Bye Bye Froggie

It looks lovely, but it may never work again

There’s a little voice in my head telling me that nobody cares about my problems acquiring a digital back for my old film camera. I am choosing to ignore that voice.

The story so far:

Robert wants to be able to take digital pictures with his sixty year old film camera. So he has purchased a younger (by comparison - only twenty years old) digital back for the camera. Unfortunately, as can be the case with vintage electronics, the back has “forgotten” its software and needs to be returned to the mothership for reprogramming. In the last post on this matter Rob likened the process of getting a working device to “kissing frogs” and hoping that one of them will turn out to be a prince (or princess depending on taste). Now read on..

I’ve been told that it will cost 500 pounds (plus VAT and postage) to reprogram my broken digital back. I’m amazed that this is even possible, but it is more than I can afford to spend on this project and it might not fix the problem if something else is broken. So this back is now officially staying a frog. I’ve got another back on order which the seller is being very coy about actually sending to me. So I’m assuming that this one will definitely work….

In the meantime I’ve sent back the “frog” and been refunded. I’d like to give a special shout out to the folks at The Real Camera Company in Manchester who were great about the returns process, the Phase One technical support people and Andy at PearTree Photo who were all super helpful. The quest continues…