Good bye old friend
Today was a pretty sad day for me.
I said good bye to my MiniDV camera, a Canon ZR200 I’ve had for close to 4 years now. I purchased the camcorder back in the heyday of Videozine when I was actually editing videos in my basement. My ZR200 was my inexpensive playback and record deck for MiniDV. It was a great way to capture MiniDV footage, plus I got a lot of mileage out of it creating videos. My daughter also got a lot of mileage out of it shooting videos with her friends.
It was inevitable that one day it would break down and yesterday was the day. From the autopsy I performed this morning to extricate the tape still jammed inside, it appears a small sliver of plastic jammed the gears on the loading mechanism. The tape never stood a chance.
My older daughter was using it to shoot a video with some friends when it died. She came home late last night in tears that her project was ruined.
In my hour of need (like 11:30 lat night) I turned to my Social Network to see if anyone could help out with a camera I could borrow. My former College roommate came to the rescue with the gracious use of his camera. I also ran an ad on Craigslist asking if anyone could help out with transferring the tape to a video file.
I received a reply to my Craigslist ad this morning. The gent said he could also repair the tape for me, so all was not lost. I just dropped off the tape and it seems he may be able to rescue the day after all.
But my faithful friend is now a disassembled hunk of junk. However, instead of filing it away in a box to be repaired at some mythological future date, I actually tossed it in the garbage.
Good bye old friend.
Now though I REALLY do have an excuse to get a FlipHD or similar solid state camera.
The moral of this tale – always look for the silver lining!
