What was the first digital camera in space? It turns out in 1991 NASA sent a modified Nikon F3 with small Kodak CCD sensor and external processing unit on a shuttle mission. Called the Hawkeye II, this system used a RS-232 serial port to connect to its external gear. Kodak would use this platform as the basis for the DCS system, the first commercially available digital camera.
To put this in perspective, 1991 was the year that Linux was released, Apple released System 7 for the Mac, and the floppy disk was a popular storage device. Early limitations though didn't apply to the NASA space program. They were able to squeeze digital components into an F3 to pioneer the field of digital photography.
If nothing else this realistically goes to prove how far we have come and how lucky we all are as photographers to be at the point we are in digital imaging.
I recall the amazement we had as children when my mother borrowed a video camera from her work around this time ... 30mins run time to a full size VHS in an outboard recorder. fast forward to now.. nokia lumia range phones have near broadcastable video ( iphone etc... sorry but nokia's do have a more robust codec)
Thinking on stills, we have at our disposal machines that not only resolve better than most of the analog systems ever devised but are so refined that we have become complacent of the power we have been given! In 1991 I doubt anyone would be complaining about a lack of iso 256k or that the auto hdr bracketing was 3 menu items down.
Great article on the turning point of it all to hopefully bring us all a little back to ground ;)
What an excellent concept. Imagine a slim digital back that you could attach to your Nikon F3 (or Canon F1) that would transmit images shot to an ipad/iphone over wireless for chimping / editing and allow you to set digital parameters from the ipad too. Superbly designed and built cameras coupled to modern technology. It would be nice to think that a manufacturer was working on this concept... Sigma perhaps with a full frame X3 Foveon? Ooh, is that coffee I smell :)
Ian.. the Key term you have said there is "the issue was". It wouldn't be a problem now , but such a product would not sell more than a few hundred, so it would not make sense economically / production wise
Because it would be such a limited novelty, Canon or Nikon should just make a special edition product for $10,000 and sell them to collectors. If people end up using them in the field, maybe that would encourage a larger-scale release.
interesting that you said that.. Because Leica made a Digital back for there Leicaflex cameras that were priced at 10,000 dollars. They did not sell well and production did not last long. I do like your Idea tho, and would love someone to do it, but I doubt it would happen.
What would be best is, if someone made a back that, with appropriate adapter, can attach to more than one brand of Legacy Film cameras. That digital back would at least have a chance. .
Kodak didn't fold per say. It emerged from bankruptcy as restructured and much smaller company. Their film division (most importantly was sold and is alive and well with increasing sales two years in a row. It's just not your old Kodak anymore.
Hi they have restructured, then why have they sold off several licenses. A Chinese company has rights to the Kodak name on compact cameras, they sold a CCD Patent and many other expensive patents. I think you need to look further before making coment
Jk Imaging is a US company that oversees the sales and worldwide distribution for Kodak branded cameras. JK partnered with Asia Optical of Taiwan to engineer and manufacture the products in Taiwan and China.
A consortium of 12 consisting of Apple, Research In Motion, Google, Samsung, Adobe, HTC, Facebook, Fujifilm, Huawei, Amazon, Shutterfly and Microsoft bought the 1100 library of Kodak patents.
No just a Sony prototype in 80's Sony first Mavica commercially available was 2nd part of 90's. The writer should say " DSLR" instead of camera. First commercially available was the very expensive Canon RC-701 than you had a " pretty affordable" Canon Ion in 1988.
1st Digital camera prototype known, is Kodak in 1975
In 1981 Sony launched the "Mavica" still video camera with a magnetic recording system (Mavipak 2.0" diskettes). Just in time for the 1986 Los Angeles Summer Olympics, Canon came out with their own digital camera: the RC-701. It was a still video (SV) camera which recorded onto magnetic media (miniature floppy disks?).
You must be very young if you are using wikipedia.org as a Source.....OR.. I am sorry! . . .maybe you are not very young . . . maybe you are too old to know any better, because everyone who has been in High school or College within the past 10-15 years (at least) can tell you; WIKIPEDIA is not a Valid source for accurate information , and no educational institution in America will accept it as a source for research. The average educated middle age person would know it as a poor source for facts too .. Especially since anyone can make a page or edit a page.
Yea that would make sense.. since most professional photographers would stay away from commenting on this site. It would make sense that there would be a wide variety of professions for the people who make up our our membership
When NASA wanted a digital camera they modified a NIKON F3. NASA must have had good reasons to choose that body. I wonder why Nikon choose the Df over of F3, FM3,...
Why would Nikon break? They can add D800 sensor to D5 body... And D5s can be with D800E sensor...
nothin' to be worried ;)
( well surely any p&s cam will disappear smaller than 1" sensor or worse than F.2.8 aperture.. And no life for any mirror less system which has smaller than micro 43 or focusing in minute the technology aka, eos m ;) )
Please stop with the idea of more MPs in a future D5.
