Your first "handycam" was a Sony BMC-110

Your first (and only) copy of Hollywood Fx was made by Sinergy Int´l for the Amiga platform.

Your first copy of After Effects was made by CoSa

Your first pro cam was a Panasonic WV-F250 (and you still have it for sentimental reasons)

Your first "real-time" NLE was a video toaster - flyer (and you still have it for the same reason as the Panny)

You know who Lee Stranahann is, because you have all his instructional videos.

You were allowed to use two 650 halogens at church when taping a wedding.

You say "taping" instead of "filming" when aquiring footage.

And a lot more.

Sad thing is that this is not one of those chain emails floating around. My wife asked me to clear some storage space in my office closet, and all these memories are now on cardboard boxes ready for the dumpster (that´s what I´ve told her)

Hey! I just found both my Umatic decks! In pristine condition... sheeeez!

Cheers!

Yeah, I keep moving my Umatic deck from this closet, to that one... 'just in case I need it'.

And I'm STILL shooting with a Panasonnic wv-F250 at one of the stations where I direct.

When you say 'old tart' I have to wonder - first camera I got my hands on was an Arri 2C, 'captured off a U-boat' I was told. We used it to make films on how wonderful nuclear power was. Funny how things come around..... Better go, my carer doesn't like me playing with the computer thing.

I'm just old enough to have learned to edit on 2 U-matic decks before they were used as boat anchors.

Waitaminute..... where'd I put my teeff?..... Ah, Now then.

Okay - started in Television in '74. In Houston Texas. We were phasing out film for news - but hadn't gotten the new Ikegami 'body pack' so-called portables. Station was still shooting on AMPEX two inch machines... BIG honking reels. I watched an engineer CUT and SPLICE a tape using iron filings to see the bands.... yeah.

We still had Scoopics and Eclairs, and a film room.

When we did remotes, we took the fricken Studio GE cameras... yeah, monster five tube babies. Shot football, baseball, basketball, World Team Tennis, in the Astrodome and HOUSTON WRESTLING in the Collesium with those monsters.

Okay, I gotta go yell at the kids...

"Hey you kids - GET OFF MY LAWN!!!"


Oh and Godfrey - It's OLD FART not OLD TART.... I think there might be a difference on this side of the pond...

Up here, it's an old faht. And yes, I resemble that remark. I'm just late to the party.

I edited my first paying gig on a U-matic when I was in college. I was as lost as an Easter Egg but I still got paid. I remember that I had to rent an editing bay by the hour somewhere south of Frisco.

I think you're officially an old fart when the equipment you fondly remember working with/on is referred to as "vintage"...

I think on this side of the pond the current term for an old "tart" is "cougar"... at least if my UK English - US English translator is working properly

You say "taping" instead of "filming" when aquiring footage.


Aw come on! Take that one off! :D Film is film.....

Top loading U-Matic players & recorders. You'll shed a tear when they ask for a dissolve (ABC Roll) 2600 series I think

Black & white viewfinders

Amiga Toaster was the bomb ( sexy chick transition doing the cart wheel)

betamax camera with the sl2000 recorder

ForA Character Generator

You can smoke inside the ballroom during a shoot and you use 1000 watts VTR lights as personal lighter.

Your first "handycam" was a Sony BMC-110

...

I guess I'm REALLY old, my first camera was 8mm film!!!


Bob Diaz

TK76
VO5800>RM440>VO5850
Panasonic 555

and you know what someone means when they say "crash edit."

Looks like I fall into Bill's age range :-)

A TK76, with a truck battery in an adapted esky (I think you guys call 'em coolers) for location power.

The days of walking past an edit suite as a U-Matic tape comes sailing out the door to smash into pieces against the opposite wall as the editor finally got fed up with the multiple drop-outs on the tape :-)

you're trying to run Premiere CS4 on Windows 95

Hi "Fellow Old F*rts"

My first Cam was a wind up 8mm film unit, with a bank of 4 flood lights that made the nite into day.

