Anyway, What got me into movies was is this CAMERA shown below:
There was a time when the way to film your family or your many adventures in your backyard or bedroom where you had to lug this thing around with your right hand.
This is the camera that introduced me to the realm of filmmaking in the long run.
This Sony Handycam Camcorder does what it does: It records movies on Magnetic Video Tape but for those who never touched this thing before, it records on Sony's Proprietary Tape Format known as High8 tape.
I seriously got tons of tapes from my Childhood but at the moment, I'm currently lacking a way to transfer the media to a digital source.
I mean, I do have the USB Capture hardware to get the footage but at the moment, I have no working camera to transfer the footage.
But still, I can't stress how this camera has brought nostalgia to many people who shot footage using cameras like this.
The camera above is actually my most preferred of them all.
The camera shown below was the one I used most but...
But still, I have many scenes that were shot with this camera and I can't stress enough the memories of of shooting movies on it.
Most of my shots were pretty experimental, often it was me pointing at random things, messing with the effects, etc.
When YouTube showed up in February 2005, People often had to choose between filming with their Handycams or a digital camera.
Some people like the Higher Fidelity of 480i Video footage better so they use Handycam Camcorders but how do they get the footage into their computer?
They use things like capture cards or pray that their camcorder has USB or Firewire Support.
Other's however had to contend with Cameras like this Olympus FE-20 shown below.
Why? Because it was easier to transfer the footage via USB or SD Card Readers built into your desktop, Laptop, or with a USB SD CARD Reader.
This camera shown above has given me some memories but It's more of a mixed opinion in my part.
I find that the specs often shown on the Box or the camera itself doesn't lend itself to quality and as far as I know, the specs are bogus for Video.
As it turns out, the high megapixel count often advertised on these cameras are just for the still photography feature so when you take Pictures with these cameras, the quality is high but the movie mode is crippled by a longshot.
Part of the problem with these Early Digital Cameras for video is due to the amount of money that be spent on the tech.
For a lot of these cameras, the more compact the camera, the more crappy the footage will be.
On many of these compact digital cameras, Video Mode is a crapshoot. You have to find the right resolution or the right settings to get the best picture and framerate you want.
And that's the least of the problems. Many Digital Cameras have shitty microphones so when you view your video footage, the sound sounds like a blanket or towel as covering up the mic but that's how shitty these microphones were.....
And the shitty microphone quality was exacerbated when taken into some editing software..... at least if WINDOWS MOVIE MAKER is an indication. I remember hearing the muffledness of sound on my OLYMPUS FE-20 camera suddenly turning into NAILS ON CHALKBOARD sound quality when I edited the footage on MOVIE MAKER.
And movie mode often messes with other things such as the Zoom.
My OLYMPUS was notorious for disabling OPTICAL ZOOM whenever I shoot footage with sound but if I disable audio, I regain Optical Zoom.....
IAN THAYER, aka TWEETERMAN287, had a Samsung Camera that kept Optical Zoom when recording video but every time he used the zoom, the sound mutes every time.
And that was for his 2008 videos. By December of that year, he switched to a better CANON FS100 camcorder and used that for a better part of 2009 until he again upgraded to a CANON VIXIA just so he can be part of the HD Video boom of the 2010s.
If you wanted to have great footage without compromised functionality or a crippled microphone, you had to invest in a Digital Camcorder or a professional Camera like this one shown below.
The problem however is the cost.
If you look up the cost of these Professional Cameras, you'll be shocked to see how UBER-EXPENSIVE many of these cameras can be.
I understand that some of my readers who read this, especially those born after 2000 will be confused about Sony Handycams or Olympus Cameras I've talked about but that's either they never grew up with them or they have used them in childhood but they've forgotten about the era of cheap dedicated cameras or phones with low-quality cameras.
But yes, these cameras existed and yes, I've also dealt with the older cellphones and older smartphones where the cameras were even crappier than their dedicated counterparts.
To give you an idea of the RAZR's photo quality, here's a photo taken on this RAZR featuring my previous cat PEACH.
My mother later got an LG Neon Slider Phone with a slightly better camera but it's quality was still miles behind the newest iPhone of 2010 which by that point was the iPhone 4.
Anyway, here's are two photos of my mood taken with my mother's LG Neon.
Optimistic Dan Circa 2010
Pessimistic Dan Circa 2011
My very first Smartphone I had with a proper and dedicated Phone Plan was this baby shown below.
The phone may be considered mediocre even by early-2010s standards but it had a better camera and better microphone than most of it's cheaper competition. maybe even better than most Androids back in the day but still underpowered compared to most iPhones back in the day.
I wish I had some photos to show off but many of them were store in a 2GB Micro SD Card that I've long since lost so I have very little to show off.
I do have some videos but I'll leave that for a future post.
But My Nokia had a better microphone than my next Phone which was this baby shown below.
My Second Phone was this NEXUS 5 from Google and so far is my only ANDROID Phone I've owned since.
It also was my first proper SMARTPHONE.... as in my first phone to have apps that are standardized by release platform.
Yes, I did use this Phone as my Camera and while the Video Quality was ok, the Microphone however deteriorated.
Since December 2015, I've been using iPhones ever since.
That phone above which is an iPhone 5S was my first iPhone I had. Amazing how my phone possession has evolved since then and now I have an iPhone 15 Pro.
So why are compact digital cameras no longer available in stores today? Because of Smartphones like the iPhone and Android Phones like the Samsung Galaxies or Google Pixels.
The tech has evolved so drastically that it became redundant to have devices that are for dedicated functions so it caused many a Phone User to just buy a Phone with a decent camera via a dedicated plan like that of AT&T, SPRINT, VERIZON, TELUS, ROGERS, TELCEL, VOTAPHONE, etc.
Dedicated Digital Cameras thankfully are not dead.. yet.... just crazy expensive because those manufacturers know that those cameras are desired by people who feel no matter how high-res of a camera their phones have, the camera CMOS in a dedicated Camera offer superior results when compared to your phone's camera.
For me, While I like the Camera on my Various iPhones, I still prefer to have pictures and videos shot on a dedicated camera like those of CANON or LUMIX but for now, I'm stuck with my iPhone until I save enough money to buy a Lumix Camera.
On a side note, Yes I set my Videos to 60FPS.... While I could shoot exclusively in 4K and 60fps, my iPhone uses up a lot of storage for that and the footage uses a proprietary format that isn't MOV or MP4 friendly for most people who use older operating systems.
Although I use Windows 11 Pro as my Operating system in my PC, I still prefer the MOV or MP4 file formats for video since they're the most efficient formats for my footage. Especially on my MSI Laptop which is stuck with Windows 10 due to it's KABY LAKE Intel CPU.
This isn't a Maverick Quickie but this post did sort of deviate from my Animation Knowledge I usually post. I had many posts that were in the works but so far, I'm suffering writers block and writer's remorse so many of my posts are in the backburner until I feel my posts are ready so that's why I made this post dedicated to Phones and Cameras because I'm bored and rather nostalgic....
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