Do you remember your first encounter with a digital image?

[andredossantos]

Funny enough, I don't remember! I remember noticing that all of a sudden a lot of people were using little point and shoots. I also remember buying a Canon Powershot with 2MB's before heading out on a vacation. That little thing brought me back to photography after a several year long hiatus.

 

[Keith]

dpreview has a timeline starting in 1995 of consumer level digital cameras which I found fascinating.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/timeline.asp?start=1996

It's incredible to think that in just fifteen years at a consumer level we've gone from .3 megapixel Casios to what's on offer now ... the new X100 comes to mind here!

 

[bgb]

My first digital photo was of someones cat around the time (2002) the Nikon D100 was released, I took the shot loaded it into the computer and sent it off ... it was like Magic.
Friend of mine had the F100 and was going to get the D100 soon, today I see a D100 for sale online here in NZ for $100
Things sure change fast in the digital world.

 

[Haigh]

Yes, some years ago in Kyoto and I loved what I saw.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

you people have been in digital already in -90's 😱

Not me! Started in the 80s. Used a Scanning Densitometer to Digitize negatives in the 70s.

 

[hexiplex]

My first encounter with digital cameras was Gameboy camera and the printer that came with it (I think I got it for christmas 1998). I thought it was amazing, I went around with that little orb mounted on my Gameboy and snapped crappy black and white pictures like a madman.

The first "real" digital camera I saw was my fathers Fuji Finepix, I think that was in spring of 1999, the family dog had died the day before and my father went out and bought the Finepix along with another dog, the camera so that we wouldn't ever lack pictures to remember the new canine by. The Fuji took quite impressive pictures, dad still used it up until a year ago when he dropped it.

My fathers first encounter with digital imaging is something similar to Brians, he worked with the early fax machines, document scanners and so on... In those days when even digital was fairly analogue 😉

 

[gavinlg]

Dads minolta di-mage point and shoot from early somewhere in the 2000's. It was actually a pretty decent little camera, and 4.7mp if I remember correctly. Still working too.

 

[mtargz]

I think around 2003-2004, I bought my first camera - a digital P&S - with my Christmas money. I don't remember it's name, but it was boxy, had a 2mp sensor, and cost me exactly 100 Euros, which was all I had at the time.

I loved the little thing (not so little by today's standards - about Canon G sized) to bits, and took it everywhere I went. At first I used to fill up the built-in memory and empty it every 33-35 shots, so it wasn't even too different compared to film cameras.

Sadly, on a trip to Paris, I went to take it out of my bag only to find the zipper open and the camera missing. I still miss it sometimes, despite the mushy output and horizontal banding it displayed.

 

[hipsterdufus]

NBA Jam! They had "digitized" the players faces. It was a very big deal for the time and it was one of the features that they advertised for the game.

"He's on fire!"

 

[divewizard]

My first experience using a digital camera was in 1997. I rented a Olympus D-300L to take pictures for a web site I was setting up for a friend.

Here are some of the pictures I took then:

 

[Sonnar Brian]

A Kodak DCS200ir, 1992.

1.6MPixels. Kodak made it for me without the cemented IR cut filter over the CCD. It was the first Digital camera in the DCS series made for Infrared. $12,400 for the body.

 

[Doug]

1996... I bought a Kodak DC-50 to document maintenance etc around a rental property. $990, about 0.5 Mp, used PCMCIA memory cards. It did the job! Still have it somewhere...

 

[Warren T.]

i first played with a friend's 1MP Nikon Coolpix (late 90's?), but after trying it out, I decided that the features, ergonomics, and IQ were not yet good enough for me to get into digital. I waited to jump into digital.

My first digital was the Sony DSC-D770, a fixed lens, 1.5MP, slr-like digicam with optical viewfinder. The lens optics and ergonomics were superb. Focus was slow, and focus accuracy was a problem with that camera.

My next jump up was when the Nikon D100 came out. I HAD to have one, I bought one new for $2000 for the body alone (around year 2002-2003), and I still have it today. I still use it with my large array of Nikon lenses when I'm feeling nostalgic.

I stayed with the D100 until March 2010 when I jumped into the micro 4/3 format. Of course, I still shoot film but micro 4/3 is currently my digital format choice.

--Warren

 

[migtex]

Unlike Brian I only started Digital in 1998...

My first Digital picture and my ninth and twelfth... Sony Mavica....
Next ones where Nikon's of course... (coolpix 99x) and so on...