A day at Playland

A nice diversion from all the iPhone related stuff lately, yesterday a bunch of us (John, Rebecca, Jen, Keira and Amy) went to Playland for the day. It’s our local amusement park that is the foundation for the Pacific National Exhibition which happens later this summer.

I thought it might be fun to try and shoot a bunch of video of the different rides we went on. I quickly learned that trying to record a wooden rollercoaster by holding the camera with one hand and holding onto the coaster with the other wouldn’t end well:

The video ends abruptly when I hit the power button by accident while being whipped around on the coaster. That and the kidney pummeling I got from the ride as well. You can see a little more of the ride here where I turned it back on and got a short clip….then I gave up due to the difficulty in holding on to the ride, let alone the camera.

You’d think I’d learn my lesson on the Wild Mouse coaster:

It was easily the scariest ride at Playland and inflicted the most physical damage to my knees.

Fortunately I didn’t drop the camera on the Hellevator which was fun but wasn’t nearly as scary as the anticipation of going on it. I thought the Pirate Ship ride had more stomach churning moments:

Judging from the bruises on my knees today, shooting video may not have been the best choice but it was still a lot of fun. Thanks to Rebecca for making the arrangements, Playland for having us and for the weather which almost cooperated the whole day…it actually helped keep the lines down and allowed us to hit the bumper cars over and over – especially when the rain was coming down:

We finally had enough and called it a day after two back-to-back trips to the “Crazy Beach Party”:

Check my Flickr set for more videos and pictures from the day.

In case you’re curious, I shot these videos with my Casio Exilim EX-60 which is a couple of years old now. It’s not terribly popular anymore but it still works great for stills and video. It makes me wonder what the big deal is with those Flip cameras? I mean this camera can be had for about the same price as a Flip – probably alot less (mine even came with one of those 4×6 photo printers for free), is smaller than the Flip, has wicked battery life, can do more (shoot great stills and video) and uses memory cards that can be changed when it’s full. I get a little more than 1/2 an hour of video with a 2gb card which can be bought for about $2-5 a piece these days. Just sayin’.