Remember the digital cameras from 8 years ago?

[Johan Groenewald]

106748

106749In 1998 my friend bought a very high tech Sony Mavica digital camera. Paid the price of a Rebel XT in todays terms. This camera was so cool, it could put the pictures on a 1.44 Mbyte stiffy that slotted into the camera! Plus minus 20 photos on a stiffy, the size was 640 x 480 pixels. Max burst was 1 pic in 5 seconds. Great for the time.
What will digital cameras be like 8 years from now?
Attached 2 photos taken with that Sony>>>>>

[MichelleK]

wow...thanks for sharing that.

Michelle k

[thomascanty]

I had one of those cameras, too. I never did like it much. I gave it to my brother and he used it until just a couple years ago when he finally upgraded to something a bit more modern.

The Mavica was my second digital camera, though. Before that I had a Casio QV-10. That camera's resolution was 320x240, and it could hold up to 99 pictures in it's internal memory. I still have that one, but of course, I don't use it any more.

[saravrose]

wow!! So I suppose when I hear folks bad mouthing digital this is what their thinking of... it does make you think about advancements and what we have to look forward to..

sari

[ssim]

I can remember one of the other departments at work had one of these and I borrowed it for a weekend. Went through alot of disks and had a blast. All the time thinking how cool this would be. I'm glad I waited until the last couple of years to start my digital buying. I'd hate to think how many models have come and gone since then.

[Lightstream]

My little history with cameras....

End '96 - film point and shoot. I actually made a decision to go with film over digital, yes! And looking back, despite the fact I never scanned any of the negs (just the prints), quality at 2MP was far superior to ANYTHING that digital could have delivered back then. The only reasonable digitals that I could have afforded were 640x480 things. I was into computers, so I knew my resolution numbers, and they stank. I figured I could always scan the prints (I was right, as it turned out to be).

In 2000 I got the Digital IXUS, first generation. I kept on wondering why the skies always seemed to be grainy, and why the shots I took in low light without flash were absolutely, HORRIBLY blurred, and the battery NEVER lasted anywhere near long enough. It was practically always flashing the silly low battery indicator at me.

(here you can see the beginnings of the journey...)

Work at that time was using the Mavica and the CD descendant thereof. The CD version was particularly awful as well. On a good day, shot-to-shot times were 5 seconds apart, just like the floppy version. On a bad day, if the camera didn't like the CD, we were talking about 30 seconds plus error messages. However I remember playing with the ability to selectively 'blur' parts of the image and thinking "this is way cool." (again one sees where this is leading to). I remember correcting consistent underexposure on that camera for some reason. No idea why.

Facing the limitations of the IXUS, the next step up was the S40. Battery didn't last long either, autofocus was VERY balky at times (missing landscape shots in bright sunny daylight), camera took five seconds to boot up, which stank because I could not put it in power management mode. Furthermore, I could press the shutter button for 2 seconds before the camera made up its mind on what to shoot. The S40 took excellent shots outdoors, though. Never found anything to quibble about its resolution. At ISO 400 it was truly horrifying though, we used to cure its noise by downsampling 50% for publishing on the Web (where one can afford to discard 2 of the 4 megapixels with virtually no penalty).

When the time came for the next upgrade, I considered, believe it or not, an A-series camera. The A95 looked great to me - AA batteries, fast chargers, and no problems because I could then carry as many spares as I wanted.

Then sanity prevailed, I went out and bought a 350D, the rest is history.

What I saw in the IXUS was what we call digital noise nowadays. Amazingly, the IXUS had *ONE* ISO setting and no ability to change it. It's recorded in EXIF as ISO 100. If I ever see that amount of noise in digital ISO 100 on my SLRs I'm going to go NUTS :P

Blurry shots - I learned about shutter speed, and later about image stabilizers.

Battery life - finally cured by the BP511A where I can run a couple thousand shots through the camera with the image stabilizer turned on and not have to worry about battery. Yes, this is OVER the spec Canon claims it will deliver, and I'm using Canon originals on the 5D. Once I shot a thousand frames on the 350D before realizing I hadn't charged the battery the night before, AND more incredibly, I still had one bar of battery power remaining! FINALLY.. phew.

I hated the shutter lag on all of the P&S, it really did range from "long" to "forever". The 350D was a breath of fresh air, finally I could actually breathe again.

Thanks for posting this thread. It has been a good look back at what has brought us here and a reminder of how far we've come.

[ayotnoms]

I had one of those Mavicas. I ran about 600-700 USD back then.
Served its purpose I suppose.

I have a few dozen of those floppy (stiffy?? :lol:)disks with photos hanging around somewhere. Biggest problem now is finding a computer with a floppy disk drive :lol:

[Steve Parr]

Think I can get one of these in a digital??

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0e/Kodak_Pocket_Instamatic_60.jpg/800px-Kodak_Pocket_Instamatic_60.jpg

:lol:

[Johan Groenewald]

Maybe 8 years from now we will talk the same way about our currant cameras.... remember those 350D's and 5D's,can you imagine?

[Radtech1]

I started a similar thread a while back. HERE (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=93722)

Here is the opening post, check out the size (both size and capacity) of that PCMCIA memory card.

I was doing some research on the Bayer pattern, and I stumbled across this. MY GOD, technology has just screamed by. I am trying to imagine having to "span" one 1DsII image across 4 of those memory cards.

Rad

[calicokat]

wow, that puts things into perspective

[Jon Foster]

My first digital was a casio QV-700 then a Sony Mavica MVC FD-73. Both manuals are sitting next to me right now for some reason. I also just sold the Sony on E-Bay. They were good in their day and I still have pictures taken with them on my train web site.

Jon.

[lakiluno]

In 2002, I decided to get a digital camera.

I had about £30, and I wanted to get one of those really cheap keyring ones.

I walked into Dixons, aged 12, with quite a lot of money (as it was at the time). I went in expecting one of those cheapo cameras, and then sitting on the shelf with all the really expensive cameras was one of these: A Kodak MC3.

http://www.steves-digicams.com/2001_reviews/mc3/mc3_front.jpg

http://www.steves-digicams.com/2001_reviews/mc3.html

It was a discontinued model, so was reduced to £50, and it turned out that it was the display model, and therefore they had thrown out the box, the charger, the cables etc. £25. It had a screen, used CF - instantly much better than the similarly priced digital camera I was going to buy. So I got it.

It played MP3's - for christmas that year I got a 128MB CF card. I was shocked - 64MB ones were already close to £40, so it must of cost at least £60 for it.

Nevertheless, I used it as an MP3 player and camera for 2 years, living with its VGA resolution, terrible battery life (the MP3 player would last half of the three hour journey to my grandparents) and useless functions. It was shaped oddly, but it was pretty tough!

Anyway...here are some pictures from it - the digital noise is so bad, even on sunny days its terrible. Compared to camera's currently out (my dad had bought a 2Mpixel IXUS V a few months before - its still going, and the image quality is acceptable), it was terrible. Probably why it was discontinued.

In the end, for christmas 04 I got my A75, got obsessed with photography and now have a DSLR...I gave this camera to my cousin, who probably barely uses it due to its terrible photos. I almost wish I hadn't - it made quite a good memento of how crap cameras used to be.

Photos:
Great? Nope...

edit: I don't know what that pink thing next to my mum is - it only appeared once...

[Johan Groenewald]

Don't let the FBI see this photo, they will think thats a UFO

[thomascanty]

Looks like a bug flying by to me, but that sure is a strange color for a bug...

[JCR]

It's a geronimomatic orb, in all likelihood the ethereal spirit of a commanche warrior, apparently they are drawn to the scottish highlands by the smell of haggis, which is akin to the smell of freshly hewn scalps (so I'm told).
O'course it could also be a bit o trouser fluff or sweety stuck to the lens, but that don't sound as good.

Back on topic, I had a creative webcam that doubled as a pocket stills camera, it was truly amazing, well ok so it was barely adequate. I remember the mavica I was suitably impressed by the floppy disk, me being 1/3 geek.

[Radtech1]

... me being 1/3 geek.

Is that on your father's side, your mother's side, or other?

:lol:

[Lost sheep]

I think the time stamp says it all

from one of my first Kodak digital cameras

http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/Lostsheep_2006/DCP00059.jpg

[JCR]

I asked fer that :D

[rklepper]

Hmmm, we still have a bunch of those Mavica's at the college. When the biology Dept takes students on field trips they arm them all with these cameras. They seem to still work well for the purpose that they need them for.

[Curtis N]

I think the 2 megapixel mark was about the point when digital cameras became a serious replacement for film for the typical snapshot producer with no particular interest in photography. They could make a nice sharp 4x6 and a half-decent 8 x 10. I figured out how to use a slave flash with mine and managed to make some acceptable pictures with it.

[MarkoPolo]

I had a Kodak DC-50 as part of a dental imaging software package. Absolutely horrible. I thought I had died and gone to heaven when I replcaced it with the 1.7MB Sony DCS 770. Times have certainly changed.

[Radtech1]

I think the 2 megapixel mark was about the point when digital cameras became a serious replacement for film ...

Athough, back then it was referred to as "2 Million Pixels". As this thread has gone on, I remembered seeing an ad for Nikon that very plainly made the case for 3 Million Pixels over a mere 2 Million. It took me a few days to find it, but here it is.

Oh, and I very nearly bought Nikon, too. :lol:

Rad

[lakiluno]

HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA!!!

LOL!!

[Mark_Cohran]

My first digital camera was an Olympus D620. I think it was 1.3 megapixels. Ate batteries like there was no tomorrow, and I think it cost nearly a grand when I bought it. Moved up from that camera to the Olympus C2000Z, and when if finally came availble to the Canon D30. I started out with Canon FD cameras many years ago, moved to the EOS system in the early 90's and had quite a bit of good glass, so the D30 was a no-brainer for me.

Mark