(10 hours) #6 Cameras SLEEPY Boring Objects (Jason Newland) (20th September 2021)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name is Jason Newland. This is Boring Objects. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes.

This podcast is aimed at helping you to relax and maybe if you want to also drift off to sleep. And in each recording, because I do different recordings, and not just one long one, these individual ones, I talk about a particular object. And then I just talk about my experiences with that object.

So today I am going to talk about, what should I talk about today? I'm going to talk about camera, a camera or cameras. Now I guess I've had a fair bit of experience with cameras over the last probably 15 or 16 years. But previous to that I didn't really have much need for cameras.

So thinking back to the first camera I had, and I think I was about 15 or 16 years old. And I bought a camera, I purchased a camera and I was quite excited at having a camera of my own. And back in those days, I guess there's always been professional cameras.

But I didn't have one of them, because I wasn't a professional photographer. Therefore I didn't see the merit in having a professional camera. That just didn't seem much point in doing.

Such a thing. So I got myself, it wasn't an instant one, which pushes out the picture. I forget the name of those cameras.

Do you remember? Um, not cross your heart brows. That's a different advert. There is, there is, uh, not panty liners.

I'm trying to think of some of the adverts that used to be on television when I was around 15 or 16. Crunch nut cornflakes. No, just trying to think.

But there was a camera that you could buy and you could, it was quite a big old thing. And you could take a picture of whatever it is you're taking a picture of. I guess the choices are fairly infinite, uh, depending on your ability to travel, I suppose.

I mean, if you're living in a village somewhere or a little town, perhaps a photograph in Niagara Falls might not be, or the Nile river might not be available to you at this moment. So I suppose saying that the, the options of taking pictures of things is infinite would probably be wrong. Because realistically there is only a finite amount of things in the world that you could take pictures of, but it would take a long while.

You'd literally would have to be a vampire. And you might think, what, only allowed to come out at night and having to drink virgin blood. What's that got to do with a camera? And I would say, well, first of all, you don't have to be a virgin to feed a vampire.

And secondly, um, I'm talking about the longevity of the lifespan. And then you'd, you'd understand. And you might say, Oh, I understand.

I see what you mean, because there's so many things to photograph in the world that a normal human lifespan probably won't cut the mustard. And I would say, yeah, I might not use the term cut the mustard, because, uh, to me, that's, that makes me think of farting. But I understand, uh, your sentiment in using that particular phrase, because, you know, you're basically trying to express that, uh, the human life is not long enough to accommodate being able to take photographic pictures of every single thing in the world.

It just wouldn't be enough time really, to be able to fit it all in. Because, well, there's stuff on television to watch and we have to eat as well. Although maybe you could eat and photograph at the same time, especially if you eat lots of different food every single meal, because then you could photograph the food that you eat every single meal.

But I'm not sure how workable that is. To be honest, I haven't really given it a huge amount of thought. And to be honest, I'm not going to, and you can't make me.

So, I, so there, I had, uh, this camera when I was about 15 or 16 years old, and I was living in a flat with my step-mum and my little brother and my step-mum's mother, who I guess would be my step-grandmama. And she had her own bedroom. My step-mum had slept in the guest room with my little brother, and I slept on the floor, well, I slept on a camper bed, a fold-up, uncomfortable camper bed in the living room, in front of the television.

So, you may ask, what's that got to do with cameras? And I guess my answer would be, I'm trying to add some filler to the recording. And you may say, why? And I would answer, honestly, because I have very little to say about cameras. So, I'm trying to add a bit of other stuff, uh, to flesh out a very weak story, uh, in the hope that nobody would notice, you see.

And I don't know why or when exactly, but I got this camera, because at the time I was working in a chip shop, which in itself isn't necessarily related to me purchasing a camera, other than the money I got paid for working in the chip shop, was the money that I handed over to the shopkeeper, who then handed me the camera. Although I might have got the, ah, I'm not sure, I don't remember where I bought it.

I might have bought it at Argos, which is like a catalogue shop, where you don't actually hold the item, you just look at it in a catalogue.

