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Here is my collection of 600+ “old” digital cameras

151 points by stevewilhelm 8y ago

jelliclesfarm 8y ago
Hah! I don’t see the Canon G1. My first digital camera. Metal body. Carl Zeiss glass lens. Every thing afterward came in fiberglass bodies. Still have the G1!
- phirschybar 8y ago
  I was just looking for the G1 too. That was my first digital camera. I loved it!
  - geerlingguy 8y ago
    That whole line (G) was great for many years, some of the best overall consumer cameras each model in those early years, and much more compact than a DSLR.
    - jelliclesfarm 8y ago
      I still use it. Here is the fun part. I was able to use a IR filter with a lens adapter and create infra red film quality images after removing RGB layer. That was such a cool trick. Now..I had been trying to take infra red photos with film for years and I totally sucked at it. It was expensive and it was tricky. You couldn’t use just any camera because anything with electric features would leave a mark on the film because light acted different on IR film/aperture ..it was heat that registered. And gosh..one couldn’t find a place to process it. Every shot was hit and miss. I don’t think I made even one good IR film print. And then..it all changed with the G1 IR lens hack. I was so excited that I told everyone and blabbed endlessly. I did invite scorn mostly as it was considered ‘cheating’. The older photographers wouldnt stop pontificating about the virtues and glory of IR in film media.So I just stopped teaching people the trick. Suckers! Anyways..it won’t work with other digital P&S cameras that came later. To me, G1 was almost SLR quality because of the Carl Zeiss lens. Even with the focal length magnifier aspect! Fast forward many years and I got a DSLR(D3 and then canon D6). This trick sadly wouldn’t work with the new dslr cameras...it has something to do with a sensor light hitting the mirror.(sorry. I forget). And then I found out that someone made conversions for several hundred dollars but it would mean that it will only take IR shots(images still has to be digitally manipulated..the alteration was inbthe camera..not the lens or lens filter..). Also. It needed a dedicated lens and it was fixed. You can’t use different lens interchangeably. But it was still worth it for me. When I finally got a second DSLR many years later, I sent my old canon for the conversion and I think I use a 50 prime lens with it. It’s an older dslr and still has the 1.6x multiplier. It’s ok. With digital tweaking, I can now print 20x30 prints(Hellooooooo, Costco!!!) that is borderline medium format quality. It’s better with landscape shots than portraits. Altho IR can make a wrinkly 70 year old look like a teenager with gorgeous clear skin. How things have changed since film days! I enjoyed this one. Thanks for posting!
      - mark-r 8y ago
        Some Sony cameras were able to remove the IR filter automatically - they called it "Night Shot" mode. There was a IR LED that would help light the scene. They had to cripple it when it was discovered that some clothing was translucent in IR.
timonoko 8y ago
The first affordable one (Kodak DC20 of 1996) was actually very good. At least colorwise. Most people just did not know how to use it. You could make panoramas and use supersampling ie blend several static pictures: https://photos.app.goo.gl/sbG9uneEHakBMMSu5 https://photos.app.goo.gl/sbG9uneEHakBMMSu5
- drmpeg 8y ago
  I still have my Kodak DC-280. It can take very nice pictures. http://www.w6rz.net/DCP_1040.JPG http://www.w6rz.net/DCP_1040.JPG
  - shawndumas 8y ago
    W6RZ 73 de KC6SCD
- leejo 8y ago
  I had the Kodak DC-3200 back in 2001: http://old-digitalcameras.com/MorePicts/MP42.htm http://old-digitalcameras.com/MorePicts/MP42.htm. I recall it being great, and the CF card made it incredibly convenient. It's weird to look at the history of Kodak's digital camera lineup[1]. It's often said that Kodak fell because they didn't invest in the technology early enough and were too late by the time they started to do so in the 90s. I would argue that the existing user base of Canon and Nikon in the 80s probably contributed more to that - although Kodak made SLRs they didn't make lenses, and instead offered compatibility with Canon/Nikon's mounts. The problem is that the users of those lenses were more than likely to buy camera bodies manufactured by the same company, and not Kodak. Had Kodak offered bodies in the 80s then it's doubtful they would have sold to Canon/Nikon users due to the costs. It seems they were damned by either going for too much (cost) too soon, or too little too late. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_products_manufactured_by_Kodak#Kodak_professional_digital_cameras https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_products_manufactured_...
  - cr0sh 8y ago
    > I had the Kodak DC-3200 back in 2001: http://old-digitalcameras.com/MorePicts/MP42.htm http://old-digitalcameras.com/MorePicts/MP42.htm. I recall it being great, and the CF card made it incredibly convenient. My fifth (arguable) digital camera was a DC-3200; I still own several (others that I picked up at Goodwill). I say fifth and arguable because my first real digital camera, prior to it, was this no-name cheapo QVGA camera that took horrible pictures. Prior to that were a series of digitizers (a Dazzle for my 486, some digitizer for my Amiga, and a DS-69b for my TRS-80 Color Computer). There may have been a quickcam or two in there as well. Anyhow - yeah, it was a really nice camera, and I still keep it around (and the extras I bought) for taking "shop" pictures when my hands are dirty, or I'm in a "dirty" environment (welding, automotive work, etc). Don't want to ruin my phone or my "good" camera. But I do know of one major downside (ok, two): 1. Slow to take a picture - you had to press the button, and wait - don't move - otherwise it'd blur. 2. Ate AA batteries for lunch - you'd be lucky to get 2 hours out of a set. But other than those two things - it was really nice camera!
exabrial 8y ago
Years ago, I sent someone cash payment and my picture to have them scan it so I could have it on my AOL signature. I remember the alternative was contacting someone that had one of these new fangled digital cameras. I'm old.
j45 8y ago
Great list. Reminded of my first digital camera I used - the Apple QuickTake camera appearing in 94. While they were built by Fuji and Kodak, I believe the Apple Cameras predated Fuji and Kodak releasing their own. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_QuickTake https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_QuickTake Edit: I hope the author can add this camera to his collection, it's so comprehensive it didn't register when reading on a mobile device that it was more than a list.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  The picture quality of the original QuickTake was really impressive given its age. It was early 2000s before cheap consumer-grade digital cameras finally caught up.
