You remember the camera.
You remember the camera, and seeing it, you start to remember what it saw.
You turn it over in your hands, and you can remember it in his: big fingers carefully choosing a lens from the tri-dial, winding the spring, aiming the optics by smile more than anything (is there even a viewfinder on this thing?) and tracking you and your sister and your brother through some of the most mundane, formative moments of your lives.
Now he is gone, and what he saw is gone, but the camera is still here. And what it saw. What, exactly, did it see, anyway? You start to dig through the closet with renewed purpose.
There was a box of reels there. Two, actually. There was a projector, too, but it seems like it was out of commission long, long ago… thankfully, by some miracle, there was still a local shop that could digitize them. They said that it all turned out great: they ended up putting several hours of footage onto the drive, in fact. You’re sure you have an intuitive sense of how much a USB drive weighs, but this one feels… weightier, somehow. More substantial. You’ve got a copy for your sister and a copy for your brother, but you haven’t watched a bit yet. That will come tonight. Maybe sleep will, too, finally. But if it doesn’t, what a gift it will be to have finally revisited the footage you never saw properly.
If there’s any film you’d like to transfer to digital, now is the perfect time: take 20% off your entire movie film to digital order all June! Preserve and enjoy those family memories for generations. For obvious reasons, this offer is available in-store only, so bring your reels in to a Mike’s Camera store near you!