Mazel tov!

I own a few Minolta’s, including the X500 and X700. Those were basically the last of their manual focus SLR’s. I love classic bodies like that; metal built bricks that feel solid and chunky to use. I also bought a ton of Minolta glass back in the 2010’s when they stuff went for pennies on the dollar on Ebay. Good glass is good glass, right?

I’ve never shot HP5 myself; I tend to be more of a Fuji shooter in general with Acros for my B&W needs. I’ve developed my own rolls, especially when I had to shoot that in cut-down form in Minox cartridges. Not exactly the kind of thing you take to a one hour photo place :D

Though I’ve also shot stuff like Tri-X 400, Ektar and a bunch of other stuff from Kodak and Fuji over the years. But the thing I absolutely LOVE to shoot is slide film. Velvia 50 & 100 in particular. Absolutely amazing to see slides on a lightbox. You get a lovely depth and color that you just don’t really see in other negatives in my opinion.

I actually just bought a Fuji X-S20 camera which includes a bunch of film simulations, including Acros and Velvia. That’s how much I love shooting those, that I want to bring that fun factor to digital as well :D Also own a Fuji X100S, which I found out is a ‘TikTok trend’ apparently…

I’ve got plenty of stuff that’s older than I am. I’ve got mechanical cameras dating back to the 1930’s, electronic camera’s from the 70’s, watches dating back to that time as well. And there’s game consoles dating back to the NES, like many here.

I like old tech. Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s bad or unreliable. If you treat stuff well and maintain as needed, a lot of things will outlast you. I’ll be shooting film in cameras that are a hundred years old in a few years.

Exactly. I used to carry an iPod with loads of music on it. So did everyone else. But these days, nobody even uses an MP3 player. Heck, I don’t have a single MP3 on my phone. Streaming through YouTube Music is all I really need. And it works great for my normie taste in music.

Now, my brother is really into video game midi music and such, so he does have a digital collection of files. But for us normal people, downloading music is simply a thing of the past.

Heck, even if you subscribed to every streaming service out there, some companies simply refuse to make shit available to you.

I once gave Crunchyroll a try here in Europe. I figured there’d at least be something on there that I’d watch, right? Turns out, everything halfway decent wasn’t available in my region. And you COULD get the good stuff on some other service… except that one’s region locked as well, so you can’t get that one here. Oh and even if you think of buying anime on Blu-Ray? Tough luck, that’s not sold in your region due to rights fuckery. Basically, there’s no way for me to legally watch and/or buy particular content.

Piracy is and always has been an access problem. If you make it impossible to acquire legally, well, people will do it illegally.