…in which I talk about some old photos and a very old camera.
So, back when I was a teen living in Connecticut, I always dreamed of being a film maker. While I could never dream of getting a video camera with which to practice such a craft, I often lusted over the Fisher Price PXL2000 which was far more affordable. It was a child’s toy, and not very good, quality, but it would serve the purpose of learning how to film would satisfy my craving for moving pictures.
Against all my begging and pleading, I never did get the so desired PXL2000, and to be honest, it’s probably for the best. The thing takes horrible video, is very picky about lighting, and is nearly impossible to work with. How do I know this? Years later, when I had my own disposable income, I purchased one on eBay and have actually taken some video with it. You can see some samples after the jump.
When I first got the used and beaten PXL2000, I did everything I could to clean it up and got it at least functioning. The model I purchased was the deluxe model which came with the “hands free stand” and output monitor. These deluxe additions, however, do not make the video any better. As you may have seen from the Wikipedia Article, the video quality was 90×120 pixels. How is that compared to your 1080P TV? Or even your 320×240 pixel cellular phone? It also is black and white with, I swear, about 5 shades of grey, and is almost completely hopeless in any situation other than full noonday, Texas cloudless sun.
Regardless, here are some samples taken from a party I attended back in Grad School not so very long ago. They’ve been converted to animated gifs, but in truth, they’ve not suffered from the conversion at all. My personal favorite is PXL-Dibley both because of its aesthetic and its quality. That and Dibley was just a cool dude.
5 replies on “Pixelated Past…”
Is this really your first blog since August? This doing-two-jobs crap is really eating into what is important.
Is this really your first blog since August? This doing-two-jobs crap is really eating into what is important.
Yeah, I feel really bad about it, too. I hadn't even intended to post today, but I wanted to share these pictures with someone and discovered that Flickr doesn't actually animate animated gifs.
Is this really your first blog since August? This doing-two-jobs crap is really eating into what is important.
Yeah, I feel really bad about it, too. I hadn't even intended to post today, but I wanted to share these pictures with someone and discovered that Flickr doesn't actually animate animated gifs.