Specifically, that Sony sensor in the D800 isn’t particularly good at high ISOs, and, in someways even more important for image quality: Above base ISO, the dynamic range of that sensor simply can’t keep up with the sensor in the D4.
Then there’s the file size thing.
Yes, a future D5 can have more mega pixels, as long as those megapixels don’t interfere with frame rate, dynamic range and image quality, which the Sony sensor would.
Nikon will not go broke. They have been the innovators of many things over the years, look at the picture in a far bigger light, what have Canon been the innovator of. Fluorite glass had many serious issues and that is why Canon no longer sell Fluorite lenses. Look at the whole picture and not a blinkered view. Kodak have sold off all their real businesses and are just bout hanging in. Who now owns the Kodak Camera manufacturing license. Its NOT Kodak Americans think that the Japanese rely on the USA for sales. sadly it no longer the case
It's true that Apple released System 7 on 15 floppies, but at that time technology in PC world was pretty advanced.
In 1989 there was pocketable PC-compatible computer with Intel CPU - Atari Portfolio. John Connor used it to hack ATM in Terminator 2. It was a real thing, a fully functional PC weighting 1 pound.
Kodak was run by some inefficient and corrupt CEOs which led to its failure.......Now I wonder how many of those Kodak executives have a swiss bank account........
Kodak was first to pioneer the digital camera. They had it all. What happened. Would Kodak have survived if the CEOs were interested in the future of the company rather than next quarter's profit. Reminds me of Steve Jobs and Steve Scully. Apple II made money while Macintosh did not. Scully therefore did not like the Macintosh. Scully end up tanking the company. That whole generation of CEOs were failures.
Here's a link at Jim McGarvey's site that I had to dig a little to find, but its good reading. http://eocamera.jemcgarvey.com/pdf/dcsstory.pdf Complete history of the pro digital camera program. Some of the cameras were seen by very few people, including and underwater digital SLR!
Ian, you do not know what you are speaking of. All of these were available commercially, and were primarily sold to corporations and government entities. Kodak did not make these for the fun of it. I was part of this and know it to be a fact.
Actually if you would like more info on the Kodak cameras from the dawn of the digital SLR take a look at Jim McGarvey's website: http://eocamera.jemcgarvey.com/ Jim was one of the most influential engineers in the development of the digital cameras. Make sure to check out the links at the bottom of the page too.
I thought of that when DPReview first posted this, and your point is correct, but as I'm sure you realize DPR means person operated camera. (Yes, CCDs had been used in spy satellites for years by 1991.)
More bothered by this being called the "first commercially available digital camera".
And now we have to pray the Russians don't forget to unlock the door of the next Soyuze rocket for a single Amerikanski to pay mega Rubles for a ride into space ... Thank you Mr. Obama and your Republican counterparts for underfunding NASA all these decades!
NASA was a way too expensive program, id well, but too much $ This is now in the hands of private businesses like Space X, meant to launch satellites, not to show muscle to Russia. http://www.teslamotors.com/executives
NASA is an example of government waste. We need the space program, but not NASA. Space Shuttle as cool as it was, was only a government handout to friends of politicians. It did not push the technology envelope. People that love the Shuttle were the one who made tons of money off of it. And they drape themselves in the flag. That was it.
Without the shuttle there would never have been an International Space Station flying around like it does now.
You can find space exploration costing a lot of money, but in the meantime for every dollar that was put into it 10 dollars came back out and which brought us very new technologies especially in medication and science.
Space X, and the internet, wouldn't exist without massive government research big projects like Apollo.
Frankly, Henry Ford would never have been able to develop and mass produce the Model T car, if the US Army hadn't started a large industrial standardization project in the 1880s.
So ironic that you post comments like yours on the interwebs.
"NASA didn't go to the moon" ..... that old chestnut. This has been debunked so many times it's ridiculous. The Soviet Union would have howled from the roof tops if it didn't actually happen. Don't you think they were watching?
Kodak folded because (among many issues) they allowed the RS-232 port to be on the front of the camera! Amazing stuff... wonder what the crop factor and pixel count of this Million Dollar prototype was? Anyone say in the video... I jumped around and didn't catch every line.
Wow, I always find this kind of technological pioneering fascinating. I'm really curious though, considering that the lens didn't look particularly fast, especially with a combined 3X TC, and '91 CCDs not being super sensitive how long you have to aim it at anything that far and how do you stabilize the camera for this long on a spacecraft.
even awesomer ( for those that have only awesome, cool and humungous in their arsenal of adjectives ) .....
From Ken Rockwell about John Glenn in 1962, in the era of film ...
"Glenn was the first American to see a sunrise and sunset from space, and was the first photographer in orbit, having taken along a 35millimeter Minolta purchased from a Cocoa Beach, Florida drugstore."
"A view of both coasts of Florida taken by Glenn during his space flight using a modified Ansco Autoset 35mm camera with RCN film. NASA photograph"
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