  - j45 8y ago
    Taking photos with that first QuickTake and publishing it in a Pagemaker felt like it was science fiction.
tryum 8y ago
Wow impressive collection ! I probably have one not listed somewhere... I'll contribute if I stumble upon it : Creative PC-Cam 300 ;)
glup 8y ago
My parents had a Sony Mavica FD-91 for a conservation project in Panama in 1999 or 2000... the great joke was that there was an image quality setting where a single picture took more space than was currently available on the storage medium — floppy drives. At normal image quality, a single floppy held eight photos. The amount of technological improvement and decrease in cost between that camera and a 2003 Olympus point-and-shoot was stunning. I don't think I've seen hardware advance that quickly at any other point, except maybe PDAs around 2003 or smartphones around the introduction of the iPhone in 2007.
- dddw 8y ago
  that was a fun machine!
- RL_Quine 8y ago
  Sony produced a device that let you put a memory stick into the floppy drive. It had 3 coin cells to let it work as an emulator for the floppy disk for reads and writes. Seriously.
  - cronix 8y ago
    Hah, I hadn't seen that. It reminds me of those "cassette tapes" that came out around when CD's first came out, so you could play your portable CD through the car stereo system which only had cassette tapes at the time. My friend had one and I thought it was the funniest thing - a cassette tape with a 3 foot wire coming out of it to attach to the stereo minijack output of the cd player.
    - RL_Quine 8y ago
      https://obsoletemedia.org/sony-memory-stick-floppy-disk-adaptor/ https://obsoletemedia.org/sony-memory-stick-floppy-disk-adap...
- sevensor 8y ago
  I worked in a factory that had one of these. We weren't allowed to bring our own cameras in, but it was often necessary to photograph things for documentation. So you'd go check out the camera and the floppy disk, both of which had asset tags and had to be accounted for.
rchaud 8y ago
Very cool, I love that weird, hobbyist sites like this still exist. Nice walk down memory lane for those familiar with this tech. Sometimes I look at pictures taken with my 2006-era 3MP Nikon Coolpix and marvel at how bad they look compared to anything I was using from 2013 onwards.
Tepix 8y ago
Nice collection, but he wants to sell it. We still have a Sony Mavic camera somewhere with a 3.5" floppy drive. I think it has XGA (1024x768) resolution. I wonder if the battery is still ok.
- jmiller099 8y ago
  My two batteries were both dead when I pulled it out of my closet last month. Ordered one on ebay, received it, charged it, put it in camera and then saw it come to life again. Slid in a floppy disk and failed to write to it when pressing the shutter button on the camera. Didn't get it working and forget if I tried to format the floppy from the camera or not, if such method exists?
wazoox 8y ago
The site has also a very vintage look that fits well. And it's fast, with high usability. The past is the future...
kerrsclyde 8y ago
I had a Agfa CL18 in 2000. The quality of the pics were awful but it really got me turned onto digital photograph in a way film photograph never did. I graduated to a HP 618 a year later and the picture quality was excellent. I still have the camera and I could probably get by with it today if I needed to. I remember my boss showing me a really early Casio camera in the 90's. That was the first digital camera I ever got to play with. Great site, love it.
Spare_account 8y ago
It took me a little time to grasp the fact that this is a list of cameras that the website author OWNS rather than a list of all cameras that existed in 'antiquity'. Once that sunk in, I was considering offering to send him my old Canon Digital IXUS II and my wife's old Fuji digital camera which we have the orginal packaing and manuals for, but it seems the owner is planning to sell up so I decided against making the offer.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- dingaling 8y ago
  Occasionally I toy with the idea of fitting a job-lot of Powershot digital cameras onto a frame and doing insanely-HDR shots of scenes. Or 3D composites, or instant 360 degree panos. Time for another browse on eBay!
  - arethuza 8y ago
    "instant 360 degree panos" Or get the timing right and you could get Matrix style "bullet time" effects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_time
    - thanatropism 8y ago
      Maybe just kicking strings that pull the triggers in zoopraxiscopic[0] style works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sallie_Gardner_at_a_Gallop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sallie_Gardner_at_a_Gallop
  - sp332 8y ago
    With some processing, you can capture a light field and get holographic data for a volume of space. https://www.blog.google/products/google-ar-vr/experimenting-light-fields/ https://www.blog.google/products/google-ar-vr/experimenting-...
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
phonon 8y ago
Polaroid made a beautiful professional digital camera, with their own CCD design early on, which even had its own compressed RAW format...then they gave up :-( http://www.digicammuseum.com/en/cameras/item/pdc-2000 http://www.digicammuseum.com/en/cameras/item/pdc-2000 https://www.digicammuseum.de/kameras/detailansicht/kamera/Kamera/show/pdc-2000/ https://www.digicammuseum.de/kameras/detailansicht/kamera/Ka... http://www.digicammuseum.com/en/cameras/item/pdc-3000 http://www.digicammuseum.com/en/cameras/item/pdc-3000
- xiconfjs 8y ago
  right click and ctrl-c blocked - fuck them.
- moftz 8y ago
  They probably spent too much on development and didn't sell enough of them. That's a quick way for management to shut down the professional digital camera division. They can just buy whitebox designs from China and slap their name on it for almost nothing. They probably figured that Canon and Nikon were going to corner them out before they could really gain a foothold so why blow all that money when they could still make film for the time being?
- icanhackit 8y ago
  It'd be interesting if development on sonar autofocus systems continued - they could work in the dark where phase detection and contrast detection have difficulty. A compound eye of phase detection points, laser, sonar as well as regular contrast detection would be interesting. Each has their own strengths and limitations. (For context the camera listed above uses sonar autofocus - basically echolocation)
  - phonon 8y ago
    I'm guessing the issue is that there would be few (1?) focus points available; people are used to much finer grained auto-focus capabilities. That being said...maybe uBeam can find a use for their tech now :-) https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/search/label/ubeam https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/search/label/ubeam
ams6110 8y ago
