Old video cameras, filming for the future

Real film, stop motion, film flicker, oh yeah!

For those that know me know I have been pointing a motion picture type camera at something for a very long time.  Starting with a GAF Super 8mm camera which my parents used to film themselves skiing in the 60's and 70's.  Little did I know that I was Filming for the future, a future hobby on Youtube.
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However, those types of cameras were not instant playback.  I remember the days when I would shoot on 8mm film, 3 minutes at a time, that was the max mount of time on a roll of 8mm film, and then have to wait 3 weeks to get my masterpiece back, only to find some over exposure or blurriness.

Enter the magnetic tape video recorder, or for most people, the VHS camcorder.  My first VHS camcorder was the Panasonic Palmcorder PV53 that used VHSC (VHS compact) this was a smaller, lighter video camera.  VHS Camcorders had been around for a good number of years before this thing came on the scene.  Early camcorders were expensive and bulky but this was a more compact unit and maybe that was the tipping point for my parents to pull the trigger and get one.  Even though prices were coming down from the $1500 price tags, this still probably set my folks back $700 and this is late 80's money.

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The first "video" camera I ever used. Panasonic PV53

Purchased through SoundTrack early 90's

2 day shipping no less!

This was liner editing on VHS

Anyways, as you can see it was purchased from the now defunct SoundTrack Electronics (also known as Pearse Electronics in other states, and later Ultimate Electronics).  This would become a Christmas present for the family, however I would get the most use out of it.  If you peruse my YOUTUBE CHANNEL and go back in the archives or follow my retro video series you can see a tiny bit of things that I pointed this camera at.  Back in the day I would do the two VCR method and use the left and right channel for different tracks of audio.  It was tedious! But it was the only way I could do rudimentary video editing. Below is an example of that.
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​In addition to filming things around the farm, I also pointed it at my motorcycles, which in turn mean it got operated in a very dirty environment most of its life.  After about 10 years of use the video quality degraded, presumably from dirt wearing on the drum and heads.  Leaving video that looked like this...

Y2K!
Enter the Cannon Optura 20, which was my first foray into digital video.  MiniDV tapes was the format, a more accurate and robust media.  It also recorded in then TV quality along with lots of manual adjustment features and stereo sound.  The downside, at the time, is I didn't own a computer.  I shot video with visions of being able to do non liner editing sometime in the future, just not at the time I had the camera.  So I shot gigabytes worth of video that I am still combing through. I would own this camera 5 years before getting a computer with enough horsepower (read: good video card for rendering) and a firewire/IEEE 1394 (this is even before USB 2.0) port to do the transfer.  Below is a good example of the types of video I shot with this camera.

My first "digital" video camera, using MiniDV tape

Look at all those accessories!

Check out those specs!

And now in the present day we have flash media, multiple CCD sensors, high def and even 4K video cameras that can capture faster and faster FPS for ultra slo-mo even the most amateur video maker (me) can capture video of nearly anything that tickles their fancy.  Couple that with more affordable computers that can do non-liner editing fairly easily, Youtube that make distribution of your video creation incredibly easy, and a viewer base hungry for on demand specialized content that they can search for.  All this I never could see coming.