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Average rating:
3.15
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Kodak DCS4201.5 megapixels
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Average rating:
3.15
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Opinion: It's amazing how technoligy has advance. I have not owned or seen one of these cameras. (hope you don't get mad at me) I just found it amazing how great cameras have gotten, I was born 12 months after this came out. Would also like to add how it's amazing how Kodak still hasn't gone out of business. There cameras are pathetic!
Problems: old...Good for it's time I guess
Opinion: I owned one of these for a month or two towards the end of 2009. I paid £25 for it, and bought it to compare with my six megapixel DCS 460, which was the high-resolution twin of the DCS 420. I managed to wrestle some good images out of the DCS 460, but the DCS 420 was clearly not ready for prime time for reasons I will explain in the next section.
Kodak also released a press model, the N2000, which had a more normal cropping factor (1.5x rather than the whopping 2.6x of the DCS 420), a slightly lower resolution (1.3mp to 1.5mp), and an expanded ISO range (200-1600 rather than 100-400). There's a lengthy article about this on the internet by Eamon Hickey, and judging by his comments the N2000 was a better deal at the time.
As an antique is has a certain underdog status. It feels bad to criticise a camera that is so old. I am tempted to emphasise the positives and pooh-pooh the negatives. But I will resist that temptation. The race will not prosper if it is built on lies.
Problems: The lack of an anti-aliasing filter made things sharp, but whereas the DCS 460 tended not to produce moire the DCS 420 suffered badly from it.
As with the DCS 460 the fundamental problem with the DCS 420 was colour response, which was poor and washed-out and wrong, to a degree that defeated me. I even tried using Kodak's own DCS Acquire software in an old Macintosh but to no avail; the DCS 420's files suffered from infrared contamination and wrong-looking colour, and also a graduated colour cast along the bottom of the image. Even with a stack of two Tiffen hot mirror filters I could never be confident that the colour when shot outdoors in sunshine would be any good.
The 2.6x cropping factor complicates things greatly, because it is hard to find cheap hot mirror filters for ultrawide lenses. The best results I could produce outdoors were vivid but looked wrong. When shooting indoors with a 28mm and an IR blocking filter the results looked decent but washed-out, and what was the point of it all? Any modern digital SLR could have produced superior results with less fuss, and every time I reached for the DCS 420 I felt that I was just wasting my life when I could have been (a) using a better camera instead or (b) making love to a beautiful woman on a yacht moored off Monaco.
As a camera to use from day-to-day the DCS 420 is a terrible choice. It is however an interesting historical curiosity. It's not quite the first digital SLR - it's the earliest one listed at DPReview, but Kodak also made a DCS 200 and DCS beforehand, and the DCS 410, which I think was a budget version of the DCS 420 with a fixed ISO and smaller buffer. I have seen the DCS 200 a few times on the second-hand market; as far as I can tell it is similar to the DCS 420 but only captures 8 bits per channel rather than 10.
Opinion: First of all, this is a camera that requires at least an average IQ... There's a lot of hassle to get it working on a modern Win-XP system - the installation of ForceASPI, the installation of a SCSI controller and finding XP drivers for it, and finally, downloading XP drivers for the camera itself.
Someone who can't cope with this process will be disappointed, but once you get it done and it comes to life, this is a MAGNIFICENT camera. Resolution and image quality-wise it doesn't differ that much from a Nikon D1, and costs a tiny fraction of that cost!
It doesn't have an anti-aliasing (softening) filter, so its images are razor-sharp, at the expense on some color moire at hi-contrast details. However, even its current 14-megapixel successors still show that problem, so it's really nothing to complain about.
It's one heck of a great digital camera for a pathetic price, it's really worth all the installing hassle and rewards you with lovely images... I bought this thing DIRT CHEAP, and I'm absolutely amazed just how much of a professional, real, fully capable D-SLR it really is!
Conclusion: If you're not a pro, don't even bother with the D1 or the overpriced D70, as long as you know how to operate it, this is the D-SLR for you. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
Problems: None whatsoever, this thing is as simple as a stick and just about unbreakable. The only problem i can think of is that it requires and infra-red filter - without it, everything that emits infrared rays or reflects those from the sun - goes pink. IR filters are expensive and hard to find - but it's no big deal at all, as a SINGLE CLICK in Photoshop (auto-color) fixes this problem easily in most cases. If not, you'll need two clicks ;-)
Opinion: I'm just buy this camera but it doesn't work because i can't find the driver for it.
Problems: Can some body help me to find the driver for win 98 ??? my adres is : j.walstock@wxs.nl
Already thanks for response me !
Opinion: Brought one home for $650 with a AF 28mm (wide angel lens) great value for the $, the only thing you have to know how to use PhotoShop or you are in troubles, this Camera only records the imgaes in RAW tiff formats.
Problems: the batteries are so old that they won't hold the charge, kodak does not sell them anymore, so I used a quantum 5+ externally, no biggy. had a little poblems getting drivers for Windows XP, but ended up writing them, will post them on the site when they are complete...
Opinion: I bought this camera for $500 from a friend, well, not a friend
of mine anymore. I thought that this would be worth it, but i
brought it home and it just sucked...then I got online and
realized that the cameras VERY old...how could of I been
suckered into buying it! AH!!!
Problems: Everything
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Reviews and specs
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Galleries
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Challenges
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 | 22.3 megapixels 3.2" screen Full frame sensor |
