Dad & Tech
My dad has always had a keen interest in the latest consumer electronics. Often, he would go out and purchase something he’d seen someone at church using, or caught a glimpse of in an ad. One of the immediate consequences of my dad’s tech fondness was that any time it manifested itself into a purchase, my mom would instantly throw a fit. My dad ended having to hide his “toys” (as my mom put it) all over the house. His secret purchases were so prevalent that growing up, one of my favorite past-time activities was to go “treasure hunting” around the house. The late 1990s and early 2000s were my Gold Rush years.
I’ve always considered my dad’s closet a gold vein for small to medium sized electronic nuggets. I’d reach into a pile of neatly folded clothes and sometimes feel the outline of a zip drive, headphones, or a Sony mini disc player. I’d pull out whatever I found, inspect it, mess around with it, and then carefully put it back like nothing happen. However, my dad somehow always knew I had messed with his stuff.
Things got a little more serious when I’d find something like a laptop. It was actually pretty shocking because I knew my mom would totally ream my dad if she ever found out, so I’d just pretend I never found anything. Finding that much gold could get you killed.
I remember one time I pulled out a video camera in front of my mom. What followed was her yelling the equivalent of “the f***?!” in Vietnamese while she eagerly waited for my dad to come home from work; rolling pin in hand. I’m positive the anger was a blend of finding out my dad purchased something expensive and the embarrassment of her realizing that she was oblivious to such a massive object. That incident put a swift end to the announcement of my discoveries.
The Camera
Around 2002, one of the manifestations of my dad’s curiosity took the form of an Olympus C-50Z. If my memory serves me correctly, this thing was a beast. Not only was it a digital camera, it had a cool XD memory card (later turned out to be a pain), and took very poor video (really, it was so bad that the Amazon product description used phrases like “not meant to replace a true camcorder” and “offers limited resolution”). My dad actually revealed the C-50Z purchase and to my surprise, my mom wasn’t very upset about it.
How did I come to use it? I was persistently annoying. I hogged the camera and bothered him to use it all the time. The thing is, as much as my dad liked technology, he didn’t really have a good initial understanding of how to use a lot of it. Most of the time, he’d hand something over to me to look at and figure out how to use. I got used to flipping through boring user manuals pretty quickly.
Use
Figuring out how to use the camera was incredibly delightful. I’m sure my mom saw the leaks of flash light coming out from underneath my bedroom door. I played around with all the modes and settings the camera had. Most of the adjustments only showed up as minor incremental changes. However, after I found out how to use the built in black-and-white and sepia effects, I declared myself an artist.
Reflecting on my time using the C-50Z, I treated it very casually. I took it with me to family gatherings, events, school, etc. just to have something to do in addition to the primary reason why I was wherever I was. I liked playing with the different settings, but ended up using auto or one of the program modes most of the time.
Even though my use was casual, the C-50Z woke at a powerful interest in me which persists to this day. It led up to some of the gear you see below.
Here are a few other pictures from the C-50Z:
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Example of the horrible, horrible video: