Take a picture. It'll last longer.
That's true. Let's say your parents took you to Vanuatu when you were 2 years old. Do you remember it 10 years later? Nope. BUT your parents remembered to pack their old camera into their suitcases before they left, so luckily, they've got a few photos of you digging a hole in the sand halfway to China. Now, you look at that photo thinking, 'I went to Vanuatu? I WENT TO VANUATU!? MUM! DAD! WHY'D YOU TAKE ME WHEN I WAS 2?' (Groovy rhyming, eh?)
Could you take a photo of us, and we'll take one of you?
Who's never heard that from a tourist? No hands? Right. The backpackers have obviously noticed you trying to take a "selfie", and failing tremendously, so they were nice enough to offer a win-win situation. You smile, nod and say thanks. The tourist says, 'You just press this button'. You think, 'Duh! As if I haven't taken a picture before!', but their instructions aren't over. They continue, 'But before you take it, try and make it look like we're the same height as the Harbour Bridge, and don't get any other people. If there's a ferry passing, please wait until it's left, and make sure the sun isn't in the way, and then, actually, could you take it so that it looks like we're holding up the Bridge? Hmm, I think that would be better, and then...' and so they go on, talking about how you press the button halfway to make the picture focus, and then press down all the way. Then you realise the flash wasn't on, so you have to endure the whole process again. Finally, it's their turn to take the photo, so you hand it to them. They tell you to walk back a little, left a little, about 5 metres further backwards, and then they run off with your camera. Joking! They take about 3 minutes to figure out that with this camera, you also press the big button on the top, and you're just standing there grinning, noticing all the people waiting to take their own picture in the spot you're standing.
What the- it's a UFO!
For some odd reason, you notice a glowing disc way up in the sky above your house. It's OBVIOUSLY a UFO with real aliens plotting to zap you up to them with a large green ray of light that comes down to you. 100 years ago, people would have been thinking, 'No one's going to believe me! This is a UFO right here, and every one's going to think I'm mad! If only I could prove it to them!' Now, you can quickly grab your camera phone from your pocket and start recording. However, having a 2 mega-pixel camera doesn't quite offer the great quality you're looking for when it's dark and you're jumping around hysterically. Then, of course, the video you submitted has the possibility of finding its way to several situations.
A) Everyone thinks that you're handy with some expensive editing software, which you've managed to try and cover up with the bad quality of the recording, and you're deemed a public nuisance.
B) Everyone believes you and the world prepares for alien contact. (Well, that's a first. It's not like we've never tried Morse Code-ing to space or anything...)
C)The New Zealand government has found the video, hidden it away, and then some genius finds it 12 years later and the video is now part of WikiLeaks.
Option C is obviously the most entertaining, and it must be made inevitable that this is the path set out for your dodgy-quality video of a 'UFO'. Which, you figure, was actually just some little kid's new frisbee he had coated in glow-in-the-dark paint. Of course, you keep this little part to yourself.
Where would we be without cameras, right? I've taken the liberty to provide 3 extremely relevant (um...), serious (er...), truthful (well... about that...) examples of the necessity of cameras. My insightful (oh seriously?) report and 5 star (more like 0.5 star) analysis of several situations has hopefully added something important (pah! Fibs I tell you!) to your day. ;)
