Digital F3 aka DCS100

[rxmd]

For those of you who like the idea of a classic SLR with a digital option, there's just the thing for you on the 'bay - a DCS100, a/k/a a Nikon F3 with an 1.3 megapixel digital back, no screen and consequently no chimping, just a bare-bones SLR in all its late-1970s glory.

It seems to be missing the processing unit that goes underneath the camera, so it will take a fair bit of tinkering with the camera interface to get pictures out, and for that it's priced fairly expensively. And the crop factor is 1.8. But hey, it's a classic SLR with a digital back, 1991 style, just the thing everybody's been asking for 😀

 

[Frank Petronio]

I used one of the early Nikon F3 models with a shoulder-straped 30-40mb Hard Drive and 4' SCSI cable circa 1991 or 92 for shooting some press events as an "experiment" for Corning Inc. We attempted to send jpgs via dial-up Remote Access to their design department server. Kodak was loaning the gear out to commercial shooters informally, I guess to get feedback. It didn't work very well but you can imagine some of the hurdles.

Later in 94 I shot one of the first catalogs using a Kodak-Nikon digital and it was OK for small product shots, like 1.5" tall. It was hard to focus and the images sucked, it was a very difficult to use and it cost us a lot of extra time.

Considering how far we've come so quickly, we really are living in the Jetson's Age, at least as far as computing, imaging, communications is going.

It also helps you realize how much Kodak did to create all of this technology and I hope they are getting good licensing fees for it. You have to remember that Kodak (and to a lesser extent Leaf and Scitex) carried nearly all of digital's weight up until the very late 90s. (And ultimately all the companies were rolled into Kodak).

 

[sevo]

It seems to be missing the processing unit that goes underneath the camera, so it will take a fair bit of tinkering with the camera interface to get pictures out,

In other words, if you have a few resident electronics engineers around and significant amounts of cash to spare on reverse engineering a digital camera missing two thirds of its electronics, go ahead...

 

[rxmd]

In other words, if you have a few resident electronics engineers around and significant amounts of cash to spare on reverse engineering a digital camera missing two thirds of its electronics, go ahead...

Exactly... Alternatively, you need the patience and money to wait for one of those 987 units to pop up somewhere on the globe. 😀