Creating the page at the convention wouldn't be possible without the rise of the consumer-grade digital camera.

These cameras have improved so rapidly that the author has bought several cameras, just to keep pace. Yes, it's hopeless to try to keep up with the state of the art when improved models come out every month, but at least you can stay a comfortable distance between the cutting edge and obsolescence.

One camera used by this page, the Canon EOS 300D, is a good example of that comfort zone. The Digital Rebel was a breakthrough bargain prosumer digital SLR when it was released by Canon in 2003, offering the same image`quality as cameras costing twice as much. When Canon released the upgraded Digital Rebel XT in 2005, the still very useful Digital Rebels dropped in price and the author bought one.

After the original racing page used a Kodak DC-50, the convention page started with a Sony DKC-ID1, the camera that produced all of the images from 1997 and 1998. It had the widest zoom range (38mm-480mm) of any digital camera at the time, and a decent 768x576-pixel resolution.

Then, as higher-resolution cameras were released, the site moved to a Nikon Coolpix 900s. That camera, with 1280x960-pixel resolution, produced most of the pictures from 1999. The Nikon wasn't very sensitive to light (ISO 64 equivalent), meaning that the Sony (ISO 100) had to be brought back into action when it was time to photograph masquerades where flash pictures weren't allowed. And the Nikon didn't have the Sony's telephoto range - only 110mm at the long end of the zoom lens.

The newer Casio's resolution (same 1280x960 as the Nikon) was a couple of generations behind other cameras (Casio was the first to announce a 2048x1536, 3-megapixel camera). But the QV-8000SX had a wide range zoom lens (40mm-320mm) that few cameras in its class had. The Casio was more sensitive to light than the 900s, had a shorter delay between shots (although it could be sluggish in recharging the internal flash) and was much faster in switching from record to playback mode. And the Casio's LCD display was larger and brighter than the Nikon's display.

However, the older digital cameras needed some help in taking flash pictures. All anime conventions are held in places that are lighted more for photosensitive business owners than for easy photography. Digital cameras made in the late 1990's needed a lot of light to get properly exposed shots.

The Sony's built-in flash was supplemented with a pair of inexpensive "slave" flashes, which were triggered by the Sony's flash. The Nikon had a flash terminal which could use standard hot shoe flashes, and a Sunpak 383 flash was used with the 1999 camera. That Sunpak also was in use with the Casio.

This page then switched to an Olympus C-2100UX from the spring of 2001, a unit with the wide angle-to-telephoto zoom range that the author needs at conventions. The Olympus also had some features that the Casio didn't have - higher resolution (1600x1200 pixels) and an image-stabilization zoom lens. And it has an adjustable imager setting that made the camera eight times as sensitive to light as the Casio, important in the circumstances where flash can't be used (ISO 400 for the Olympus as compared to ISO 100 for the Casio, for camera buffs). That minimized the author's use of flash in well-lighted rooms.

One year later, the author picked up a Canon D30 SLR. Using a variety of lenses, the digital SLR has the C-2100's focal length range, but higher resolution and imager sensitivity (up to ISO 1600 for the D30). The Canon is far more responsive to the shutter, easily firing at 3 frames per second and offering none of the shutter lag of most consumer-grade digicams. The Olympus' electronic viewfinder is as good as you'll get with a point and shoot camera, but the D30's standard SLR viewfinder is larger, brighter and allows more accurate manual focusing.

But all toys break when you play with them too hard. The D30's shutter and flash assembly has worn out three times, and only the first two repairs were covered by the extended warranty. That led the author to get the C-2100 repaired, but it developed trouble after taking nearly 6,000 pictures during the Anime Expo weekend in 2004. The cost of getting the two cameras repaired was the same as a new unit, so the author decided to get a Fuji FinePix S7000. There were two other likely candidates - the Canon PowerShot S1 IS and the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ10 - but only the Fuji had a hot shoe trigger for an external flash and used the author's collection of CompactFlash memory cards and AA rechargeable batteries. The Canon had no flash trigger and the Panasonic used a proprietary battery and SD/MMC cards. So in July of 2004, the Fuji became the first-string flash camera, the D30 became the reserve available-light camera, and the Olympus was retired.

The D30 finally wore out in May of 2005 (it broke in the middle of the Fanime Con costume contest), and the author needed a replacement, fast. The solution was the Digital Rebel, which cost just over half the D30's price but offered twice the image resolution. The Digital Rebel also uses the same lenses, flashes, memory cards and batteries as the D30.

This site is not an office or desk-bound product. At first, it was created in the field on a 1997 Satellite Pro 445CDX laptop with a 133-MHz Pentium MMX CPU, obsolete by most standards but useful for this author. After five years of  toil, the 445CDX was retired in favor of a newer and faster Toshiba, a Satellite 1205-S151.  Several months' experience showed that 256 MB RAM wasn't enough, so the author upgraded the computer to 512 MB RAM. At least the Windows XP horror stories haven't bitten the author's field work so far.

Windows XP stays in use with this site's latest notebook PC, an Acer Aspire 5100 that came with a single-core AMD CPU and 1 GB RAM.

Some of the the unsung technical heroes of this site are battery chargers.

The Fuji camera and Sunpak flash use eight AA batteries between them, and that means a lot of batteries for these high-drain devices during a weekend. While the author carries several sets of Energizer lithium batteries to conventions, the best cells for the job are nickel-metal-hydride (NiMH) rechargeable. After a search for the best way to recharge the author's eight sets of NiMH batteries, he found a Promaster charger that replenishes a set of AA's in about one hour. That charger was then replaced with units, badged as Sony and Energizer chargers, which recharge four cells in about 20 minutes.

Another useful gadget is an EV-DO card. For wireless Internet access, this site used a series of WiFi cards and USB adapters, assisted by a Samsung VGA-1000 cell phone, which was one of the few phones on the market that allowed reliable Internet access. But a better option is available - the Evolution Data Optimized 3G system through cell phone companies. This site now uses a Pantech PX-500 EV-DO card, which lets the author use the Internet wirelessly at connection speeds that are slightly slower than WiFi, but in locations that are nowhere near a hotspot. That's made updates to the site more frequent, something that's important to people who are waiting for fresh pictures and stories to be posted online. This site's goal is still to get that material online in hours, not weeks or months.

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