Ten unique cameras from the dawn of consumer digital photography

he he, I used to own a MVC-CD1000 with the CD-Rs - I still have a hundred or so lying around gathering dust somewhere.

The cam was nice, but what I didn't realize before I bought it is the fact it didn't have a write buffer - unbelievable! You had to wait after EVERY SINGLE shot until the data was written to the CD :-(

But it produced a real nice picture quality for the time...

My digital firsts: scanned film and prints on an HP ScanJet IIc in the late 80s or early 90s (?), used Panit Shop Pro, and never went back to the chemical darkroom.

While waiting for the price of full frame to come down (still hasn't!), I spent $300 on film one vacation, so I spent $300 on a used digital hoping that every shot would be free from there on.

Bought a $300 used Minolta DiMage 7 7x zoom 5mp from KEH, killed it, they refunded, bought another, killed it, got it refunded.

Bought a $250 used Minolta DiMage A1 7x zoom 5mp from KEH, killed it, Sony rebuilt it free, but I killed it again.

I bought a $150 used Minolta DiMage A2 7x zoom 8mp from KEH and it seems (finally) impregnable.

But now, even a mini-dslr-like DSL/EVF camera seems too big.

I got an $80 used Panasonic Leica TZ1 10x 5mp, and carry and use it all the time, or a $50 used Blackberry Torch 9810 5mp, or an mp3 player 1.3mp camera.

I'll probably never use my dozens of full frame film lenses now anyway.

A history of DSLR's would be interesting. I still have shots taken with my first, a Minolta RD175. 3 CCD's and a whopping 1.75 Mp. Since then I have tried a lot more.

What, no Canon digital Elph? I still have mine...

I don't remember the name but I had a B&W digital in 1992. I think it was made by Epson. I still have pictures taken with it.

Re. the Casio, we got 3 of them as product placement from Casio for a feature film back in July 1995. I gave away 2, still have the 3rd one someplace. Actually, what we got was the QV-10A model that had a larger LCD screen, could take VGA resolution images, had a larger internal memory, and also had a 2-setting lens -- normal and tele. Would love to find one that makes this much sense today.

Thanks for the article. An interesting trip down memory lane.

I started off digital with a Canon G2 in 2002 and in the past couple of months decided to acquire, purely for their historic interest, three Mavicas - a floppy only FD71, what I term the intermediate type using a floppy and memory card, the FD200, and finally the 5 meg CD500 and which is the one that arouses most interest when I show it to friends.

The IQ of the CD500 with its Zeiss Vario Sonnar lens I prefer to the Canon G5 that I upgraded to from the G2. In fact I also prefer its IQ to that of the 5 meg Sony DSC-V1 with which it was contemporaneous. The bulk of the CD500 isn't an issue for me today, but its very slow operational speed is. But it is great fun to use.

Kodak DC20 had no rear LCD. My very first digital camera and I still have it. It was extremely simple: shutter/power/erase buttons, optical viewfinder, power/busy/memory full LED indicators. No options, no modes, no reviews. Just shoot until the light came on and you were done. Only held 8 0.2mp images. Those were the days. I remember using it on a trip with my son to Yellowstone. I was very selective of what I shot with it so I could make a calendar for his mom. (Scanning film was too expensive then, for me at least.)

The Mavica may seem stupid today, but remember that computers from the 1990s didn't have USB ports, and prior to Windows XP in 2001, even if your computer did have a USB port, it didn't work unless you installed drivers for it, which probably required you to type in cryptic DOS commands.

So recording to floppy disk was a creative solution from Sony.

of that period remember the Chinon ES-3000, the first with 560,000 Pixels.

Well lets not forget the man who is behind all of this "Digital Camera" idea. Steven Sasson invented the first digital camera in 1975. ( while he was working for Kodak) It weighed 8 pounds (3.6 kg) and had only 0.01 megapixels. The image was recorded onto a cassette tape and this process took 23 seconds. His camera took images in black and white.

This brings back memories. Back in the mid-90's, I worked with many of these early digital cameras, integrating them into a system for mobile insurance adjusters (think hurricanes) to submit fully electronic claims (with photos) to the insurance companies. Each camera had its own unique method of getting photos onto the computer. Some used cables and TWAIN API, some had proprietary libraries, and some used disks or PC cards -- it was a huge pain. But insurance adjusters fell in love with these early digital cameras, because it meant no more daily trips to get film developed, which meant they could process more claims each day and therefore earn more.

We (sort of) had a digital camera in high school in 1987 or 1988. It took many seconds to scan the images...around 20-60 seconds, so you had to sit very still. :-) I can't recall what it was, and I was just a kid...

Kodak DC360 was competitive and I almost bought it, but ended up buying the Olympus C3000 ($800 for 3MP). That was 1999, but I had followed digital cameras for a year before buying one - when the various sites were just coming online.
I think it was steves-digicams who used to give prizes at multiples of 100k page hits (which took quite awhile to reach!).

Check out dchis.com.

