Rise of the Machine.

Now when I was younger, oh so much younger than today, I never needed anybody’s help in the techno way. But now those days have gone, I’m not so tec-aware, now I find I’ve changed my mind and opened up the home tutorial, self-help, idiots guide to technology!

I always had, as far as I could afford, the latest stuff, sometimes it was the right choice, others not so much. I had super 8 when most people were still using standard 8, very cool and in the game, even though splicing was a ‘mare and lining up sprockets very time consuming, until the. Video camera came along and I moved to that.

I also had the disc camera, and an 8 track tape player, well you can’t win them all!!!

There was something to be said for the shortness of the old fashioned film, you really planned your shots, so as not to waste the film as once it was taken, like the old 35mm still camera, it couldn’t be erased and reused. However if you planned and timed your shots and made good use of the zoom, when it came down to running it through the editing machine and cutting and splicing, if you were lucky, there were only a few discarded frames of film on the floor.

I moved from film to video tape quite easily and loved the fact that there was now sound as well as the moving image and the length of filming time was an amazing transformation, but the best was the ability to play it back straight away and erase what you didn’t want, you could in effect edit as you filmed. My old video camera has been out of operation for a while now and I haven’t even used the video function on my digital camera, except by accident, and anyway I still haven’t figured out how to play it back, I really just haven’t kept up with the times!

Time has moved on again and the video tape has been replaced by tiny little memory cards, all very confusing and way out of my league, I mean let’s be honest I wouldn’t be doing this blog if my son hadn’t set it up for me and patiently explained what buttons to press!

But now that there is about to be a new babe in the family I thought I’d better pick up one of the new digital camcorders and try to overcome this late onset technophobia.

I may need therapeutic intervention, I’ll let you know!!