Now it's on a, like a computer screen. And you just choose to purchase whichever, uh, specific item that you're choosing to buy. Maybe you've fallen in love with it from the image that you have witnessed with your eyes.

And I, I mean, in a way, they were kind of like the internet before the internet started, with their computer screens and everything. It was like, basically, it's a website already. But instead of ordering things to be delivered to you, you'd order something and pay for it.

And it would be brought to a box or like a, uh, like a little counter or a little, a little hole in the wall or somewhere like that. I think a little hole in the wall is probably wrong. Maybe a big hole, maybe an entrance to another room, but with a, uh, like a desk or something in front of it with a till, so you can't actually go through there.

I actually want to say a room, I mean, a warehouse. It was a big old warehouse. Yeah, it had a lot of stuff.

It was a little bit like Superstore out of the, either the Beano or the Dandy comic. Every week in the comic, someone would go into the Superstore because they said, we're a Superstore, we sell everything. And every week, somebody would come in and ask for the most random object, the most random thing that you could even imagine.

And every week, the shopkeeper would say, wait a second, sir or madam, I will just go and get that for you now. Or maybe they, and they might have made it a little bit more, added a little bit more tension. And the shopkeeper said, let me go out back to see if I have that particular item in stock.

And that high tension that was there for the reader of the comic wouldn't last very long. Because in the next image, it showed the results of that search. And I suppose there was occasions when you had to turn the page over to find out whether or not the Superstore, who always had every single item that anyone ever asked for, week in, week out, every single week for years and years and years.

The tension of knowing whether or not they would have it that week was, I guess, quite surprising, really, when you think about it. So I got my first camera from a place, I think probably Argos. I don't know if they have Argos in other countries.

But here they do, which is lucky because that's where I went. I took the camera home, I say home, but where I was staying at the time and a certain excitement took over me. And I just wanted to photograph everything.

It was almost as if it was the one thing that would be missing from my life. And it was as if I didn't, I thought to myself, I never need to look at anything again. I don't need to store anything in my memory.

I can just take pictures of everything. And then if I want to be reminded, I can look back into my photograph album. So I took pictures of family members and by the time I'd used up all the film, and I think there was like 50 photographs, maybe 100, I don't know, on the camera, or maybe I had more rolls, because maybe it was only 12 pictures per roll.

I'm not sure. By the time I'd used up all the pictures, I'd lost completely interest. It was just, it was, yeah, it was like a, it was a little bit like watching a pizza advert on television when you've already had your dinner.

It just, there's no, there was nothing there, no, no real urgency for me to pick up the phone and sort of say, oh, I'd like to order a pizza, please. Because I saw your advert and I'm now wanting and craving pizza. But because I had maybe a sandwich earlier, a little while ago, you know, maybe half an hour ago, I didn't have that particular need to eat a pizza.

And I think it was that kind of feeling that I experienced when I had the camera and I got bored. And that was, I didn't have any cameras, I don't think, all through my 20s. And then there's no photographs much of me during that period.

And then in 2002, I was working in a call center and a lady, I spoke to a female on the phone and she asked for my telephone number and she wanted to, she said she liked talking to me. And wanted to talk to me again. Now that was against the rules, but I can't get sacked now because I don't work there anymore.

So I can disclose it. Anyway, we, but if you are listening and you are the manager of a call center, and if I apply for a job there, then please either forget this little story or just pretend that I was making it up. Thank you very much.

And I was talking to this, this person out of work and we got on really well. But she lived quite a long way away. And she said to me one day, this was actually, it was a day off.

That's my day off. But I worked shifts. So the only day I didn't work was on a Sunday.

So I'd work every second Saturday all day. So I would have on that week, I would have a day off during the week. It might be a Monday.

It might be a Tuesday. Sometimes it was a Wednesday. And I can't remember if there was ever any Thursdays off, but Fridays as well.

I mean, Mondays was one of the most busiest days. So I didn't have many Mondays off. I think the day that I'm referring to is possibly a Thursday.

