Borbin the 🐱

Selling lenses (and 📷) is easy. At least according to the offers from small and large camera dealers. Advertising with 'up to 70% of retail' should have the focus on 'up to'.

Here is my result: Quotes from camera sites and then selling at eBay at the average eBay price.
If the value is 0, they did not want the lens.

Lens		B&H	Glazer's	Kenmore	MBP	eBay
	Nikon AI-S 28-85 f/3.5-4.5	125	35	30	0	95
	Nikon AI-S 28-85 f/3.5-4.5	125	35	30	0	95
	Nikon 35-105mm f/3.5-4.5 AI-S	25	15	15	28	145
	Nikon AI-S 70-210mm f/4.5-5.6	30	15	10	0	95
	Nikon AF 105mm f/2.8 D Macro	75	72	100	118	185
	Nikon 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED VR II AF-S D	50	27	10	42	115
	Nikon 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED VR II AF-S D	50	27	10	42	115
	Sigma 30mm f/1.4 DC HSM	70	52	50	72	185
	Sigma 50mm f/2.8 DG Macro	75	0	30	128	165
	Sigma 50-150mm f/2.8 EX DC APO HSM	0	125	115	121	385
	Tokina 500mm f/8.0 Mirror Lens for Nikon	0	0	35	125	165
	Ʃ	625	403	435	676	1745
	Sigma 8mm f/3.5 EX DG Fisheye	140	50	125	87
	Nikon AF 50mm f1.4D	75	42	65	55

The quote from Adorama required to send in the lenses, but I was told the estimate would be around 500.
B&H's is similiar price, but there is an exception for the Nikon AI-S 28-85 f/3.5-4.5. Seems like a very sought-after lens, but not for MBP.
So far, B&H pays best for those (vintage) lenses.

The last two lenses I decided to keep, but I had them added to the quote to check. Would you sell for this price?

Update:

Lenses have been sold on eBay, with an approximate 20-25% fee deducted. The only exceptions are the two Nikon AI-S 28-85mm f/3.5-4.5, which I traded to B&H for a tax-free voucher. They are still listed for sale there¹, quietly gathering digital dust.
The lens shelf now looks more intentional and less like a clearance bin.

Backing Up a NAS via SSH and rsync

A practical guide to safely backing up large NAS file sets via SSH and rsync, including why some external USB hard drives slow down dramatically due to SMR technology.

NAS (Network Attached Storage) is a convenient solution for storing pictures, videos, and all your other files. The NAS device is typically configured as RAID-1, utilizing two disks so the system can continue operating if one disk fails, thereby improving availability. It connects to your local network, providing reliable and accessible storage, but it is not a backup.

Backing up files from a NAS device is very important to ensure data integrity and availability.
Many NAS systems, such as my Synology NAS, come equipped with backup software like Hyper-Backup. Unfortunately, this software tends to become slower over time during long backup runs, especially with very large file sets.

Using PuTTY, a popular SSH client, and simple Linux commands, you can efficiently perform backups and verify them directly on the NAS. Here is a step-by-step guide.

Prerequisite

NAS devices typically feature USB ports, allowing you to connect an external hard drive of the required size directly to the NAS via USB. External drives are available in two main types: SSD (Solid State Drives) and HDD (Hard Disk Drives with spinning disks). I am using HDDs because of their long-term data retention capabilities, but SSDs are faster and maybe perfect for frequent short term backups.

The drive connects to the system with a path like /volumeUSB1/usbshare. Simply check with the cd and dir command.
On Synology systems, user data is typically located under /volume1, which will be used as the source path in the following examples.

I recommend formatting the drive with NTFS. On large volumes, exFAT often uses very large allocation units, which can waste significant space when storing many small files.

Note on SMR-based external hard drives

Many modern 2.5" external USB hard drives use Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR). With SMR, write performance may appear fast at first, because new data is written into a small sequential write area. Once this area fills up, the drive must internally reorganize and rewrite entire zones to place the data permanently. This consolidation happens in the background and can take a long time, during which the drive remains busy and write speeds drop significantly.