My first digital camera was in late 1997 early 1998 - the Minolta Dimage V with 2.7x manual zoom & 640x480 resolution.

http://www.rvharvey.com/dimagev.htm
http://www.manualslib.com/manual/89971/Minolta-Dimage-V.html#manual

It actually took great photos (in good light)

In the pre-digital camera era (1994) I used a Canon still video camera & a video capture card. The capture card alone cost £400 & could capture images at 320x240.

I still have a Casio QV-10A and the proprietary cable and even the power-cube so you could use it without batteries. I remember when the music store I hung out at bought it - $800 Canadian dollars at the time and it was considered a bargain!

We also had a Sony thermal video printer we could plug it into with an RCA video cable. I think the printer was about $3000.

An awful lot of "sefies" were taken with that camera because you could flip the lens around backwards and it would automatically "right" the photograph upright.

I powered the camera up the other day - it still works - barely. After a while QV-10 cameras had an issue with their sprung sliding on switch. The camera would randomly switch off.

Great article, but in the final thoughts you might want to change 'detachable lenses' to 'detachable LCDs''

I remember seeing these things in the trade publications, in some camera stores, and even in the hands of some early adopters. I knew this was the wave of the future and that film would be left in the weeds sooner or later (just didn't think it would happen as fast as it did!). I remember tuning them out for two reasons: they were so damn expensive for what you got, and they didn't have a flash hotshoe or PC contact so I couldn't use them in my studio... what I really wanted was instant feedback during shoots without the use of Polaroids. I remember having a deep sense of joy and anticipation when the early digitals began sporting hotshoes and maybe a PC contact... Like the Canon Sureshot G1 and G2 and Kodak 280 (I think). The price was still prohibitive. Then Canon with it's landmark D30, D60, 10D and finally 20D brought digital down to earth!

I think the Olympus C-211 deserves mention.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/2000/7/25/c211zoom

A friend had one back in the day, and I remember thinking it was such a cool camera to have the ability to print instant photos from the digital files!

Another suggestion for part 2 -- the Pentax Optio S. It was so small that you could use an Altoids tin as a camera case (which is exactly what Pentax did when they revealed the camera at 2003's Consumer and Electronics Show). With decent image quality and the ability to use it as digital audio recorder, 3D and Panorama modes, it still makes a nice pocket camera at its $20 price these days.

I was drooling over a Minolta Vectis RD-3000 at this stage of the game, having the S-1 system.
Fun (expensive) stuff.

One wonders how digital photography didn't die early looking at these camera's.

I always liked the Sony Mavica with the floppy drive. I used one at work quite a bit. It p!ssed me off when they went to the CD-R!

No mention of the EPiX Pro... amazing :)

But the Fotoman is HUGELY important.

Correction for the Mavica part of the article: A CD-ROM isn't writable by definition, ROM standing for read-only memory.

what about the Logitech PhotoMan....
two models...I had the updated one so...the second model...
https://www.google.com/search?q=logitech+fotoman&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=4egUUomHMOeBiwLH4YHQBQ&sqi=2&ved=0CC0QsAQ&biw=1536&bih=815

......which I still have somewhere....
B/w......

anyone remember that?

I even had an add-on lens or two for it....

my 5d3 is a little better..... though....

my first digital was the batman styled Polaroid PDC-3000!.. 1996 lols

http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/P3K/P3KA.HTM

first pro bodied studio camera ( the studio brought three of them at $30k each lols ) was the 2001 Kodak DCS760 6mp nikon pro body monster.. dropped it on my foot once.. OUCHES! haha.. still in use at that old studio up until just a couple of years ago lols.. boss wouldn't upgrade them until he went out of business stating they never paid for themselves and he was still paying them all off.. sucker..

I still own my Casio QV-10A, along with a number of lens adaptors (wide angle, magnified, etc.). I bought it new in '95 or '96 (I believe) for $500 and used it for several years. The camera still works good as new (aside from the battery cover which won't stay shut).

The only "major" issue I have with the QV-10A is no longer owning the proprietary cable needed to download images. I got around it (somewhat) by using the video cable to download the images as a movie into Sony Vegas so I could extract individual frames.

I bought an Epson PhotoPC in early 1996. I chose it over the QV-10 because it had 640x480 resolution over the QV-10's 320x240. The Epson lacked a view screen and battery life was ~20 shots!

In the early 90's my employer bought a Canon still digital camera that took these mini "video floppy disks". It had 640x480 resolution, had a proprietary interface card that was installed in the computer's internal expansion slot. It made very good pictures for the resolution but it was very expensive. Hard to believe that was over 20 years ago now.

Perhaps one of the most important cameras for the pro photohrapher was the Kodak DCS460. Many pros cut their digital teeth on that one.

We still use the Kodak in a specialized, essentially embedded application, with a UV setup. It's all controlled by a turn of the century PowerBook running OS9.

It's gotten quirky over the years but generally still works OK. Support, however, vanished a decade ago.

Still have my Fuji 'MX500' (1.5MP) that used those SmartMedia cards.