Realtors were huge early adopters of digital cameras. Made getting photos into online web listings much faster, and quality didn't really matter because the early web was quite limited in bandwidth for most people so images had to be small and fairly low quality. Also the highest common screen resolution was 1024x768 and most sites were designed for 640x480 pixels.
- moftz 8y ago
  And they still show awful quality pictures where you can't make out how terrible the paint is and how much dryrot the door frames have.
  - stevekemp 8y ago
    And of course you get this wonderful site too: http://terriblerealestateagentphotos.com/ http://terriblerealestateagentphotos.com/
o_nate 8y ago
My first digital camera was the Nikon Coolpix 800, which came out in 1999 and came with a CF card that could hold 18 photos at the default resolution (less at high resolution). Also, it had a serial port connector instead of USB.
- devereaux 8y ago
  I remember the Coolpix 950, quite a beat for the time with the rotating bezel
d--b 8y ago
The author should add that it's consumer-grade cameras. No professional or semi-pro device there.
tialaramex 8y ago
Somewhere I still have a digital camera so rubbish it was never available for purchase in the West at all. I can't imagine it cost more than a dollar including shipping, it was given away by not-quite-scams where they say you get a digital camera free when you sign up. I signed to get the camera because I was interested to see how many corners they could cut - a LOT it turns out. Obvious things first, it's QVGA. Yes that's 320x240 and remember this is a stills camera, not video. The sensor is just raw exposed through a pinhole, no actual lense. There's no compensation layer to remove noise or compensate for defects in the sensor, so you get dead pixels and other noise in your shots. There's no JPEG, just raw data and the driver makes it into an image. Ok bad but you've seen worse right? I'm just getting started. Flash is expensive so they didn't use it. The camera has DRAM in it. If the batteries die (which they will after maybe two hours of inactivity) every lousy picture is lost. It's not good DRAM either, no need. They used seconds so some extra pixels are dead or bright in particular shots every time, some fade before the batteries die. There's a single button control, and the "LCD display" is literally a counter that tells you rough battery remaining and shots taken, no images. It is amazing. They tell you the best camera is the one you have with you. But if you have this, the best camera is probably to describe the scene in a tweet. Higher fidelity. AFAIR it's so cheap it has no model number, describing itself only as "Camera" or something.
- kalleboo 8y ago
  That's fantastic. And here I thought I had the cheapest digital camera - but I had luxuries like 1.3MP, 15fps video, and a plastic lens to twist for "macro"! http://commonemitter.blogspot.com/2012/06/teardown-mustek-gsmart-mini-2.html http://commonemitter.blogspot.com/2012/06/teardown-mustek-gs... But it had the worst rolling shutter effect I've ever seen. Just taking a photo in not the brightest of sunlight holding it in your hand you're liable to get a wavy image.
  - romwell 8y ago
    Ah, someone remembers Mustek! They were pretty big in scanners, and branched into digicams. Just a step-down from the cheapest Olympus (in 2002 Ukraine). Mustek MDC3000 was my first digital camera, which took me on a journey through Canon Powershot S2 IS, Nikon D1x, Nikon D200, and now Fuji x100. Mustek MDC 3000 was amazingly versatile: plug it into a computer, and it becomes a webcam (same as the Mini you had, IIRC), could shoot videos. Daylight quality was good. If it had manual controls, it would have been amazing for the money (about $200). I semi-killed my Mustek by trying to power it off a DC adapter by hotwiring it to the battery terminal, and mixing up the polarity or the voltage. It still worked as a webcam after that! 100's of thousands of shots later (on other cameras), I still have my Mustek, hoping to repair it one day.
marpstar 8y ago
My first digital camera was the Olympus C-420L (http://old-digitalcameras.com/MorePicts/MP169.htm http://old-digitalcameras.com/MorePicts/MP169.htm) way back in 2001. I was 13 years old and had been fascinated by digital imagery. I started with an HP flatbed scanner scanning film photos but knew that digital cameras were the future. The camera took better pictures than many of the entry-level offerings from Kodak and Canon that came even YEARS later. I remember buying it at Staples and having them price match from the internet (saving me something like $150) before internet price-matching stopped being a thing (until it started being a thing again in the past couple years).
- devereaux 8y ago
  The Olympus were amazing! I personally had a D360L and the pictures were extremely good: 1.3 MP and always ready to shoot with plain AA batteries. https://www.amazon.com/Olympus-D-360L-1-3-Digital-Camera/dp/B00004R8V6 https://www.amazon.com/Olympus-D-360L-1-3-Digital-Camera/dp/... It had a smartmedia (like the Rio 500) and I too got it from Staples or somewhere with a price match too
stevewilhelm 8y ago
Anyone have a collections of photos taken from these early digital cameras?
- ljf 8y ago
  https://photos.app.goo.gl/cnMmZQgNNba51ZJYA https://photos.app.goo.gl/cnMmZQgNNba51ZJYA this is the only one of my year 2000 shots I'd fancy sharing, of a friend I've long lost contact with. This was a Largon Chameleon http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/412DZQG69QL._SX300_.jpg http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/412DZQG69QL._SX300_.jp... which was 0.3mp and held about 100 pics with no screen to review. I bought it for £50 new and loved it and took hundreds of photos, now nearly all lost in a computer move. I have a few though and this seems to be one of the earliest. Taken in a dark pub, so amazed it comes out at all! Couple more in day light.; https://photos.app.goo.gl/mHyzBAme6ZYhsbHB8 https://photos.app.goo.gl/mHyzBAme6ZYhsbHB8 https://photos.app.goo.gl/qKpUifHd8ewtWsnx8 https://photos.app.goo.gl/qKpUifHd8ewtWsnx8 For a long time it was better for camera phone pictures, and they were often a real pain to get off the phones and so often were lost when the phone was replaced. I have a bunch of old phone cameras with no way to charge them and no way to get the pics off. Ah well. I still have the Chameleon somewhere, I should see if there are any 'final' snaps still on it!
- zimpenfish 8y ago
  Three from my Casio QV10a taken in 1998. https://rjp.is/qv10a/1998/ https://rjp.is/qv10a/1998/
writeslowly 8y ago
Looking at the huge collection of odd camera brands starting around 2001 reminded me of an earlier article linked on HN about Fuji/Kodak transitioning from film. You can see the point where cheap cameras became increasingly easy for anyone to assemble from commoditized parts in China, which was apparently one of the reasons it became infeasible for Kodak/Fuji to transition their entire film business to digital cameras (it was much easier to produce a decent digital camera than film)
seymour333 8y ago
