PluggedIn - What is that around your neck?

Richard Mackson's Posts

Richard Mackson
Photon Wrangler

August 19, 2008

What is that around your neck?

Dateline Beijing: "Mackson, what is that thing hanging around your neck?" (imagine the words being spoken in English with a European accent). The question came from my longtime friend Giuliano Bevilacqua who has been covering the Olympics since 1964 in Tokyo. In those days it was an 8 day trip by train and boat just to get there! By his calculations, this Olympics is his 22^nd. He is quite the character and quite a photographer. We first met doing swimming in the late 1970's. He was always at the morning practice sessions with a long lens made even longer with a tele-extender, walking along the edge of the pool snapping away. And keeping with his personality, he was giving everyone a running commentary on what he was shooting! We have been paling around at the last few Olympics

Here's Giuliano at swimming a few days ago

I digress... So what is around my neck that he was asking about? Before leaving for Beijing, I wanted a camera that I could carry with me all the time. The equipment I use to cover the events is hardly something you would wear. We just announced with Motorola the new ZN5 handset - 5 megapixels sounded good to me and it's always on and ready to go. You have been seeing the pictures from this camera throughout my postings over the past 12 days.

Here are a few pictures that frankly would not have been made without the ability to just reach into my pocket and fire away. By the way, it has 4 ways to transfer the images - Blue Tooth, WiFi, CMDA, plus you can take the memory card out and stick it into a reader.