Banzai Batteries!

I have a strong suspicion that a couple of the camera batteries that power my Fujifilm X 100 camera have gone to join the ancestors. The battery charger accepts them, turns on a green light, but does not charge anything. I have been told that this is the result of letting them go flat for too long, and that the charger does not recognise them as needing its help. There may be some kind of Frankensteinian procedure that will restart them, but we will need to wait for a thunderstorm and then we strap the batteries onto a wooden table in a locked laboratory...I am Igor to see what happens... On a different circuit entirely, here is a battery that Ernest found in a film camera that had been put in for repairs. One of the later-model cameras with an electronic shutter, it relies upon a small cylindrical cell to power the timing circuit. Accurate and quiet, but still dependent on that battery...and what do you do when you are in the bush, so to speak, and there are no specialised camera battery shops about? You take a leaf from the book of the bush mechanics and improvise, that's what you do. Four batteries for the power and a nut for the connection. Electricity is electricity, and if the numbers are right, the shutter mechanism is not fussy. Our hats are off to the shooter and his ingenious nature. That's photography for Australian men, that is. That's the guy I want on my team. And at least it beats the pedal-powered portable studio strobe system. Or the steam zoom lens where you had to fire the boiler with kindling for half an hour to get it to f:11. More electrickery tomorrow.