Same Glass, Different Wavelength

"One has visible lights going through them, the other has electricity"

I was visiting the monthly flea-market at downtown Dallas when I noticed gentleman with a vintage van opened at the back and on the side.  Among the pile of boxes of the things that he's selling, I noticed several old radios and amplifiers. Having my camera in the bag, I thought to myself, hmm, those may make interesting props for studio shots; no harm taking some pictures of them.

So I went over and scan the table, then I noticed these little bitty boxes, obviously mass-manufactured from hundreds of different brands and models. That's neat, I thought.

At that moment the gentleman probably noticed my geeky-fascination look and said to me, "those are vacuum tubes".  I lift my head and noticed him smiling at me.  We then proceeded to talk about his hobby and passion, old tubes used to build or rebuild old equipments.  Pardon my very pedestrian description, I'm sure most of you know what I'm talking about and have better vocabulary to describe it :).

I have almost zero Electronics knowledge, but I did remember hearing in a college lecture about these glass tubes; enough to appreciate their versatility and their place in history.  I also know that they look very stylish and I'm making it a challenge to capture the vintage-ness. 

So I extended my hand, saying, I'm Will, I am an amateur photographer.  He said, I'm Jim, nice to meet you!  Then I asked him if I can compensate him in any way for letting me take a picture of his tubes and radios.  Jim just smiled and waved his hand, he said, "shoot away, don't sweat it".

That day I brought my Olympus 35 SP and a Nikon FM2, I snapped some photos, hoping that the 1.7 Zuiko on the Olympus and the 2.8 Nikkor can do the job.  Mind you, this flea-market happens under the highway bridge, the lighting is weird to say the least.  The yellowish street lights under the bridge are mixed with the morning sunlight.  I decided to save myself a lot of white-balance hassle so the pictures are going to be black and white for sure.



Suddenly Jim turned to me and said, "You like vintage photography? come
on back later, I think I have an old camera catalog from the 1800 for
you" then he started rummaging in his stack of crates full of old ads,
catalogs.  I smiled at his comment, said that I'll be back later, and
proceed to the rest of the flea market.

Later on, I came back and took some more pictures.

As I snapped these pictures, several others have gathered around the table and talked to Jim, some of them are obviously long-time acquaintances and fellow vacuum tube fans.  A guy, seeing that I'm taking pictures, opened a box and pull out a tube and stage it for me to take a picture of. He told me that even today, these vacuum tubes are still used to control switches within nuclear reactors because we couldn't use modern transistors or semiconductor chips because they will be fried. Wow!

Between shots, I suddenly realize, these are just like  film photography people, they have the same passion, same dedication, to a craft thought useless and lost to many.  Same glasses, different wavelength.


Finally Jim came over and told me that he couldn't find the camera catalog, he apologized. I said, you have given me enough. Just the chance to meet people like him, who are steadfast in their chosen passion, is encouraging to me. And that made my day.