the r-space
6 - Smartphones and why camcorders are still cool
1/02/2025 at 10:17
"Why? Smartphones do everything you want all in a small form-factor and are much better featured!!!"
To put it simply, I'm really bored of smartphones. I've used the same iPhone SE (2nd Generation) since I got it in 2021 and of course it works perfectly fine. But you know what I don't like? The fact that it caused me (and a lot of people) to take everything we have for granted.
I got my first iPod Classic in 2022 (a 6th generation one) with the full intention of listening to all my music on it, and I'm pretty sure once I realised how good using an iPod was there was no going back. Fast forward a bit and now I own 5 of them*. Go figure. And it didn't stop with iPods. I soon found myself getting my first Nokia, an E61 (I was doing it before it became an internet trend) which I used for a year in place of my iPhone. Over time I saw my collection expanding and I began to appreciate the absence of my smartphone. It's actually fun to break down all the features of a phone and use a specific device for each purpose, whether it be listening to music, taking pictures or playing games.
Anyway, I'm kind of rambling about my collection again (of which I will showcase at some point) and at this point you're probably wondering why I even decided to name this blog post in such a way. I probably should have named it 'Smartphones and why they're uncool' or something, heh... Nevermind.
Due to the fact smartphones have super high-quality cameras and are 'affordable' (depending on who you ask), the average person doesn't really want to buy dedicated cameras for either photos or video. Phones have had cameras for a while, don't get me wrong. My Nokia 6820 has a 0.1 megapixel (320x320) camera on it and the phone itself was made in 2003. The value and advantage of having a digital camera on your phone which also fits in your pocket and could send the photos to other people (though multimedia messaging was pretty expensive) couldn't be understated in 2003. But put yourself in someone's shoes in the year 2003 at a family occasion or birthday. Do you really want to save a memory in a 320x320 resolution as a JPEG which couldn't be easily archived on a computer? And what if you wanted to take a video instead of just a few pictures?
Enter the camcorder. Initially home video would be done mostly through 8mm film cameras (of which the video could only be shown on a dedicated projector) and the film itself was expensive. But once videotape became popular, and both camera technology and VCR technology became smaller, eventually companies were able to combine VCRs and a camera into one body, which became the 'camcorder' (Technology Connections did a great video on one of the first camcorders, the Sony Betamovie) and soon camcorders saw common use in households for capture of video.
I LOVE camcorders. A dedicated video capture device with tactile buttons and ergonomics that way outcompete the boring slab that is the smartphone. My only camcorder in my possession is my Canon MD101, which uses miniDV cassettes and I. LOVE IT.
There's something special about taking videos on a
dedicated device, (shooting in 4:3 aspect ratio adds to it greatly for me) and
just the tactile nature of inserting and handling cassettes really adds a whole
new perspective on shooting video.
Anyway this blog post is getting pretty long so I'll wrap it up here and
probably make a follow-up one.
Happy Saturday!
(Edit 4/02/2025: I'm playing around with line spacing (single line to 1.2 lines) to make text more readable)