My 20-year old Powershot G3 still works!
11 months ago
2
Modern tech is often thought to be somewhat disposable, but sometimes you get solid gadgets that just refuse to die.
It's the 20-year anniversary of the Powershot G3 (launched 2002 I think), and I bought mine in 2003, for £470. Expensive for the time, but not out of reach. Having learned the basics of photography with my dad's old Canon 35m SLR, this was my first digital camera, and I just loved it. It took great pictures and the battery would always comfortably last a whole day of shooting.
My G3 went into retirement after about 2010ish, and I started using the camera on my mobile phone to take casual snaps, but they never seemed quite as good, even when the resolution on phones started to outstrip the 4MP G3.
Shortly after I saw the "throwback Thursday" Powershot on the front page of DPReview, I found my old G3 in a cupboard, and plugged it in to see what would happen. I was not optimistic - 20 years is a long time for consumer electronics, and it had not even been plugged in or used at all for the past 10 years.
But it worked! After a full charge of the battery, and re-setting the clock (which only goes up to 2030!), I tried it out. And everything still worked perfectly. I thought some of the mechanicals might have stuck, but no. Zoom and the ND filter all worked like the camera was brand new.
My Windows 10 laptop recognised it when I plugged it in via USB (I don't have a compactflash card reader any more), and fetched the photos. Adobe Lightroom even processed my old CRW raw files that I had saved.
Couple of snaps attached from when I first started using it - no cropping or retouching, these are just the camera RAW files converted to JPG with a bit of white balance adjustment. These are not particularly good photos, but I was just taking snaps of where I was living at the time.
Camden Lock, London, looking towards Gilbey House
Camden Lock, London