RICK DUPEA TAKES A NEW CAMERA DOWNTOWN >>>

This year's springtime rains have refused to go without a fight. Like the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, our bad weather has seriously overstayed its welcome. Yet uninterrupted stretches of sunshine continue to grow, and we all know what that means - filmmakers emerging from their burrows, eager to test some new toys.

I last touched base with Rick Dupea (owner of CRE8TV Media Group in Parkland) back in Feb., right before he jetted off to Naples, Italy, for a few weeks to volunteer on a video project. This past Thursday I tagged along as Dupea broke in his new DSLR camera, the Canon EOS 60D.

We began our trek at the Tacoma Dome Station, amid a bustle of traffic, commencement gowns and mortarboards waving in the breeze. Fortunately the hubbub didn't disrupt Dupea's audio capture, as he just wanted landscape shots anyway. Besides, though this new wave of lightweight DSLRs pack quite a wallop in visual quality, they generally lack in the sound department.

Unlike the very popular 5D Mark II model, the 60D comes equipped with a flip-out LCD screen, which gives the camera operator much more flexibility. Whether low or high, from any angle Dupea positioned his tripod he could see his subject clearly and comfortably. And to minimize glare on the viewfinder he attached a handy little device called a Sock-Loupe^TM.

The two of us hopped on the Light Rail and grabbed more shots along Pacific Avenue. A sun-dappled downtown lends itself extremely well to a new website Dupea has created, www.beautifultacoma.com. There he posts his growing collection of stills and videos that show off a town he grew up in and loves. The idea came, Dupea says, from "thinking of what's unique about the character of Tacoma visually." He invites others to submit their own works and spread the love.

"It really is about what Tacoma can be, and what's already cool about it," he says.