can forget about all daily life issues and just enjoy the moment. Especially moments like when I shot the Warawara bird last month in Aruba.
