Video Camera

On a recent newscast, WBAL-TV anchor Donna Hamilton introduced a story about moves by the Federal Reserve Board by saying: "Eleven News reporter Alex Lee takes a look." Lee, clutching a microphone adorned with a WBAL 11 emblem as she stood before the steps of the U.S. Capitol, picked up the story's thread conversationally: "Well, Donna ..." Two minutes later, Lee concluded her story with these words: "In Washington, I'm Alex Lee, WBAL 11 news. Donna?" In the studio, Hamilton replied, "All right.

KINGSTON SPRINGS, Tenn. - Before the Army troop truck moves an inch, Darren Takayesu is already rolling. With an eye to posterity, he turns on his digital video camera and trains it on the other soldiers piled into the 5-ton with him. "I want to say hi to Mom," one of the soldiers says. The truck lurches into the baking heat, and now Takayesu speaks into the camera. "Here we go," he says, his face glistening with sweat. "Making history, oh yeah." It was July 22. Takayesu and his unit of the 101st Airborne Division were about to get a small piece of a huge moment in the Iraq war: the raid in Mosul that killed Saddam Hussein's sons, Odai and Qusai.

Home video production still isn't as easy as it should be - or as easy as PC makers promised it would be a few years ago. To be sure, computers are faster than they were and better-designed to manipulate digital video. For their part, video software publishers have continued to try to make the process simple enough and fast enough for people to use confidently. But all too often, prospective videographers are still struggling to get raw footage out of the camera and then edit it into something watchable.

SHANGHAI, China -- One day last spring, administrators at Shanghai Fuxing High School wanting to make a point about good behavior to their students played a video in the classrooms called "uncivilized phenomena of the school." The purpose of the video seemed innocuous enough. In instructing students what not to do, it showed students kicking a soccer ball in a school corridor and climbing into a classroom through a window. Near the end, in a sequence subtitled "intimacy during the evening study session in the classroom," a boy and girl were shown hugging and then -- with their faces blurred -- apparently kissing, violating the no-dating policy that holds at most schools.

County police arrested a record-high 18 people Friday during a drunken driving roadblock that gave the officers' latest weapon, a video camera, its trial run.The roadblock, set up on U.S. 40 just insidethe border with Baltimore County, checked approximately 550 motorists and was the first time county police have used a video camera to record field sobriety tests.Four video cameras were donated to Howard County police by Aetna Life and Casualty and the Maryland branch of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

North County business and community leaders want to immortalize the attractions of their hometown on the big screen.With the use of avideo camera, the North County Chamber of Commerce hopes to create aportrait of the northern end of the county, stretching from Glen Burnie to Brooklyn Park.It's an area of quiet, tree-lined neighborhoods, old churches andmodern government offices; home to old-fashioned bakeries, fruit markets, shopping centers, restaurants and an international airport.North County is all this and more, says chamber president Lisa Pitt.

Howard County has become a regional haven for massage parlors, which crime experts say are often a new suburban face of the world's oldest profession.Despite years of crackdowns, massage parlors have become increasingly prominent in the consumer landscape, operating side-by-side with doughnut shops and convenience stores in strip malls across the country."Business is booming in suburban areas, and people are spending more time there," says University of Maryland criminology Professor Lawrence Sherman.

The beginning of the video snoop can probably be dated to 1948 when a man named Allen Funt hid a camera, tricked people into amusing and sometimes embarrassing situations, then -- after revealing himself and obtaining their consent -- broadcast the results on that fledgling medium, television.Today, Allen Funt -- whose "Candid Camera" show went off the air as a regular series in 1978 -- says this about the ever-increasing intrusion of the video camera into daily life: "It's a subject that I'm so confused about."

NOT LONG AGO, I was sitting in a restaurant with an old friend and his very pregnant wife when the man said to me: "Did I tell you we're videotaping the birth of our child?"I waited for his wife to crack him over the skull with the pepper grinder and say: "Over my dead body, sport."But instead she flashed this eerie, Kathie Lee Gifford-on-hashish smile and chirped: "Yes, it'll be so exciting!"And I thought: Can you believe this? My social life has declined to such an extent that I'm actually sitting in a cheap Mexican joint with a couple of nuts who view childbirth not as a wonderfully sacred experience to be savored quietly, but as a chance to fiddle with zoom lenses and make goofy faces at the camera.

Here's looking at you, kids.The Connectix Quickcam, for Macintosh and Windows computers, is a gray-scale video camera that resembles an oversized eyeball with freckles and a tail. The camera, smaller than a baseball, comes with a built-in microphone and pyramid stand.To get an idea of what it will look like atop your computer, check out the design on the back of a dollar bill.In fact, check out the backs of 99 dollar bills, which is what many catalogs charge for this endearing little gadget.