Digital Cameras of Ten years ago

[Sonnar Brian]

Aesthetics? That E3 was full-frame digital, long before the D3. It took a lot of space for the optical path and reduction optics.

The DCS200: basically a Digital camera and notebook computer, 2.5" SCSI drive. That took some room. Handling it is no worse than an F3HP with an MD-4, about the same weight.

 

[hteasley]

My first digital camera, a Coolpix 950:

Shown here with the Tiffen wide angle and telephoto lenses you could get for it. Still works, takes pictures, but is messed up writing to the card. Maybe it's because the smallest CF card I have is 2GB, which was an unheard of size back then: I recall spending $400 for a 128mb card for it. But the weird thing is the camera sees the files it's writing to the card: when I go into play mode, the files are there, viewable on the screen of the camera. When I take the CF card out and put in in a reader attached to my computer, there's nothing there (not even in Terminal or Windows PowerShell; never trust Finder or Explorer for screwy tasks like this).

I'll try formatting a tiny partition on this card, like 64mb, and leaving the rest unpartitioned, and see if that helps.

 

[Phil_F_NM]

Don't forget the Fujix!

We were using one of these on my ship (USS John C. Stennis) back in the late '90's.
From getting the shot to post processing & print was easily twice the amount of time that it took for film out of one of our F4 or F5 bodies.

Phil Forrest

 

[hteasley]

I'll try formatting a tiny partition on this card, like 64mb, and leaving the rest unpartitioned, and see if that helps.

Yep, that did it. Windows wouldn't let me partition the CF card, but Disk Utility in OSX did. With a 64mb partition, it worked in the camera just fine, and the files wrote correctly for other computers to read. With the 950:

I recall when 1600x1200 files seemed wildly extravagant. Man.

 

[wolves3012]

My first digital was a Kodak DC210, bought ex-demo at a third of the price new. I refused to jump on the emerging digital technology since it was obvious the prices would crash. Next came a Fuji Finepix (2800??) that I sold on and is still in use. Nice pics off that but the EVF was hopeless in lower light. After that I bought the Minolta Z1 which is still in use. A mere 3.2Mp but a very capable camera with unbelievably good battery economy. I've bought a Nikon P50 P&S as a "carry-around" since it's smaller but I've still kept the Minolta and film cameras for more "serious" use. I'm not prepared to drop film until it becomes out of reach on price or too much hassle on availability.

 

[jsrockit]

My first digital camera was this:

.3 Megapixels and a "bargain" at around $400 at the time... 🙂

I remember making baseball card sized prints with it and bringing them to my photo class in college in 1996-1997 range. People were astounded (digital was new) and horrified (the quality was horrible).

 

[Sonnar Brian]

I modified the Coolpix 950 for full-spectrum,

above with a green-blocking filter on it. I still use it, but just ordered a full-spectrum EP2.

 

[Mr_Flibble]

My first camera was a Trust Family C@m , A webcam that could be used as a 1.2 megapixel camera as I recall. Ran on 2 penlight batteries and took about 200 photos. Quality was utter cr@p though. I think this was somewhere in 1998 or so.

In 2002 I bought an Canon Ixus V2 with 2.1MP. It served me well through many holidays and events. Later on I used it for Macro photography of model aircraft and other tiny stuff... 2 weeks ago the sensor no longer worked though 🙁

The really good thing that came out of it was that it got me interested in photography and ultimately in Rangefinders!

 

[efix]

I remember my stepfather bought his first digital camera in the late 90ies. It looked like a film compact with flash but without display, and it had a 3 kilopixel (!) sensor. Took pretty crappy pictures, but hey, it was the first digital camera I ever saw, and it was hip at that time! 🙂

My first digital was bought in 2002 - pretty late considering digital was already common at that time. It was a cheapo fix-focus camera without memory card support that had 2 megapixels and an internal memory of 32 MB. I had it for about one-and-a-half years, accompanying my Pentax ME reflex, until I got a digital with zoom and more features in late 2003.

