When did the seller post the camera that I bought on Monday? eBay kept telling me that
it hadn't been posted yet, but Australia Post gave me more plausible information, that it was posted on Tuesday. But
eBay stayed that way until I found this morning:
From ebay@ebay.com Wed Nov 5 23:42:10 2025
Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2025 05:41:59 -0700
From: eBay <ebay@ebay.com>
Subject: 🚚 Order update: Nikon D1 Camera Body And 70- 210mm Lens Please Read Description
Estimated delivery: Wed, 05 Nov - Mon, 10 Nov
Well, that's optimistic, isn't it? Sent just before midnight and expects delivery the same
day? And why should I read the Description? That's a link that they could have included in
the message. Never mind, 40 minutes later, still in the middle of the night, they had the
wonderful news:
From ebay@ebay.com Thu Nov 6 00:21:32 2025
Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2025 06:21:20 -0700
From: eBay <ebay@ebay.com>
Subject: Your package is now with its carrier!
Estimated delivery: Wed, 05 Nov - Mon, 10 Nov
That's particularly optimistic. Posted in the middle of the night, delivery yesterday!
Checking showed that the item had been somewhere between Melbourne and Ballarat at the time. Never mind, a third
message:
From ebay@ebay.com Thu Nov 6 10:32:13 2025
Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2025 16:32:01 -0700
From: eBay <ebay@ebay.com>
Subject: Delivery attempted: Nikon D1 Camera Body And 70- 210mm Lens Please
Read Description
Australia Post just missed you.
Delivery attempted: Thu, 06 Nov 08:27 Local time
Well, no, eBay, Australia Post never tries to deliver parcels to me. At the specified time
the item was in Delacombe and
marked for transport to the post office, where it arrived at 10:27.
But they do this every time. Why? They've been round for over a quarter of a century.
Surely they could have got their act together by now. Still, they ask a question: “How
useful is the email?”. Useless, of course, and that's what I said for the first email. But
I couldn't give a similar feedback for the second message: they only allow one feedback per
day! Why? Do they even care?
Yes, the three on the right are Four Thirds system form factor,
but the one on the left is a 24×36 mm sensor, and the Nikon is roughly APS format, between the two.
The lens is one that I got five years ago. The camera won't stand up straight with the 70-210:
Normal details: Nikon D1,
serial number 5022707. Nikkor 70-210 mm f/4.0-5.6, serial number... Oh. I can't find it.
Where could it be hidden? Sent off a message to the FacebookNikon Collectors group, also
asking about the batteries: I have three, all discharged, but no charger. What can I use
instead?
But no replies came. A bit of searching around produced this message:
What's that? After following the “Learn more” link I still don't know. But by chance I
found a more obvious answer: it's waiting for moderator approval. Why didn't Facebook tell
me up front? And what does it have to do with Community chats, whatever they may be?
Apart from that, of course, looked at the camera. Like the Olympus E-1 next to it in the photo
above, it's an early camera with amazingly complicated interlocks. Two covers and a button
just to reveal that it does, indeed, have an CF card (512 MB) in it, and that I need to
fold over another lever to finally remove it.
Why do I want to remove it? It fits my Nikon Coolpix 880, with which I
wanted to take a photo some time back before discovering that it didn't understand cards
over 1 GB. It also had a photo on it:
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/15) ~/Photos/20251106 546 -> mdir -s e: Volume in drive E has no label
Volume Serial Number is F0F3-7854
Directory for E:/
But then it was taken at 1/4 s on a camera without any stabilization, so it's not
surprising. It also appears to have been taken with the lens I got. Sadly, though it has
Exif data, it doesn't appear to
include serial numbers. It does include a time zone offset, though: UTC+11:00. And
presumably it tells me how long the camera hasn't been used, though at that time there was
nowhere worth mentioning with that time zone offset: DST had finished at the beginning of the month.
Presumably the user had forgotten to reset the date.
The CF card also gave me a chance to take a photo with the Coolpix 880, which hadn't been
used even longer To my surprise I found a battery, and was able to take a photo that at
least confirmed that the camera still works:
Now why did I want to take photos with it? Some comparison, clearly, but which? And in
passing, it's likely that the last image I took with this camera was even before 2006: I
replaced it with the Ricoh Caplio R1 almost exactly 21 years ago, on 5 November 2004, and
I don't think I used it after that.
I'm getting more and more frustrated with computers. It's been long enough: they should
Just Work. By chance I found this entry in my diary for 6 November 2005, 20 years ago:
I think the time for playing around with software is over, and now I want reliability.
Certainly the hardware is more reliable. But the software still has its issues.
Now I have a couple of answers from the FacebookNikon Collectors group,
unfortunately none of much use. One told me where the serial number of the 70-210 mm f/4-5.6 AF Nikkor lens was, on the back of the aperture ring. But it wasn't there on this lens. Took a couple of photos of the area:
The dirt on the last photo looked like it might cover a serial number. But no, no luck.
Cleaning it off wasn't easy, but it was clear that it didn't cover anything.
The lens looks genuine enough, and it's strange that there's no obvious serial number
anywhere. I thought that there might have been another ring round the surprisingly bare
looking front element:
But no, other images look the same, like this one from somewhere on the web:
So for the moment I don't have anything to go on. Maybe I'll find a Nikon user with a newer
camera who will be able to get the info from the Exif data—if it supplies it.
And the batteries? Also no help beyond “you can buy chargers on AliExpress”. But that doesn't make
sense, first because it costs (minimal) money, and second because the batteries could be
beyond hope. About the best information I got was from this page, which also makes it clear that you shouldn't try to charge NiMH batteries with a LiIon charger.
Since we have been letting the cats out, I have been keeping an eye on where they are.
Today I heard a noise from the laundry. That would be Mona eating. Out to check.
Not Mona. To my surprise I found a rat in the feeding area. It disappeared immediately, of
course. But what we do about it? How do we catch it?
This page contains (roughly) yesterday's and today's entries. I have
a horror of reverse chronological documents, so
all my diary entries are chronological. This page normally contains the last two days,
but if I fall behind it may contain more. You can find older entries in
the archive. Note that I often update a diary entry
a day or two after I write it.
Do you have a comment about something I have written? This is a diary, not a
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deliberately no provision for directly adding comments. It's also not a vehicle
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I'll assume that it's OK to do so.