This reminds me of a time when I had become jaded as a camera store employee. I got in the habit of telling people that the cameras they were hoping to buy were essentially landfill filler. This website would have been a useful resource for confirming that point. Oddly, it was an effect tool for up-selling cameras. The higher end cameras tended to last slightly longer before getting binned.
kawfey 8y ago
Nostalgia. I started my youtube "career" on that Kodak 2MP Powershot, and by some miracle I still have that camera.
earlz 8y ago
I remember my first digital camera. I think it was a somewhat pricey ($200) point and shoot. It was around 2002 or 2003. It was so awesome to get "scans" off the camera with just an SD card... but, it had it's drawbacks. It was 3.1MP which was fine for most stuff at the time, but it had this awful way of rendering colors and a few months after I got it some kind of hardware broke in it making video and preview mode "broken" in some way. Basically what you saw was NOT what you got in preview mode, typically with way less exposure on preview.. and movie mode always looked weird, as if it had lost half of the bits of color info or something. Anyway, I kept it and ended up digging it up in 2010 from a box of old stuff to crack it open and make it an IR camera. Something went wrong, so now it's fixed focus at ~3ft, and with a few bits of dust permanently on the sensor... but, it worked! The focus issue prevents it from being very useful, but it's really cool as it is VERY sensitive to both IR and UV light. Using a very deep 920nm IR filter with it, I have to decrease exposure on a bright day or it's blown out... and it can very easily see UV patterns on things inside when the sun is out. I have a faded shirt that looks just black, but with the camera it can see the original lettering etc as if it were new... but also it looks magenta rather than black. Even with tungsten lights, the IR sensitivity is stronger than normal light and can end up with some crazy pictures that have "color" but not true color. Here's some example pictures: * https://i.imgur.com/5ZKmgFm.jpg https://i.imgur.com/5ZKmgFm.jpg reading text on a letter through an opaque black shirt (UV/IR illuminated through windows) * https://i.imgur.com/IYzdhXP.jpg https://i.imgur.com/IYzdhXP.jpg an out of focus look out of my house on a summer day (notice red leaves, brown grass) * https://i.imgur.com/STSPbq5.jpg https://i.imgur.com/STSPbq5.jpg IR "enhanced" portrait in a car. Her hair is deep red and the coat she's wearing is black and white only. * https://i.imgur.com/7gSzCTT.jpg https://i.imgur.com/7gSzCTT.jpg looking partially through a deep IR filter The only good UV-only photos I have tend to be flash pictures. The built in xenon flash appears to output enough UV that it will burn through IR filters. It definitely appears to be UV though because of different colors used and the way certain things will fluoresce I've done some film B/W IR photography but with film it's so temperamental and I've never gotten good IR-only (though a deep red filter can be nice) pictures. There is Aerochrome, which is getting harder and harder to find for color IR pictures on film, but even it is hard to predict (though requires less filtration) and very expensive these days.
smacktoward 8y ago
Back in 1996, I was doing an undergraduate honors independent study project on integrating computer technology into elementary-school classrooms. As part of that, my university and I had worked out an arrangement with a local public elementary school to let me teach a class on computer skills to a class of 5th-graders (ages 10 to 11, for those of you not in the US) a couple of days a week for a year. I had some friends in the campus bookstore, which had a very close relationship with Apple (as was common in those days), and through them was able to get my hands on a QuickTake 100 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_QuickTake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_QuickTake), one of the earliest consumer-level digital cameras. As soon as I started working that camera into my curriculum it became obvious to me that digital cameras were going to be a Very Big Thing. The kids took to it like fish to water, they loved taking pictures with it, and then when I showed them how to transfer those pictures to one of the Macs in the school computer lab and then publish them in a simple static-HTML Web page for their friends and family to see they were practically over the moon. As with many Apple innovations of that era, the QuickTake was doomed by being just a little too far ahead of its time -- too expensive for average people to afford, too low-res due to the primitive sensors, and too clunky to use from the lack of simple ways to interface with a PC (USB 1.0 had only just been standardized and wouldn't start showing up in PCs for another year or two). It died at Steve Jobs' hands in the great massacre of Apple products followed his return in 1997, so that part of the future was left for others to make fortunes off of, at least until the iPhone came along a decade later. But even now, more than 20 years later, I still remember that camera.
flexer2 8y ago
I inherited a Canon PowerShot 350 from a dead relative back in the late 90s. I was still blown away that I could take pictures that went straight to the computer with reasonable quality. By today's standards it's garbage of course, but it was a cool camera at the time. The thing I find most disappointing is how useless they are -- there's no real value in them; they're not like old film cameras where you can still take good, interesting photos. It's fun to see the evolution of technology, as now my iPhone XS is vastly superior to most things on this list, and of course my big Nikon DSLR blows them all away.
yread 8y ago
My first digital camera was Kyocera Samurai 2100DG from 1999. It was actually pretty good, 2.1 MPx, great optics, 4x zoom, CF card. I've used it until 2005 or so. Only for sale in Japan https://www.cnet.com/products/kyocera-samurai-2100dg-digital-camera/ https://www.cnet.com/products/kyocera-samurai-2100dg-digital... http://www.digicammuseum.com/en/cameras/item/kyocera-samurai-2100dg http://www.digicammuseum.com/en/cameras/item/kyocera-samurai...
zan2434 8y ago
This is amazing! This free "cardboard" digital camera from IKEA is particularly cool: http://old-digitalcameras.com/MorePicts/MP656.htm http://old-digitalcameras.com/MorePicts/MP656.htm
timzaman 8y ago
No Apple QuickTake 100!?
- Corrado 8y ago
  I initially had the same thought, then I realized that these are the cameras that they actually own, not just old cameras in general. If I had an old QuickTake I would probably send it to them.
codazoda 8y ago
I shot some of my favorite images with a digital I purchased for a few dollars. The poor camera quality, vigineting, and surprise due to not having an LCD combined to make some artistic images that I loved. Unfortunately, the camera also used DRAM and would lose all your images if the batteries got bounced loose.
jasmeet217 8y ago
rich kids

