8mm Memories

I decided it was time to dust off the old 8mm video camera I've had since somewhere around 2000. I knew it would need cleaned up, aired out and charged before I could do anything with it.  So I plugged it in and let it charge up.  Then I decided I might as well see what was on the tapes that were in the case with it.

One of them is from 2006, which might have been the last time the camera was even used.  It was a video taken at our annual trip to the North Carolina mountains to attend the World Honda Chopper Meet.  Primarily it was just a bunch of shaky out of focus drunk nonsense filmed over the duration of the Midnight Auction.  I only watched a few minutes at the very beginning and decided that it would be best enjoyed with the hubby at another time as it probably contains some good laughs.

Then I stuck in tape number two.  It was labeled "Spring Trips 2003".  I popped in the tape, rewound it and then pressed play.  It began with myself and my friends Selena and Joey having a picnic at a park here in WV.  It then moved to my sister and I at the St. Louis Arch in Missouri. After that there was a few moments of myself playing with video settings being incredibly nerdy and weird (ya know my normal self).

After that there was a thunderstorm I enjoyed from a hotel room in Lowell, Indiana. From there it was a few brief clippets of me doing random things, including hanging out with friends Steve and Ronda in Omaha and also a snip of me admitting to heading out for a tornado hunt in Iowa.  I remember that trip, I never got to see anything but torrential rainfall and the flooded parking lot of an Iowa rest area.

Next was my trip to Alabama/Florida with my friends Erin and Kevin.  We went to Panama City, FL and spent a day at the beach and then I took film, rather dizzying film, of the drive back from Florida to Erin's hometown of Slocum, AL.  Next was a good bit of watching Kevin ride his dirt bike at a track nearby.

Up next several more days of fun with my friends Selena and Joey starting with the 4th of July cookout and fireworks and ending with a play day at the lake.

It's so funny to watch the videos (even though I had to take frequent breaks because my horribly unsteady film hand kept making me nauseous) and see how weird and nerdy I was just 10 years ago.  Although, honestly, not that much has changed.  I'm still pretty weird and nerdy.  It's just how I roll.

I know I have a boat load of other videos somewhere in the house.  Most of them films of trips and such that my ex-husband and I took.  I also found a video I had no idea was even in my possession that my current hubby took while at his last job.  I forgot he used to use my camera from time to time on jobs he did as an audio technician.  It wasn't anything exciting.  Some bit about gambling problems and getting help. 

I have to say that while I'm excited to use the camera to capture moments of my life as it is now, I'm kind of sad that the quality of the video is gonna suck so badly compared to today's technology.  I mean, yeah it's only a little over 13 years old, but so much has changed in that time with video capturing.  I mean, you can take high quality digital video from a device just about the size of a credit card today. 

I suppose I could forgo using the 8mm and just use the video setting on my digital point-and-shoot camera or my iPhone, but that's just not nearly as fun. 

Comments

some asian guy said…
ship some off and transfer them to digital before baby arrives. that way she can watch them without the camera in a few years.

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