The Good Old Days

Back then photography was really expensive; not the camera, not the lens; the film and processing. That cost discouraged the virtually free experimentation that we have now with digital equipment.
This is a Minolta XG2 which I bought second hand when film was all the rage. It had aperture priority exposure mode or full manual with the vague assistance of how the camera was wanting to meter the same situation. The lens I bought new. It is a Sigma 28 to 84 lens with maximum aperture varying with focal length from F3.5 wide to F4.5 at the long end. I was delighted with its versatility and results. The combination is a good bit lighter than a current Nikon SLR equivalent.
The yellow box is the really expensive bit. It holds 36 process paid Kodachrome 64 slides (64, ISO64). That’s pretty slow I know but I occasionally went for Kodachrome 25 too. It really demanded a tripod for every shot but the colour and detail was sublime. Kodachrome was a unique chemistry to that company. Other firms had slide film which you could buy PP or not; Agfa and notably Fuji had E6 type chemistry and even Kodak had a slide film of this type too. What do you do with your slides? You can preview them in the wee slide viewer in the picture with the benefit of sufficient magnification to detect early rejects but ultimately you needed to rig up the projector and screen and switch the lights off. If you ever wanted a print from a slide it was expensive too.
I didn’t get a sniff of fresh air today and it was dark by the time I looked out the window from the desk.