This behavior is a direct consequence of how SMR works. SMR increases storage density by partially overlapping adjacent magnetic tracks, similar to roof shingles. Because the write head is wider than the read head, writing a new track overwrites part of the previous one, which prevents individual tracks from being updated independently. To manage this, SMR drives group tracks into zones that are written sequentially. Updating existing data requires a read-modify-rewrite cycle of the full zone, which is handled entirely by the drive firmware in drive-managed SMR and is invisible to the operating system.

As a result, long periods of drive activity and reduced sustained write performance are expected with fragmented or many-file workloads. This behavior affects performance, not data integrity, and does not indicate failing hardware or reduced long-term backup safety.

Step 1: Connect to your NAS using PuTTY

Download and Install PuTTY.
Open PuTTY and enter the IP address of your NAS in the "Host Name (or IP address)" field. Default Port is 22.

Login: Click "Open" and log in using your NAS credentials. You should now have access to the NAS embedded Linux console.

Step 2: Backup Files using the rsync command

The rsync command of the embedded Linux system of the NAS is used to copy files and directories.
To backup files from your NAS to another drive, follow these steps:

Navigate to the Source Directory:

cd /volume1

For large data sets, the copy process can take several days, and the PuTTY terminal may disconnect, closing the command. To prevent this, use the nohup command to keep the process running even if the terminal disconnects.

While commands like screen or tmux can be used to detach from the current terminal session, they are not always available on every system. At least, it is not available on the Synology NAS.

Copy Files to the Backup Location using rsync command with nohup. The rsync command has a visual progress and is a better choice for very large archives than the cp cmd.

Copy folders 2023, 2024, 2025 and "folder with spaces" to the backup folder "Bilder":

nohup rsync -rltD -W --info=progress2 --no-owner --no-group --no-perms --no-times --no-inc-recursive 2023 2024 2025 "folder with spaces" /volumeUSB1/usbshare/Bilder/ &

Note that source directories are specified without a trailing slash so that rsync creates the corresponding directories on the backup drive. Using a trailing slash on the source directory would copy only the contents of the folder and place all files directly into the target directory, flattening the structure. Always verify source and target paths before starting large copy operations.

The nohup command immediately returns and provides a process ID (PID). You can use the ps or htop command to check for this PID if it is still running in later sessions. Use the kill command with this PID to stop the backup.

Use iostat -x 1 to observe disk activity. When running under nohup, progress output can be viewed using cat nohup.out.

For large archives and long-running backups, rsync typically provides better robustness and verification than simple copy commands.

Step 3: Verify the Backup

After the backup has completed, it is important to verify that all files were copied successfully.

A practical and efficient way to do this is to run rsync in dry-run mode. This compares the source and destination and reports which files would still need to be copied, without making any changes:

rsync -rltD --dry-run --ignore-existing /volume1/Archive/Bilder/ /volumeUSB1/usbshare/Bilder/

ℹ️ --ignore-existing ensures that rsync only reports what would be missing, without copying anything again.
ℹ️ --dry-run makes no changes.
ℹ️ This comparison checks file presence and timestamps, which is sufficient for most photo archives.

For very large file sets, use nohup so the verification is not interrupted by a disconnected terminal session:

nohup rsync -rltD --dry-run --ignore-existing Bilder/ /volumeUSB1/usbshare/Bilder/ >verify.log 2>&1 &

Additional quick sanity checks include comparing the number of files and the total size of both directories:

find Bilder -type f | wc -l find /volumeUSB1/usbshare/Bilder -type f | wc -l

du -sb /volume1/Archive/Bilder du -sb /volumeUSB1/usbshare/Bilder

Small differences in reported size are normal, but large deviations should be investigated.

Finally, for a strict and exhaustive comparison, the diff command can be used:

diff -qr /volume1/Archive/Bilder /volumeUSB1/usbshare/Bilder

This performs a recursive comparison of the directory trees and may take a long time on large archives. For long-running checks, use nohup and redirect the output to a file for later inspection.

My first digital camera was a Kodak DC-260, and I used 3.5" 💾 for backup.

Ein besonderer Tag, und dazu was besonderes.