And I was actually visiting my Nan on that day. And, and she, this, this lady, she texted me and she said, can you send a picture of yourself? Because I want to know what you look like. I really like you and I can't wait to meet you and everything like that.

So I said, I don't have a camera on my phone. Now, this might sound surprising to those of you who have always had cameras on your phones. But back in the early 2000s, phones didn't have cameras, or at least not all of them.

Maybe some of them did. But I had a good phone and it didn't have a camera. I think it was a Nokia.

Was it 7210 or something like that? I forget. But it didn't, it did vibrate. And I remember her saying, well, vibrating is not going to be any good unless you're going to take a picture and put it on top of the phone and let it vibrate all the way to where I live.

Which I thought, I don't know if she was being sarcastic or not. Because I considered it and I thought, well, what's the chances of it actually ending up where she is? Especially as I was sort of standing near the sea at the time. Didn't want it to get wet.

So I really liked her. We would talk on the phone for hours and outside of work. So what I did is I went into the shop and I just bought a phone which had a camera on it.

And I went down to the beach. I think it was quite windy that day and it was raining. I think it was raining and neither of which is relevant to the story.

But again, I'm just trying to set the mood, the romantic mood of taking a picture. So I took this picture of myself and I sent it to her. I never heard from her again.

I'm still waiting actually. I mean, I figured, well, 19 years, maybe by now, maybe, I don't know, maybe it's not going to happen. Unless it got lost.

But yeah, she didn't reply back. So that was the first camera on a phone that I had. I can't remember all the different phones I've had, but that's probably a different conversation.

And then in 2000, probably a short while after that, maybe 2003, maybe 2002, I purchased a digital camera. And I couldn't figure out how to work it. So it just became another dust collector.

I don't know what happened to it. But it had a very boring life. It just sat there on the shelf, just looking up at the ceiling.

And I didn't, I just couldn't be bothered to figure out how to use it. I guess I could have read the instructions, but that goes against my religious views. So the next time I had a camera, I guess it was on my laptop.

This was in the early 2000, about 2004, I guess. But I started using, I got myself a webcam to make hypnosis videos in 2006, which I would start putting onto MySpace to start with, then YouTube. And then when Facebook came along, I used to put them on there.

And lots of other videos and social networking sites over the years. So I would use, I got, I had a few different webcams, always trying to find one that was the best that I could get. But none of them were great.

And then sometimes the rooms that I was in just weren't bright enough to, to get the best out of the webcam. So that was that. And then in 2008, again, I'm not sure what kind of phone I had.

I really can't remember. I know that I didn't have a smartphone. I think they were around by then.

I'm not sure, maybe not. But I think by 2008, smartphones were around. I didn't have one.

I had a very dumb one. It was, it really, it could count to about four. And it would start, it was really dumb.

It was a, it was against refugees, didn't like anyone who spoke a different language. It was very dumb, it was a very dumb phone. Blamed everyone but itself for the world's problems, you know, really, really dumb.

So I didn't have a smartphone until I was, I think it was 2011. 2011 was my first smartphone. That's when I got an iPhone.

The four years previous to that, I had a BlackBerry. And I'm not sure if you could take pictures on a BlackBerry. I don't remember.

But previous to that, I think in about nine, 2008, I purchased, I was at university, and I purchased a video camera. And I started making videos with that to put on YouTube. But there was always a bit of a, like a background grinding sound to the camera, which I couldn't figure out how to stop.

But it didn't stop me, I still did it anyway. And the picture was pretty good at times. And then in 2011, I started, I had a mixture, I used a video camera sometimes, and I would use the iPhone camera to make videos.

I didn't really use cameras much for taking pictures at that time. I've never really been a big photographer. But making videos was something that I have spent many years doing.

And what I used to do is take the iPhone with me, because it was a phone. So I'd take that with me where I was going. And sometimes if I had a room that I was in, if I was working, I could make a video.

It used to be very echoey though, because the camera would be maybe on the windowsill. And I'd be back a fair distance, and I'd be talking, and the picture would be quite good. But the sound would be very echoey.

