Deciding on buying a camera

[Tdarcos]

I happened to stop in Target the other day in order to buy some food, and as it turned out I also went over to the electronics section and took a look at the cameras they had. I don't know why I did; I already have two, the DXC, tripod mountable one I bought at Micro Center about a year ago, and the Kodak that isn't mountable that I bought about four months ago at Big Lots.

I would have three except that the other video camera I owned, a really, really nice one that I bought for about $70 and had a list price of about $125, disappeared. I don't know if I lost it outside somewhere, but as I noted in a previous posting, that camera and a package of drafting pencils - that I never take out of this room - disappeared a few months ago, never to be seen again.

Now, when I say "camera" I always mean a video camera, as the current video camera crop, since they produce digital files on media instead of film, also do stills.

So I saw them and I decided I would buy one as there were a couple that were fairly inexpensive.

There were a selection of about 4 from which I was considering. One was a little pricey at $99, and it apparently does 3D. Well, first it was a bit expensive, and second, since I'm blind in one eye I can't see 3D and therefore wouldn't know if I'm shooting anything or if it looked right.

So they had a couple of Vivitar cameras. One was $29, did regular and HD, had a 1.8" video screen, does snapshots, it's blue and also records audio. Uses 3 AAA batteries. The other was $39, has a 2" video screen, is a bit larger, is red, and uses 2 AA batteries.

Also, both have a hole in the bottom of the camera which was an important point. Now, if you're not much of a photographer, you might wonder why that would be important. Well, that's the screw hole you use to mount the camera on a tripod, important if you want to take video or pictures while doing something else.

Both have a hand strap so you can hold it in your hand when filming, both use SD cards, both have the battery compartment under the hand strap, has a slot for the memory card, and a rear slot cover for the mini-USB connector as well as the video output socket.

I wasn't sure which one to get, so I bought both, plus I bought the cheapest memory cards Target had, which were the 2 gb Kodak SD cards at $12 each. Plus I had to pick up some AA rechargeable batteries. So I ended up putting about $90 extra on my credit card. So I now have four video cameras, three which can use tripods and one that doesn't. As it turns out, I have two full-size (extendable up to 48") tripods which I got a while ago and I have one of the 6" desktop tripods.

Now all I have to do is find something I want to film where I need to use more than one camera at once. Since I'm doing a lot of shitting lately (if you read my latest post on Caltrops), I could do an HD video of that for YouPorn, or I could film myself doing another cooking video.

Maybe I should do a video about how to do video.

Now something weird. Each camera came with a video cable and a miniature USB cable. I can only find one of them. The other USB cable, the warranty cards, the instruction manuals and the other video cable all vanished. In a 10x20' room. I can't figure out how. I suspect I need to do some spring cleaning again and check for missing things.