Welcome into my home! Care for a drink? No? Well, pardon me then, while I quench my thirst. You know, it's not that I don't like the water bottle, because I do. But, sometimes a good thirst-quenching drink can't be found in a bottle. TeeHee!

The deal is, Mom was frustrated with Dad's webcam (if you don't remember how terrible the shots came out, you can see them at the bottom of this page - just hit your "back" button to return here) and decided to use her own webcam again. After a little session of practice shots with lighting control and image quality settings, Mom took this whole series of pictures with just her webcam!

Now, there are obviously advantages and disadvantages to Mom using a webcam to take pictures of my babes. Personally, I don't care what Mom uses to take pictures with, as long as the pictures turn out as beautiful as my babes are. All I care about is that she lets ME write in here! Boy, would she hoze it up if I let HER do it!

Anyway, the immediately obvious advantage of the webcam is that I can show you the inside of my home! If you're a Rat, you appreciate the normal perspective. If you are a human, you might LEARN to appreciate it! Understanding is a valuable tool! Mom said that this photo-session really changed her ideas for when she makes us a bigger cage - she wants to go through it with the webcam first! (Yeah, right!)

One of the obvious disadvantages is image quality. While Mom confessed to me that she had too much light in most of these pictures, they came out far better than what the other webcam produced - and with just a tiny bit of work, Mom took most of the "washed-out" look from these images. And while neither webcams will ever reproduce the beautiful quality of Daddy's Camcorder (*brux* *brux* to Daddy!) it's good enough for on-the-fly, daily image stuff. You know, for days when Dad's busy and Mom can't bug him (or when Mom's tired and would rather NOT bug him - for HIS safety's sake!) So, she thought she had better brush up on using her own webcam again. I think she did great!

Mom said tonight's webcam photo-session was entirely experimental. She wasn't going to bother Daddy about pictures tonight if it was going to require all the work that it normally does. She said her foremost concern was the lack of light so she had the lighting setting up to high - hence, she had to tone each picture back down again. But she said even that was easier than what our photo-sessions usually entail!

Camcorder photo-sessions are quite involved. I often glance over my tail while I'm typing, and I can see the whole thing from start to finish. Mom gets us out, and then Dad takes either still-shots with the camcorder, or takes footage of us from which Mom later take still pictures. Whether it's still-pictures or still-pictures from footage, there are usually 30-60 pictures taken of us each day - and then only up to a dozen are used per day (most of the time, less than half of that). That's simply because it's hard to get cute shots from the camcorder. Mom and Dad have to "set up" to do all this picture taking, and by that time nobody's in the mood to be cute anymore! Not to mention, the Camcorder doesn't fit inside my home!

With Mom's webcam, there's not a lot of sacrifices being made. Mom can take 12 to 20 pictures and use most of them because she knew what they would look like before she took the shot, and then adjust the image as necessary in her multiple collection of graphic design programs.

Oops! Mom is really tired and wants her computer back. I guess she doesn't appreciate the little gift I left her that was stuck between the 'U' an 'J' keys last night!

I guess I had better go, but I thought you might enjoy a little behind-the-Cinder-scenes information.

*YAWN* I am kind of tired myself, all this typing is a lot of work. When are they going to make Rat-sized keyboards?!

Tomorrow's Friday! I will see you then!

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