But I didn't mind because I wasn't going to be watching the video. Which is a bit selfish really, isn't it? And then I got, I'll tell you what happened. When I gave, when it was time for me to change my contract, when I'd had the second BlackBerry, or the first BlackBerry, or maybe it was 2012 that I got the BlackBerry, not 2011.

But I remember I changed, and I got an Android, an Android smartphone, and I didn't like it. It was the first touch phone, a touchscreen phone that I'd had, and I didn't like it, and I sent it back. I said, I don't like it.

And they said, I phoned them up, and I said, I don't like it. And they said, can we take your details please, what's your name? And I said, I don't like it. They said, yeah, but we need more information.

So I told them who I was, and the, they took that away, and I had another BlackBerry, and then I realized I didn't really like the BlackBerry anymore. And I eventually got an iPhone, and I haven't had the iPhone the whole time, but since that period I've had an Android a couple of times. But what I've been looking for is a decent camera, but what seems to have happened is the cameras, on some of the Androids, I think the Samsung was a very good camera, but the audio wasn't particularly great, and that seems to have been the way still with the iPhones.

Although the audio has improved somewhat, it's not always been, you know, a perfect one, far from perfect audio. And then later on, a few years back, I, so I had the video camera for quite a few years, and then that, that went, and then I got another camera, which I used for a bit. And the problem with that camera is it was such a good picture, that I just, I looked really old, and I didn't, I don't want to live in that kind of reality, where people can see on film what I really look like.

I mean that, that's why Instagram is so popular, and Facebook, and because you can filter, you can filter the picture, and that's what I want to do. I want to filter, I don't want to be seen for how I really look, because it makes me sad, and I don't want to scare away people, who perhaps would want to watch the videos. And I took, I took a break, I took a break from YouTube, and didn't make really many videos for a while, every now and then.

And sometimes I take videos of me, and things going on in my life. I do a Jason Chats vlog, which is what I do sometimes, take pictures of things, this and that sometimes, using the iPhone. And I think I've had three iPhones so far, and the, I've now got a new camera, which I got a few months ago.

It's a Sony VZ1, and it's, it's specifically for blogging, or vlogging, and I'm going to be using it soon, and I'm going to be using it, I've set it up so I can use it as a webcam on my laptop, which means that I will be able to stream as well, using that camera, because it's a very, very good camera.

But more important than anything, is it has a soft filter, so that I can look like a little baby, which is not really what I was looking for, but it definitely softens up the, you can't see so many crevices on my face, because it is a little bit like looking at the moon sometimes, but like a pink moon. So now hopefully it will be a little bit better, and the videos that I post on YouTube in the future will be a bit more, will just be better quality.

And I will be getting a new iPhone at some point, and that's supposed to have the best camera that I've ever done. So I'll be interested to see how that works, and how good the camera is. So I don't really do much in the way of taking photographs, but I do use the cameras to make videos.

So that's, I'm pretty much up to date now. I have had a few different webcams over the years as well, as well as the inbuilt cameras in the different laptops and tablets as well, but none of them have been particularly good for what I need. They're okay for streaming to a friend, you know, Zoom calls or whatever you want, but for making a video to put online, like YouTube, the quality is not really there.

So that's why I've got myself a a camera that's more suitable for what I need it for, and plus the other camera I got, the nice one, which is a really good picture, it's only, it didn't record for long enough. It recorded for something like 27 minutes, and my recordings usually last longer than that. So I needed a camera that would last longer than that.

So that's, that's about everything when it comes to cameras. I suppose I should add that I have seen cameras around, I've seen people use cameras, and I did, well I do still have, but never really used. I got a GoPro that I purchased about probably five years ago now.

Not really sure why I purchased it. It was, well it was a special offer. It was the, I think, Boxing Day special offer, so it was pretty cheap, and I thought, oh maybe I'll buy that, and I agreed with myself, so I did.

So thank you for listening. Remember to be kind to yourself. You deserve to be happy.

Lots of love. Bye.