151 points by stevewilhelm 8y ago

Hah! I don’t see the Canon G1. My first digital camera. Metal body. Carl Zeiss glass lens. Every thing afterward came in fiberglass bodies. Still have the G1!

phirschybar 8y ago
I was just looking for the G1 too. That was my first digital camera. I loved it!
- geerlingguy 8y ago
  That whole line (G) was great for many years, some of the best overall consumer cameras each model in those early years, and much more compact than a DSLR.
  - jelliclesfarm 8y ago
    I still use it. Here is the fun part. I was able to use a IR filter with a lens adapter and create infra red film quality images after removing RGB layer. That was such a cool trick. Now..I had been trying to take infra red photos with film for years and I totally sucked at it. It was expensive and it was tricky. You couldn’t use just any camera because anything with electric features would leave a mark on the film because light acted different on IR film/aperture ..it was heat that registered. And gosh..one couldn’t find a place to process it. Every shot was hit and miss. I don’t think I made even one good IR film print. And then..it all changed with the G1 IR lens hack. I was so excited that I told everyone and blabbed endlessly. I did invite scorn mostly as it was considered ‘cheating’. The older photographers wouldnt stop pontificating about the virtues and glory of IR in film media.So I just stopped teaching people the trick. Suckers! Anyways..it won’t work with other digital P&S cameras that came later. To me, G1 was almost SLR quality because of the Carl Zeiss lens. Even with the focal length magnifier aspect! Fast forward many years and I got a DSLR(D3 and then canon D6). This trick sadly wouldn’t work with the new dslr cameras...it has something to do with a sensor light hitting the mirror.(sorry. I forget). And then I found out that someone made conversions for several hundred dollars but it would mean that it will only take IR shots(images still has to be digitally manipulated..the alteration was inbthe camera..not the lens or lens filter..). Also. It needed a dedicated lens and it was fixed. You can’t use different lens interchangeably. But it was still worth it for me. When I finally got a second DSLR many years later, I sent my old canon for the conversion and I think I use a 50 prime lens with it. It’s an older dslr and still has the 1.6x multiplier. It’s ok. With digital tweaking, I can now print 20x30 prints(Hellooooooo, Costco!!!) that is borderline medium format quality. It’s better with landscape shots than portraits. Altho IR can make a wrinkly 70 year old look like a teenager with gorgeous clear skin. How things have changed since film days! I enjoyed this one. Thanks for posting!
    - mark-r 8y ago
      Some Sony cameras were able to remove the IR filter automatically - they called it "Night Shot" mode. There was a IR LED that would help light the scene. They had to cripple it when it was discovered that some clothing was translucent in IR.

timonoko 8y ago

The first affordable one (Kodak DC20 of 1996) was actually very good. At least colorwise. Most people just did not know how to use it. You could make panoramas and use supersampling ie blend several static pictures: https://photos.app.goo.gl/sbG9uneEHakBMMSu5 https://photos.app.goo.gl/sbG9uneEHakBMMSu5

drmpeg 8y ago
I still have my Kodak DC-280. It can take very nice pictures. http://www.w6rz.net/DCP_1040.JPG http://www.w6rz.net/DCP_1040.JPG
- shawndumas 8y ago
  W6RZ 73 de KC6SCD
leejo 8y ago
I had the Kodak DC-3200 back in 2001: http://old-digitalcameras.com/MorePicts/MP42.htm http://old-digitalcameras.com/MorePicts/MP42.htm. I recall it being great, and the CF card made it incredibly convenient. It's weird to look at the history of Kodak's digital camera lineup[1]. It's often said that Kodak fell because they didn't invest in the technology early enough and were too late by the time they started to do so in the 90s. I would argue that the existing user base of Canon and Nikon in the 80s probably contributed more to that - although Kodak made SLRs they didn't make lenses, and instead offered compatibility with Canon/Nikon's mounts. The problem is that the users of those lenses were more than likely to buy camera bodies manufactured by the same company, and not Kodak. Had Kodak offered bodies in the 80s then it's doubtful they would have sold to Canon/Nikon users due to the costs. It seems they were damned by either going for too much (cost) too soon, or too little too late. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_products_manufactured_by_Kodak#Kodak_professional_digital_cameras https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_products_manufactured_...
- cr0sh 8y ago
  > I had the Kodak DC-3200 back in 2001: http://old-digitalcameras.com/MorePicts/MP42.htm http://old-digitalcameras.com/MorePicts/MP42.htm. I recall it being great, and the CF card made it incredibly convenient. My fifth (arguable) digital camera was a DC-3200; I still own several (others that I picked up at Goodwill). I say fifth and arguable because my first real digital camera, prior to it, was this no-name cheapo QVGA camera that took horrible pictures. Prior to that were a series of digitizers (a Dazzle for my 486, some digitizer for my Amiga, and a DS-69b for my TRS-80 Color Computer). There may have been a quickcam or two in there as well. Anyhow - yeah, it was a really nice camera, and I still keep it around (and the extras I bought) for taking "shop" pictures when my hands are dirty, or I'm in a "dirty" environment (welding, automotive work, etc). Don't want to ruin my phone or my "good" camera. But I do know of one major downside (ok, two): 1. Slow to take a picture - you had to press the button, and wait - don't move - otherwise it'd blur. 2. Ate AA batteries for lunch - you'd be lucky to get 2 hours out of a set. But other than those two things - it was really nice camera!

exabrial 8y ago

Years ago, I sent someone cash payment and my picture to have them scan it so I could have it on my AOL signature. I remember the alternative was contacting someone that had one of these new fangled digital cameras. I'm old.

j45 8y ago

Great list. Reminded of my first digital camera I used - the Apple QuickTake camera appearing in 94. While they were built by Fuji and Kodak, I believe the Apple Cameras predated Fuji and Kodak releasing their own. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_QuickTake https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_QuickTake Edit: I hope the author can add this camera to his collection, it's so comprehensive it didn't register when reading on a mobile device that it was more than a list.

SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
The picture quality of the original QuickTake was really impressive given its age. It was early 2000s before cheap consumer-grade digital cameras finally caught up.
- j45 8y ago
  Taking photos with that first QuickTake and publishing it in a Pagemaker felt like it was science fiction.

tryum 8y ago

Wow impressive collection ! I probably have one not listed somewhere... I'll contribute if I stumble upon it : Creative PC-Cam 300 ;)

glup 8y ago

My parents had a Sony Mavica FD-91 for a conservation project in Panama in 1999 or 2000... the great joke was that there was an image quality setting where a single picture took more space than was currently available on the storage medium — floppy drives. At normal image quality, a single floppy held eight photos. The amount of technological improvement and decrease in cost between that camera and a 2003 Olympus point-and-shoot was stunning. I don't think I've seen hardware advance that quickly at any other point, except maybe PDAs around 2003 or smartphones around the introduction of the iPhone in 2007.

dddw 8y ago
that was a fun machine!
RL_Quine 8y ago
Sony produced a device that let you put a memory stick into the floppy drive. It had 3 coin cells to let it work as an emulator for the floppy disk for reads and writes. Seriously.
- cronix 8y ago
  Hah, I hadn't seen that. It reminds me of those "cassette tapes" that came out around when CD's first came out, so you could play your portable CD through the car stereo system which only had cassette tapes at the time. My friend had one and I thought it was the funniest thing - a cassette tape with a 3 foot wire coming out of it to attach to the stereo minijack output of the cd player.
  - RL_Quine 8y ago
    https://obsoletemedia.org/sony-memory-stick-floppy-disk-adaptor/ https://obsoletemedia.org/sony-memory-stick-floppy-disk-adap...
sevensor 8y ago
I worked in a factory that had one of these. We weren't allowed to bring our own cameras in, but it was often necessary to photograph things for documentation. So you'd go check out the camera and the floppy disk, both of which had asset tags and had to be accounted for.

rchaud 8y ago

Very cool, I love that weird, hobbyist sites like this still exist. Nice walk down memory lane for those familiar with this tech. Sometimes I look at pictures taken with my 2006-era 3MP Nikon Coolpix and marvel at how bad they look compared to anything I was using from 2013 onwards.

Tepix 8y ago

Nice collection, but he wants to sell it. We still have a Sony Mavic camera somewhere with a 3.5" floppy drive. I think it has XGA (1024x768) resolution. I wonder if the battery is still ok.

jmiller099 8y ago
My two batteries were both dead when I pulled it out of my closet last month. Ordered one on ebay, received it, charged it, put it in camera and then saw it come to life again. Slid in a floppy disk and failed to write to it when pressing the shutter button on the camera. Didn't get it working and forget if I tried to format the floppy from the camera or not, if such method exists?

wazoox 8y ago

The site has also a very vintage look that fits well. And it's fast, with high usability. The past is the future...

kerrsclyde 8y ago

I had a Agfa CL18 in 2000. The quality of the pics were awful but it really got me turned onto digital photograph in a way film photograph never did. I graduated to a HP 618 a year later and the picture quality was excellent. I still have the camera and I could probably get by with it today if I needed to. I remember my boss showing me a really early Casio camera in the 90's. That was the first digital camera I ever got to play with. Great site, love it.

Spare_account 8y ago

It took me a little time to grasp the fact that this is a list of cameras that the website author OWNS rather than a list of all cameras that existed in 'antiquity'. Once that sunk in, I was considering offering to send him my old Canon Digital IXUS II and my wife's old Fuji digital camera which we have the orginal packaing and manuals for, but it seems the owner is planning to sell up so I decided against making the offer.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dingaling 8y ago
Occasionally I toy with the idea of fitting a job-lot of Powershot digital cameras onto a frame and doing insanely-HDR shots of scenes. Or 3D composites, or instant 360 degree panos. Time for another browse on eBay!
- arethuza 8y ago
  "instant 360 degree panos" Or get the timing right and you could get Matrix style "bullet time" effects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_time
  - thanatropism 8y ago
    Maybe just kicking strings that pull the triggers in zoopraxiscopic[0] style works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sallie_Gardner_at_a_Gallop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sallie_Gardner_at_a_Gallop
- sp332 8y ago
  With some processing, you can capture a light field and get holographic data for a volume of space. https://www.blog.google/products/google-ar-vr/experimenting-light-fields/ https://www.blog.google/products/google-ar-vr/experimenting-...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

phonon 8y ago

Polaroid made a beautiful professional digital camera, with their own CCD design early on, which even had its own compressed RAW format...then they gave up :-( http://www.digicammuseum.com/en/cameras/item/pdc-2000 http://www.digicammuseum.com/en/cameras/item/pdc-2000 https://www.digicammuseum.de/kameras/detailansicht/kamera/Kamera/show/pdc-2000/ https://www.digicammuseum.de/kameras/detailansicht/kamera/Ka... http://www.digicammuseum.com/en/cameras/item/pdc-3000 http://www.digicammuseum.com/en/cameras/item/pdc-3000

xiconfjs 8y ago
right click and ctrl-c blocked - fuck them.
moftz 8y ago
They probably spent too much on development and didn't sell enough of them. That's a quick way for management to shut down the professional digital camera division. They can just buy whitebox designs from China and slap their name on it for almost nothing. They probably figured that Canon and Nikon were going to corner them out before they could really gain a foothold so why blow all that money when they could still make film for the time being?
icanhackit 8y ago
It'd be interesting if development on sonar autofocus systems continued - they could work in the dark where phase detection and contrast detection have difficulty. A compound eye of phase detection points, laser, sonar as well as regular contrast detection would be interesting. Each has their own strengths and limitations. (For context the camera listed above uses sonar autofocus - basically echolocation)
- phonon 8y ago
  I'm guessing the issue is that there would be few (1?) focus points available; people are used to much finer grained auto-focus capabilities. That being said...maybe uBeam can find a use for their tech now :-) https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/search/label/ubeam https://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/search/label/ubeam

ams6110 8y ago

Realtors were huge early adopters of digital cameras. Made getting photos into online web listings much faster, and quality didn't really matter because the early web was quite limited in bandwidth for most people so images had to be small and fairly low quality. Also the highest common screen resolution was 1024x768 and most sites were designed for 640x480 pixels.