The first video recorder I used - you had to thread the tape - just like the old reel to reel audio recorders, a bit before video recorders came to the consumer market.

Harold

clamp lamps and 8 track will make a comeback, have no fear

I ran into a PBS crew shooting on HDV outside of Columbia college yesterday. I was shooting on my EX3 for a mini-documentary I'm working on for a friend's studio. It was just he and I (typical indie crew). I walked up to the guys (all over 50) and made the joke, "Your camera is bigger than my camera."

And none of them responded.

So, "You know you're young" when the union PBS guys don't talk to you.

(sad face)

You still remember how to load, set up and play a Quad.

You edited audio by cutting the tape with a razor blade.

3/4 top loads were the latest, greatest thing.

Your first Still Store could hold 24 SD images!

I still have a video instructional manual from part of my first video kit. The subtitle reads "Videotape: The Communications Medium of the 21st Century!"

Always get a chuckle out of that one.

I have on my shelf a collection of "SUPER 8 MAGAZINES" - In one of them somewhere is an article "Will Video Kill Super 8?" - The answer is a resounding "NO!"

I --honestly-- checked the bottom of a Pentax digital SLR (which I bought later on) to see if it would take a motor winder. Two seconds later, I face-palmed myself. Old film-photography habits die hard, which (in most cases) is a good thing.

Martin

When you find yourself telling the guys at a swish edit facility what all the knobs and switches do on the back of a 7630 u-matic deck, and you end up having to explain 'advance sync', 'color lock', and 'TBC'...

You used ENG cameras where the deck was seperate from the camera. Connected by an XLR cable.

Finally getting the job you always wanted is considered by others to be a "Career Change"

- You know what Fat Angus does (copper bars mostly - anything else risked a guru meditation error)
- You still have the 8" hard sectored floppies for your Aston 3
- You see 151200 think 'what a nice shade of yellow'
- You wonder if the BVE-3000 could be converted to USB
- You miss the 4 little mono CRT monitors in your favourite NLE
- You'd choose Paintbox over Photoshop
- You know how to Quantel out the boom shadow
- You really want an ADO2000 plug-in for FCP

... Ah, but the nurse says I must rest now...

My "state of the art" NLE Amiga Toaster Flyer required 2 SCSI video hard drives. I paid $10,000USD for two 9gig drives.

I'm probably the ONLY digital SLR photographer that carries a Pentax Spotmeter V and a Sekonic L meter, and actually USES them (the DSLR rarely leaves the full manual setting).

I admit it -- I'm old school. I learned my still-photo craft shooting Kodachrome II, with a razor-thin margin for exposure error, and you never knew if you actually got a good shot until days later when your slides got back form Kodak. Rather than shoot loads of digital frames or individually checking the LCD on the camera, I meter, compose, take MAYBE one shot, then move on.

Martin

I can remember lugging around a Nagra "portable" reel to reel audio recording unit.

I could have taken a cassette based "SuperScope" recorder which was much lighter, but I stuck with the Nagra (and its full load of D cell batteries) for the superior recording quality.

Andrew

I guess I'm REALLY old, my first camera was 8mm film!!!


Bob Diaz

In that case I guess I should probably call in the carpenter because my first camera was a hand-cranked 9.5mm Pathe Baby - and I still have it in a display case alongside a page from a French magazine of 1928 carrying a full page ad for the damn thing!

.. you know what a 3" IO is (and have used one) ..

.. you still think the quality of 2" tape beats the pants off all these new-fangled formats ..

When your first camera was a Quaker Oatmeal Box Pinhole camera.

I guess I'm REALLY old, my first camera was 8mm film!!!

So was mine. But that does not make me old. It's just that the person who started this thread must be very young!!!

I still own a Nagra IV L and have not upgraded from the Sony TCD10Pro2.

There is a sound guy here who last year, still used a Nagra 4.2 to feed his mikes through to a modern digital disk recorder and may still be doing so.

Miro 30 anyone?