Still Miss my Camera

This is the Konica Minolta DiMAGE X50, which was a steal for an ultracompact at the time, and was very fast to boot. In insufficient light, the picture quality was pretty bad, with a lot of noise, but this was typical of ultracompacts at the time. It did take some pretty good shots when the conditions were right though. I really miss it. Okay, it's sitting right in front of me, but I think I left the charger at home my mother's house.

Looking back at previous posts, the picture quality was something I took for granted. Of course, many shots could have been better with maybe a little more sunlight and a tripod, but I was lazy.

Anyway, I noticed there was a jack on it, labeled 4.7V DC.

It's pretty hard to see it in this photo, but even if it were working I wouldn't be able to take this shot with the X50 anyway.

So I thought, hmmm 4.7 volts, that's pretty close to 5 volts, which is the USB standard. "Maybe I could charge this thing from a USB port!" I thought.

So I went down to the dollar store and then Radioshack and made this:

Well, it didn't charge anything. While hooked up, the camera tried to start, but couldn't. After being connected a while, and then disconnecting, it wouldn't even try to power up. After some googling, it turns out that jack was for an AC adaptor to use the camera off of instead of batteries. It didn't charge the battery. And apparently the USB standard of 100 mA wasn't enough for the camera to run off of (the USB standard allows up to 500 mA, but it must request it from the computer, which may or may not grant the device such current, depending upon the power settings).

I really should have done a little more research before hurrying out the door to Radioshack again. At least this time I saw someone I don't normally see working, all the other times I felt like such a regular.