Ha - I just found it! It was a Mustek GSMart LCD 3, here's a picture:

Aww, we shared some great moments! ;-) I believe I still have it somewhere, but it stopped working a few years ago ...

 

[newspaperguy]

I guess I don't understand how you guys burn out your pixels so quickly. I'm still using a Olympus C-3030 from 2000 as a backup to my 2002 C-5050, as well as my 2003 Canon G-5. My wife is still shooting real estate for sale with her 1998
Nikon 900.

Maybe its just that old dogs hate new tricks?

 

[dexdog]

My Oly C2020 purchased in 1999 still works fine.

 

[Frank Petronio]

It's a real shame the camera manufacturers have eliminated innovation and experimentation from camera design. It seems that in the 90s they actually thought outside of the box about how cameras could be. Remember the Wim Wenders film, "Until the End of the World" where the heroine used a horizontal digital camera?

I guess chimping on the LCD killed all of that. On the pro DSLR side Kodak really set the standard for workflow (raw files, conversion software, LCD previews) that everyone else adopted. Looking back, Kodak was brilliant and it is a shame they are no longer active in the market (I think their patent income is huge).

I had the first consumer digital still camera, a Canon Xap Shot from 1989. I still have the mini-floppy disc. It was really a video camera that did stills I believe. I think it was $800 and worthless to use, I got better quality from a video frame grabber on my Mac. Probably should have kept it though, someday it will be worth millions....

Then I rented the $$$ Kodak DCS that based on the manual Nikon F3 body and had a huge SCSI drive you could sling over your shoulder. I actually shot a catalog with it and used it for the tiny shots. I also used a remote access set-up to upload images of a press conference to a corporate server, but that was more an exercise in PR than practicality.

I had one of those Fuji vertical digitals around the turn of the century... the one Leica rebranded. Mine had a fixed focal length and was a pretty darn good camera, I used images from it, converted to B&W, for a local guide book (4x6 reproductions) and also used it to shoot art for illustrations, some of which became billboards, so I could claim to have shot a billboard with a 2mp consumer camera, lol. All those bikes and beer glasses were shot with it.

Attached is from the old Fuji, I did a lot of Photoshop work obviously but it made good files for what it was. Imagine a compact with a metal case and only 12-15 menu options, a solid control dial... simplicity itself.

 

[hteasley]

I guess I don't understand how you guys burn out your pixels so quickly. I'm still using a Olympus C-3030 from 2000 as a backup to my 2002 C-5050, as well as my 2003 Canon G-5. My wife is still shooting real estate for sale with her 1998
Nikon 900.

Maybe its just that old dogs hate new tricks?

I need RAW files, and the 950 only shoots JPGs. But I do a lot of technical things with my photos: I do a lot of texture shots, to turn into texture maps for 3D objects, and I need very high resolution initial images to piece them together to make good maps.

And I'm a gadget freak, and constantly upgrade my electronics.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

My 950 is at work: I thought it could save RAW files in a TIFF format?

 

[PentHassyKon]

I've never seen a Museum with a "Digital Camera Display" showing the fast evolution that took place. Too recent in History I guess. I have some Pop Photo's going back to 1990 that featured a Digital camera section in their annual "Camera Guide" issue. Fuji had the first digital camera that stored to a solid state memory card. Kodak did not do that until the DCS400 series, 1994~1995. The 6MPixel Kodak DCS460 ran $30,000. John Glenn took one into space on the Shuttle, it is at the Udvar Hazy Air and Space Museum in Virginia.

The nikonweb.com site is a good one for digital cameras, however I found this one also, details other brands
http://www.digicamhistory.com/FINDER.html

 

[Sonnar Brian]

I must have one of the only Infrared versions of the DCS200 made. Of course, I did call Kodak up and asked them to make it. They called back, another customer wanted the same thing, and stated they would not only make it but also put it on GSA schedule.

 

[dee]

My 2002 Canon G2 still works perfectly with new battery and charger - quite content to use it's 4mp as well

 

[dee]

It sometimes seems to me modern that a 5mp camera would give acceptable results with less file space on my Mac !