Man's "car booty" photographic haul

A man saw some things he thought we'd like so took photos of them. It's almost like having a friend. Next he'll be posting us pots of home made jam



"Went spectating at an estate auction yesterday and got a couple shots of some gear that might be at least mildly amusing. Considering the modern video camera, this BetaMovie rig was humongous. You needed a small suitcase to lug it, the batteries, charger and a quarter mile of cables around. And it's a Beta, which used slightly smaller tapes than VHS. You can probably date it pretty accurately by the rainbow pattern strap which resembles Robin Williams' suspenders from Mork & Mindy.



"Then you've got the cool old SCM adding machine. It doesn't appear to have any display other than what it printed on the roll of paper. It probably got ditched because it was too hard to find a new ribbon for. The little Novus calculator had one of those red LED displays. Radio Shack sold them new for around $80, I suspect. It could add, subtract, multiply and divide and that was it. Guess it was made before there were square roots or the value of Pi had been determined. But I forgot to pop the back off and see if it contained any rare batteries."



"And finally, pre-dating the BetaCam, was this Minolta home movie camera. I think it was of a type that used a sort of preloaded film cassette, but I forget what the format was called. One of the knobs on the side says "intervalometer" so it was likely more than just a basic model. Probably set someone back about a month's salary and took some great vacation movies over the years. And if you post these and insist on including my name again, sign me as Loren Ipsum - Loren Ipsum."