Zopf

1/60s f/5 ISO 4000 16-50mm f/3,5-6,3 VR f=34mm/51mm

1/125s f/3,5 ISO 3200/36° 16-50mm f/3,5-6,3 VR f=16mm/24mm

Lagoon

Ohne Fokus-Stacking

1/80s f/4,8 ISO 3200/36° 16-50mm f/3,5-6,3 VR f=30mm/45mm

Mit Fokus-Stacking

1/80s f/4,5 ISO 3200/36° 16-50mm f/3,5-6,3 VR f=26mm/39mm

Siehe Combine pictures with PTGui, Focus stacking

Schokoladentorte

[1/60s f/4 ISO 100/21° 16-50mm f/3,5-6,3 VR f=21mm/31mm] [1/100s f/4,2 ISO 3200/36° 16-50mm f/3,5-6,3 VR f=25mm/37mm]

Precise timing is critical in analog photography, especially during the development process in the darkroom. This project presents a versatile darkroom timer built around the Arduino Uno R4 and Gamepad Input Shield, designed to support key photographic development tasks with tactile control and visual feedback. It features an 8x8 LED matrix for ambient illumination and implements five distinct modes: LED brightness adjustment, manual and timed enlarger control, chemical bath sequencing, and a general-purpose timer. Navigation is intuitive via joystick or button input, making it a practical and user-friendly tool for analog photography workflows.

This project uses the Gamepad Input Shield and Arduino Uno R4. Wiring details are available in the source code. The joystick or up/down buttons are used to switch between tasks, while left/right buttons adjust the state or settings.
The first 8x8 LED block is used to illuminate the darkroom.

The timer implements five tasks:

• LEDBrightnessTask: Adjusts LED brightness from 0 to 15.
• EnlargerOnOffTask: Manual control of the enlarger.
• EnlargerTimerTask: Timed control of the enlarger.
• DevelopStopFixTask: Three timers for develop, stop bath, and fix stages.
• GeneralTimerTask: A general-purpose timer starting from 0 seconds.

LEDBrightnessTask

Sets the brightness of the 8x8 darkroom illumination LEDs from min 0 to max 15.

EnlargerOnOffTask

Manual enlarger switch switched on.

EnlargerTimerTask

Timed enlarger switch.

DevelopStopFixTask

3 timers for develop, stop bath and fix.

GeneralTimerTask

General timer starting from 0s.

Arduino Darkroom Timer Github Project

This darkroom timer project combines modern microcontroller technology with the tactile simplicity of gamepad input to support essential analog photography tasks. Whether you are timing enlarger exposures or chemical baths, this tool offers consistent performance and flexibility for both amateur and professional darkroom enthusiasts. With five dedicated modes and intuitive controls, it provides a reliable and customizable solution for anyone working in a traditional darkroom. The open-source design invites further experimentation and adaptation. Whether you are refining your workflow or building your own version.

Start of a new journey.

📷 Nikon F2A - Nikkor AI-S 35-70mm f/3.5

• Black&White Film, Ilford HP5 Plus 400
• Color Slide Film, Kodak Ektachrome E100
• Color Negative Film, Kodak Portra 400
• Also used: Nikkor AI 35mm f/2 for bright moments, and Zenitar Fisheye 16mm for a broader perspective when things get interesting.

🎞️ Films sourced from Film Photography Store ²
📷 Camera and Nikkors sourced from eBay

Lab Scans

🧪 Developed and scanned by The Darkroom ² using the 'Enhanced' scan option (available choices: 'Standard', 'Enhanced', 'Super Scan').

The scans are saved as sRGB JPEGs and include a standard EXIF header with the following metadata in one APP1 marker:

• Image dimensions 3089×2048
• Scan date
• Embedded thumbnail: 160×120 pixels
• Resolution marker: Standard 72 DPI
• EXIF Version 2.20
• EXIF Tag 0x0131 ('Software'): EZ Controller 6.60.031 (160615)

The JPEG quality level corresponds to luminance and chrominance settings of 97, resulting in an average file size of approximately 5 MB.

Black&White Film, Ilford HP5 Plus 400

A promising start.

Color Slide Film, Kodak Ektachrome E100

Color Negative Film, Kodak Portra 400

^

And finally, these masterpieces boldly redefined blur and questionable exposure as forms of artistic expression. Some even chose to exist only halfway, lingering at the threshold of beginning or end.