moftz 8y ago
And they still show awful quality pictures where you can't make out how terrible the paint is and how much dryrot the door frames have.
- stevekemp 8y ago
  And of course you get this wonderful site too: http://terriblerealestateagentphotos.com/ http://terriblerealestateagentphotos.com/

o_nate 8y ago

My first digital camera was the Nikon Coolpix 800, which came out in 1999 and came with a CF card that could hold 18 photos at the default resolution (less at high resolution). Also, it had a serial port connector instead of USB.

devereaux 8y ago
I remember the Coolpix 950, quite a beat for the time with the rotating bezel

d--b 8y ago

The author should add that it's consumer-grade cameras. No professional or semi-pro device there.

tialaramex 8y ago

Somewhere I still have a digital camera so rubbish it was never available for purchase in the West at all. I can't imagine it cost more than a dollar including shipping, it was given away by not-quite-scams where they say you get a digital camera free when you sign up. I signed to get the camera because I was interested to see how many corners they could cut - a LOT it turns out. Obvious things first, it's QVGA. Yes that's 320x240 and remember this is a stills camera, not video. The sensor is just raw exposed through a pinhole, no actual lense. There's no compensation layer to remove noise or compensate for defects in the sensor, so you get dead pixels and other noise in your shots. There's no JPEG, just raw data and the driver makes it into an image. Ok bad but you've seen worse right? I'm just getting started. Flash is expensive so they didn't use it. The camera has DRAM in it. If the batteries die (which they will after maybe two hours of inactivity) every lousy picture is lost. It's not good DRAM either, no need. They used seconds so some extra pixels are dead or bright in particular shots every time, some fade before the batteries die. There's a single button control, and the "LCD display" is literally a counter that tells you rough battery remaining and shots taken, no images. It is amazing. They tell you the best camera is the one you have with you. But if you have this, the best camera is probably to describe the scene in a tweet. Higher fidelity. AFAIR it's so cheap it has no model number, describing itself only as "Camera" or something.

kalleboo 8y ago
That's fantastic. And here I thought I had the cheapest digital camera - but I had luxuries like 1.3MP, 15fps video, and a plastic lens to twist for "macro"! http://commonemitter.blogspot.com/2012/06/teardown-mustek-gsmart-mini-2.html http://commonemitter.blogspot.com/2012/06/teardown-mustek-gs... But it had the worst rolling shutter effect I've ever seen. Just taking a photo in not the brightest of sunlight holding it in your hand you're liable to get a wavy image.
- romwell 8y ago
  Ah, someone remembers Mustek! They were pretty big in scanners, and branched into digicams. Just a step-down from the cheapest Olympus (in 2002 Ukraine). Mustek MDC3000 was my first digital camera, which took me on a journey through Canon Powershot S2 IS, Nikon D1x, Nikon D200, and now Fuji x100. Mustek MDC 3000 was amazingly versatile: plug it into a computer, and it becomes a webcam (same as the Mini you had, IIRC), could shoot videos. Daylight quality was good. If it had manual controls, it would have been amazing for the money (about $200). I semi-killed my Mustek by trying to power it off a DC adapter by hotwiring it to the battery terminal, and mixing up the polarity or the voltage. It still worked as a webcam after that! 100's of thousands of shots later (on other cameras), I still have my Mustek, hoping to repair it one day.

marpstar 8y ago

My first digital camera was the Olympus C-420L (http://old-digitalcameras.com/MorePicts/MP169.htm http://old-digitalcameras.com/MorePicts/MP169.htm) way back in 2001. I was 13 years old and had been fascinated by digital imagery. I started with an HP flatbed scanner scanning film photos but knew that digital cameras were the future. The camera took better pictures than many of the entry-level offerings from Kodak and Canon that came even YEARS later. I remember buying it at Staples and having them price match from the internet (saving me something like $150) before internet price-matching stopped being a thing (until it started being a thing again in the past couple years).

devereaux 8y ago
The Olympus were amazing! I personally had a D360L and the pictures were extremely good: 1.3 MP and always ready to shoot with plain AA batteries. https://www.amazon.com/Olympus-D-360L-1-3-Digital-Camera/dp/B00004R8V6 https://www.amazon.com/Olympus-D-360L-1-3-Digital-Camera/dp/... It had a smartmedia (like the Rio 500) and I too got it from Staples or somewhere with a price match too

stevewilhelm 8y ago

Anyone have a collections of photos taken from these early digital cameras?

ljf 8y ago
https://photos.app.goo.gl/cnMmZQgNNba51ZJYA https://photos.app.goo.gl/cnMmZQgNNba51ZJYA this is the only one of my year 2000 shots I'd fancy sharing, of a friend I've long lost contact with. This was a Largon Chameleon http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/412DZQG69QL._SX300_.jpg http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/412DZQG69QL._SX300_.jp... which was 0.3mp and held about 100 pics with no screen to review. I bought it for £50 new and loved it and took hundreds of photos, now nearly all lost in a computer move. I have a few though and this seems to be one of the earliest. Taken in a dark pub, so amazed it comes out at all! Couple more in day light.; https://photos.app.goo.gl/mHyzBAme6ZYhsbHB8 https://photos.app.goo.gl/mHyzBAme6ZYhsbHB8 https://photos.app.goo.gl/qKpUifHd8ewtWsnx8 https://photos.app.goo.gl/qKpUifHd8ewtWsnx8 For a long time it was better for camera phone pictures, and they were often a real pain to get off the phones and so often were lost when the phone was replaced. I have a bunch of old phone cameras with no way to charge them and no way to get the pics off. Ah well. I still have the Chameleon somewhere, I should see if there are any 'final' snaps still on it!
zimpenfish 8y ago
Three from my Casio QV10a taken in 1998. https://rjp.is/qv10a/1998/ https://rjp.is/qv10a/1998/

writeslowly 8y ago

Looking at the huge collection of odd camera brands starting around 2001 reminded me of an earlier article linked on HN about Fuji/Kodak transitioning from film. You can see the point where cheap cameras became increasingly easy for anyone to assemble from commoditized parts in China, which was apparently one of the reasons it became infeasible for Kodak/Fuji to transition their entire film business to digital cameras (it was much easier to produce a decent digital camera than film)

seymour333 8y ago

This reminds me of a time when I had become jaded as a camera store employee. I got in the habit of telling people that the cameras they were hoping to buy were essentially landfill filler. This website would have been a useful resource for confirming that point. Oddly, it was an effect tool for up-selling cameras. The higher end cameras tended to last slightly longer before getting binned.

