Where Can I Take My Camera To Get Repaired Near Me?

Rudy, 43, checks a analog camera lens in Harco building in Pasar Baru area in Central Jakarta. (JG Photo/Yudha Baskoro)

Analog Camera Repairman Goes Online to Beat Pandemic Slump

BY :YUDHA BASKORO

NOVEMBER 03, 2020

Jakarta. As one of the last surviving analog camera technicians in the age of digital photography, Rudy, 43, is not a stranger to adapting to the changing times. But, the Covid-19 pandemic has proven to be a challenge for his limit.

"Since 2012, this is the first time I got almost no consumers," Rudy said.

The Harco building in Pasar Baru, Central Jakarta, where Rudi opens, shop has been closed several times since March after the building management found traders who had tested positive for Covid-19. Every trader in the traditional market complex experienced an increasingly more devastating impact each time the building is closed. Many of Rudy's peers in the building went bankrupt.

Rudy, who started his analog camera repairing career in 1992, said the government's building closures and other restrictions to curb the coronavirus had barred his regular customers from coming to his shops.

"The PSBB also give me a headache at first," Rudy said, referring to Jakarta's large scale social restrictions by its acronym.

"Then I contemplate for a while, why don't I tell the customers to send their camera to my home," Rudy said.

Currently, he continues to open a shop in Pasar Baru, but he also runs an online analog camera servicing business in some marketplace, such as TokoPedia and Bukalapak. He also create a Facebook page and Instagram account to reach more customers.

For him, the job was too precious to be abandoned now. "There is no school for this kind of camera service, and very few repairmen can do it today," Rudy said.

The job also embedded him with a value that Rudy now holds for the rest of his life. "Basically, don't buy new things if the damaged ones can be repaired and return to normal," Rudy said.

"Nowadays, there is too much garbage because we humans are lazy to repair damaged goods. Therefore, I have to survive," he said.