Video

I got a nice Canon videocam for an advance Christmas present. Works fine, the 85-page manual is kind of intimidating but like most good modern personal gadgets, it has a mode where you point and shoot and it does the right thing.

I feel uninspired though; with a still camera, and if in a place where there are pictures to be taken, I see lots of opportunities to take pictures, and then later I find lots of opportunities to look at pictures.

With the video I don't know; film requires a story it seems or at least a narrative, and there is a mountain of technique to climb. Also I'm pretty sure the times when I'm going to want to queue up video and watch it on TV are going to be pretty rare.

Still, as they say, it will be nice in later years to watch my child romp aged 3-and-a-half. Morbidly I flash through the "what if he comes down with a fatal disease and in 12 months the film is all there is?" scenario... it seems almost implicit in the work of staging and filming a little boy running round.