Digital Arrives

All of a sudden it’s 1998. I’ve been retired five years in order to take care of an elderly Mom who was blinded playing doctors.    Dorothy has decided to hang around, for which I’m very happy.   We get away for a week vacation where I take my film point and shoot.  Dorothy shoots with a nice bag of modern Canon stuff,  a lot of automation now, amazing how things have progressed.  Clinton has been president and running things for a while, so the economy is booming.  I’m flush with cash, so drop five grand for some digital video related stuff.   My work life has been centered around making my stock portfolio grow with a laptop to deal stocks on line.   I find it’s unsuitable for serious video editing.   Another five grand for computing power.  Hey this video stuff is fun.  I have a new grandson, so have the perfect subject matter and get plenty of practice shooting him.  The family has become closer and they gather here regularly.  Even the X seems to like coming over. We are getting along better, which is good for the kids.   A new world has arrived.   I order a pickup equipped to haul a 5th wheeler and plan to tour the country shooting calendar stuff again, supplementing it with travel videos.  Dorothy Mom and myself.  Then everything changes.  Mom passes away from lung cancer, and I walk around in a daze for a while.  I have nothing tying me down.  I’m foot lose and fancy free for the first time since they drug me out of my sandbox at 5 years old and made me go to school every day.  My winter place in Florida is in need of some good construction.   I’m shopping for the perfect 5th wheel trailer.

But then wait a minute, I’ve also been the chief cook, baby sitter and bottle washer for the new grandson.  Jacob..   His Mom has no intention of letting me wander around the country with him, and I really enjoy watching the little guy grow.  My loyalties are becoming split.  Do I really want to take off wandering around the country.  The other grandkids came along while I was working, this one has been my constant companion for two years now.  Something about cleaning the crap off a babies rear end that makes you appreciate them more.  And my dog would probably get bitten by a snake, so maybe I better stay home and teach Jake how to fish.   And Dorothy’s dad now needs her here so maybe I better hang around a while.  I would miss her a lot.

Now I need something to do on weekends and evenings, and the video is it.  I take 1.2 megabit digital pictures with the video camera part, that seems fun.  I add Photoshop to my toys.   My digital image knowledge is severely lacking.  An on line friend is playing with the Nikon CP990.  I add one of those thinking it would make much better title screens, and it’s off to the digital races.  I can make photos without even bothering with film now.  This is really kinda cool.  I’ve gotten pretty good at the video editing stuff, the computer is now decked out with a Pinnacle card to route my video output from the Adobe Premier editor to a larger monitor and sound system.  Video’s are built for VHS tape.  I get a DVD burner..  My Pinnacle card has a processor that renders MPEG-2 files faster than the computer’s CPU can.   Time to sell a few cable TV commercials.  A 30 second spot will make a couple grand for a simple easy production.  I’m shot down.  The cable companies all have contracts with their own processors.  I can make a commercial cheaper than they will, but they charge a lot more to run mine than they do their own contract produced jobs.

Nikon has come up with an 8 megapixel camera, a CP 8700, I fall for it and buy further into the digital age.  It still allows me to shoot from a tiny little waist level finder, sort of like the twist body on the CP990.  And it is 8 megapixels  instead of the 3.2 of the 990.   I soon learn to hate that camera as the poorest designed piece of crap ever.  I love the idea of point and shoot.  But I have to use the damn thing as though I was back to shooting with the old F Model SLR things.   Sticking a camera on my face destroys the ability to anticipate the action, and you had better be good at that with this thing.  Buttons are illogically laid out right where you place your hands to hold the thing, so you are continually changing something you didn’t want to change.  Waht a piece of shit this is.  Most annoying aspect of all is a stupid bright red/orange light that lights up everything to focus.  Even in bright sunlight.   The Nikon engineers have run their heads up their rear end on this camera and have lost all track of what a person needs to take a picture.  Nikon is making fluff.  I go back to shooting with the old CP990.    I could rant for several pages about how my opinion of Nikon has now fallen.

Instead I’ll tell you what makes me happy now.   An old friend from the Fido Photo Echo ask me what do I think of the Canon A620 camera.  I say never heard of it so, look it up online.  DPreview is gushing all over themselves about its qualities.     I say what the heck, and buy one.  In the first day I realize this is the camera I wanted Nikon to make for me.   Sharp images, simple menues, good feel in the hand, simple uncluttered menus, everything I want in a camera.   And at only $300 a quarter of what I paid for that Nikon abortion that’s now laying in the closet unused.  You can see some of the pictures taken with it in my later photo pages.   A year later, Canon comes up with an A650 model and I buy that. My gosh I see I should have been using Canon equipment all along.  Here I’m holding a camera in my hands that feels as comfortable and natural to use as my old Leica.  The quality of the images are on par with the old Leica.  This is a fine camera. and this is the end of Part 3.   I’m playing online and having fun again.  I don’t think there will be a part 4, but you never can tell.  It has been for the most part a fun trip..