Video cameras

I don't remember from when and what our first video camera was. I think that my father bought something in the mid-1990s, but I may be wrong. I do remember that I took a camera with me to Gravesend at the beginning of August 1998 in order to have me filmed giving presents to members of Fairport Convention, but I don't remember whether that was our first camera. What I do remember is that I dropped the camera on the ground, thus ruining it. A few weeks later, I bought another camera; this was the type that recorded directly onto a JVC cassette.

When we were in America in 2005, my first purchase was one of the new digital cameras that had a separate screen so that I could see what was being recorded. This camera used DV cassettes; I didn't have a way to digitise their contents so I had to record on JVC cassette the images while they were being played through the video player and television. 

This camera accompanied us on many trips, but in June 2013, when we were about to travel to Barcelona, London and Edinburgh, I wrote¹ I needed to buy mini DV cassettes for our camcorder. No shop in the vicinity had such cassettes and it seems that no one in Israel sells them anymore. I could buy via eBay but it's a bit late for that now. So my wife bought a new camcorder yesterday afternoon with a built in memory card - Panasonic SDR S70. I intend to spend the flight learning how to use the new camera. Hopefully in London I will be able to buy an extra battery and charger for the camera.

That camera was very good, and obviously I had no problems in transferring what I had filmed to the computer for editing, as everything was on the memory card. Unfortunately, a year ago I had to write² ... but more inconveniently, I discovered that my video camera had also died. I had used it a little bit during a walk, but now I couldn't even turn it on. I don't think that this is due to a battery failing, as the camera won't work even when connected to its charger. At least no filmed videos will have been lost as what is filmed is stored on an SD card, but it is very annoying. The importance of my mobile phone as camera now assumes a greater importance.

I hadn't bother buying a new video camera until recently when it became clear that we would be going on holiday in September. I originally ordered a really cheap video camera from Temu; this was powered by battery, but I couldn't insert the AA batteries in a satisfactory manner to turn the camera on. Into the bin it went. After this I ordered another, more expensive but still relatively cheap camera that arrived about a week ago. This seems to be an updated version of the Panasonic: instead of batteries, it is powered by an internal battery that is charged by USB. It will help that I have an external battery³ with a USB plug that I can connect directly to the camera, so I'll carry this around as a spare. More importantly, the annoying four-way menu button of the Panasonic has been replaced with a saner arrangement, although this took me some time to figure out. The camera came with a 32GB SD disk so I don't even have to buy one. There is no lens cap, not that this is important.

By coincidence, the camera arrived the same day as my computer technician posted a request on the kibbutz notice board for a video camera that records onto DV cassettes. I told him that I have one, dug it out and passed it on to him. When I was at his house the other night, watching him repair my mobile computer, he told me that the camera was very useful and that he managed to digitise his cassettes. He offered to do the same for mine, so now I have to find the cassettes from our American trip, but also from those that followed (at least Switzerland and Prague).

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[1] 588
[2] 1750
[3] 1787

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This day in blog history:

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748	07/08/2014	Blackberries (or are they blackcurrants?)	Health, Food science
967	07/08/2016	Turning a corner?	Health, Personal, CPAP