Mothballed?

As of 2006, this site has been mothballed. That means it's no longer actively maintained and will stay frozen, more or less, in its current state. I may add corrections and perhaps even some new content, but don't expect anything substantial.

What do I mean by mothballing? I did the following:

• Editing some articles to make them a smoother read and also to include information that I somehow never got round to including.
• Deleted some cruddy articles, like my long, obvious, content-less essay about the Soviet Union, the article about a Kraftwerk album that had no business being on my camera site, some crazy articles like the 'introduction to KMZ', and so on. They won't be missed. The reason is that I want to keep the site focused on its prime content, camera reviews, rather than on all this ephemera that I don't really know a lot about. The whole thing was getting a bit long in the tooth.
• Deleted all explicit external links to other websites from the link boxes underneath pages, and sometimes in the articles. The ones that serve some sort of point are maintained for textual integrity. The reasons for this cleanup are link rot and bad screening: most of the links I gathered are long dead anyway, and I added most in the spur of the moment of writing an article, whilst never considering more worthwhile ones. Link collections used to have a function when search engines were mediocre, but today I think they're obsolete.
• Reformatting some pages, cleaning up the underlying code, making the transition from HTML4 and a table-based lay-out to XHTML, CSS and SSI. Then moving the whole thing to my Linux box. Quite an operation actually, and no fun.
• Writing this article and adding the notification boxes everywhere.

Alfred's Camera Page started off when I was fifteen or sixteen, in 1997 or 1998, I don't remember exactly. I wanted to have a website but did not believe in vanity content. Looking for a subject, my then small collection of Soviet-Russian photo gear came to mind, because at that time there was almost no information online about the kind of cameras I liked to collect. I started off small but put a lot of work into it eventually, and over the years got back a lot of heartening response. I corresponded with many people, from fellow collectors to retailers to people in the exUSSR who were connected to optical plants, and learned a lot, far beyond Russian cameras. I heard many great stories, made many worthwhile improvements to my site and also many friendships. This whole site and everything that surrounded it has been a very valuable and important experience to me.

But now it's 2006, I'm 23 years old, I'm not in high school any more, and my interests have shifted to other things. I've all but given up photography, and along with that went my interest for Russian cameras. Though I still warm to the subject, it doesn't appeal to me in the same magical way as it did five or six years ago, and my collector's discipline reflects it: I haven't made a significant purchase in maybe three years. Even longer ago is the time when I actually followed what was going on in the Russian camera scene. I was never well connected or informed to start with, but I get the impression that the scene has grown and matured far beyond what it was in 2000, and here I am, left behind.

So forgive me, but I'm leaving the field for the people who care to stay current.

This leaves this site, practically unmaintained since 2002, now officially frozen. It may stay part of the Internet for many years to come, but for me the book is closed.

Alfred Klomp, January 2006.