kawfey 8y ago

Nostalgia. I started my youtube "career" on that Kodak 2MP Powershot, and by some miracle I still have that camera.

earlz 8y ago

I remember my first digital camera. I think it was a somewhat pricey ($200) point and shoot. It was around 2002 or 2003. It was so awesome to get "scans" off the camera with just an SD card... but, it had it's drawbacks. It was 3.1MP which was fine for most stuff at the time, but it had this awful way of rendering colors and a few months after I got it some kind of hardware broke in it making video and preview mode "broken" in some way. Basically what you saw was NOT what you got in preview mode, typically with way less exposure on preview.. and movie mode always looked weird, as if it had lost half of the bits of color info or something. Anyway, I kept it and ended up digging it up in 2010 from a box of old stuff to crack it open and make it an IR camera. Something went wrong, so now it's fixed focus at ~3ft, and with a few bits of dust permanently on the sensor... but, it worked! The focus issue prevents it from being very useful, but it's really cool as it is VERY sensitive to both IR and UV light. Using a very deep 920nm IR filter with it, I have to decrease exposure on a bright day or it's blown out... and it can very easily see UV patterns on things inside when the sun is out. I have a faded shirt that looks just black, but with the camera it can see the original lettering etc as if it were new... but also it looks magenta rather than black. Even with tungsten lights, the IR sensitivity is stronger than normal light and can end up with some crazy pictures that have "color" but not true color. Here's some example pictures: * https://i.imgur.com/5ZKmgFm.jpg https://i.imgur.com/5ZKmgFm.jpg reading text on a letter through an opaque black shirt (UV/IR illuminated through windows) * https://i.imgur.com/IYzdhXP.jpg https://i.imgur.com/IYzdhXP.jpg an out of focus look out of my house on a summer day (notice red leaves, brown grass) * https://i.imgur.com/STSPbq5.jpg https://i.imgur.com/STSPbq5.jpg IR "enhanced" portrait in a car. Her hair is deep red and the coat she's wearing is black and white only. * https://i.imgur.com/7gSzCTT.jpg https://i.imgur.com/7gSzCTT.jpg looking partially through a deep IR filter The only good UV-only photos I have tend to be flash pictures. The built in xenon flash appears to output enough UV that it will burn through IR filters. It definitely appears to be UV though because of different colors used and the way certain things will fluoresce I've done some film B/W IR photography but with film it's so temperamental and I've never gotten good IR-only (though a deep red filter can be nice) pictures. There is Aerochrome, which is getting harder and harder to find for color IR pictures on film, but even it is hard to predict (though requires less filtration) and very expensive these days.

smacktoward 8y ago

Back in 1996, I was doing an undergraduate honors independent study project on integrating computer technology into elementary-school classrooms. As part of that, my university and I had worked out an arrangement with a local public elementary school to let me teach a class on computer skills to a class of 5th-graders (ages 10 to 11, for those of you not in the US) a couple of days a week for a year. I had some friends in the campus bookstore, which had a very close relationship with Apple (as was common in those days), and through them was able to get my hands on a QuickTake 100 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_QuickTake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_QuickTake), one of the earliest consumer-level digital cameras. As soon as I started working that camera into my curriculum it became obvious to me that digital cameras were going to be a Very Big Thing. The kids took to it like fish to water, they loved taking pictures with it, and then when I showed them how to transfer those pictures to one of the Macs in the school computer lab and then publish them in a simple static-HTML Web page for their friends and family to see they were practically over the moon. As with many Apple innovations of that era, the QuickTake was doomed by being just a little too far ahead of its time -- too expensive for average people to afford, too low-res due to the primitive sensors, and too clunky to use from the lack of simple ways to interface with a PC (USB 1.0 had only just been standardized and wouldn't start showing up in PCs for another year or two). It died at Steve Jobs' hands in the great massacre of Apple products followed his return in 1997, so that part of the future was left for others to make fortunes off of, at least until the iPhone came along a decade later. But even now, more than 20 years later, I still remember that camera.

flexer2 8y ago

I inherited a Canon PowerShot 350 from a dead relative back in the late 90s. I was still blown away that I could take pictures that went straight to the computer with reasonable quality. By today's standards it's garbage of course, but it was a cool camera at the time. The thing I find most disappointing is how useless they are -- there's no real value in them; they're not like old film cameras where you can still take good, interesting photos. It's fun to see the evolution of technology, as now my iPhone XS is vastly superior to most things on this list, and of course my big Nikon DSLR blows them all away.

yread 8y ago

My first digital camera was Kyocera Samurai 2100DG from 1999. It was actually pretty good, 2.1 MPx, great optics, 4x zoom, CF card. I've used it until 2005 or so. Only for sale in Japan https://www.cnet.com/products/kyocera-samurai-2100dg-digital-camera/ https://www.cnet.com/products/kyocera-samurai-2100dg-digital... http://www.digicammuseum.com/en/cameras/item/kyocera-samurai-2100dg http://www.digicammuseum.com/en/cameras/item/kyocera-samurai...

zan2434 8y ago

This is amazing! This free "cardboard" digital camera from IKEA is particularly cool: http://old-digitalcameras.com/MorePicts/MP656.htm http://old-digitalcameras.com/MorePicts/MP656.htm

timzaman 8y ago

No Apple QuickTake 100!?

Corrado 8y ago
I initially had the same thought, then I realized that these are the cameras that they actually own, not just old cameras in general. If I had an old QuickTake I would probably send it to them.

codazoda 8y ago

I shot some of my favorite images with a digital I purchased for a few dollars. The poor camera quality, vigineting, and surprise due to not having an LCD combined to make some artistic images that I loved. Unfortunately, the camera also used DRAM and would lose all your images if the batteries got bounced loose.

jasmeet217 8y ago

rich kids