Test Roll: Vivitar cv35

The first weekend in June 2020, our family hit up a neighborhood garage sale, and my son (age 8 at the time) “borrowed” 50 cents to buy this camera.

Appropriately enough, the Vivitar cv35 was marketed as “an ideal first camera for young people and beginning photographers.” If he hadn’t seen it first, I might have bought it myself, though; I’m a sucker for trashcams and toy cameras.

Its main distinguishing features on the surface are its translucent body, a built-in sliding lens cover, and a flash powered by one AA battery. However, it also has a two-element lens, which is a step up from most cheap plastic cameras from the 90’s. Cameras like this can produce unique results with vignetting and sketchy focus, so I was eager to load it up and take it for a spin.

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Line Art

Connor has been making line art lately, so I showed him how I used to do mine back in the day. Once he saw the one corner, he asked if I could make an entire square like that. When I finished drawing the third corner, he said that it looked like a comet warping the fabric of space-time, and wanted me to draw that.

So, I guess you could say this is a collaborative piece.

Merry Christmas 2020

Merry Christmas from Aaron, Diana, Connor, and Mei!

It was weird to have Christmas as just the three of us, but we made the best of it. Connor played his new Nintendo Switch Lite, we played a game of Pictionary Air as a family, we texted family and friends, and we ate ham and sweet potatoes and rolls and homemade cranberry sauce and fudge and cookies.