Digital Photography

I love my digital camera. It's a Vivitar VivCam 3705, kind of basic, but has 3.3 MPx resolution. It has saved my bacon a couple of times, not unnotably in getting pix for the Overlook, and has more than paid for itself in terms of $$ saved on purchasing stock.

One of my favorite things to try to do is get photos of downtown Portland from the top deck of the Marquam Bridge. This is where I-5 vaults the Willamette in its mad dash for Vancouver, and is about the best view (angle and elevation) that can be had.

The problem? The freeway is four lanes wide across that bridge and fast, and there is no place whatsoever to pull over. I tried simply pointing the camera out the drivers side window in the VW whilst driving over the bridge but that's kind of out of the question, not the least because of the divided attention. Can't aim effectively, run the risk of major injury. A few days ago me and The Wife[tm] tried it in the Subaru, but it'd gotten too dark by then, and the .avi's the camera made were dark and moody. Which wasn't what I wanted.

But in all, it's fun. It's not hard to carry around, I can make picture after picture, it's ready for import into Photoshop without scanning, and with a 256K SD card, I can pretty much snap all day, at least as long as I can keep batteries in the thing. It's a major energy hog, as any camera owner will tell you.