Episode 82: The Coolest Digital Cameras

When you collect vintage film cameras, if they don't work, just send it out for a CLA and some technician will take it apart, clean it up, lube what needs lubing, calibrate the shutter and it is ready to go, good as new!  How boring!  If the simplicity of CLAing a film camera is not enough of a challenge for you, perhaps you should consider collecting vintage digital cameras.  Incompatible memory cards, legacy file systems, unsupported USB cables, and batteries which no longer hold a charge are all the rage! Although the era of digital cameras barely exceeds three decades, the earliest days of digital saw a tremendous amount of innovation and strange designs because camera makers were still trying to figure out what and how a digital camera should look and work like. In this episode, the Camerosity crew (minus Anthony) go over this early innovative era of digital camera design and pick out some of the coolest cameras of the era.  Many of these cameras have early sensors which do not stand up to the quality of modern designs, but that's not why we collect them, Joining Paul, Theo, and Mike are returning callers AJ Gentile, Larry Effler, Mark Faulkner, Miles Libak, Pat Casey, Stephen Strangways, and Will Pinkham and we cover a great deal of history regarding the earliest and most important digital cameras like the Kodak DCS-100, Nikon E2Ns, and Minolta RD-175.  We declare two cameras from the late 1990s to be historically significant moments in camera design, on par with that of the Leica and Nikon F. Stephen Strangways shares with us his wide depth of knowledge about camera sensors.  We discuss the differences between CCD and CMOS sensors, why companies made the switch between the two, motivations of Live View, and why DSLRs eventually gave way to digital mirrorless cameras. We discuss the limitations of early CCD sensors, what are hot mirror filters, why we think Nikon missed the mark on mirrorless, plus we cover a great deal of cool digital cameras, some of which have features cameras today don't have, like the Sony Cybershot DSC-F828, Olympus E-100 RS, Panasonic GF1, and the Ricoh G900. In addition, Mike shares his large collection of 17 Pentax Q-series cameras, plus a very strange "camera coffin", a wooden Nikon rangefinder camera that has the guts of a Sony alpha mirrorless inside. As it is officially the holiday season and each of our schedules has gotten increasingly complicated, we do not yet know when the next show will be, or what we will discuss.  Rest assured, that once we know, you'll know.  Be sure to follow us on our Camerosity Podcast Facebook page, the Camerosity Discord server, our new BlueSky page, and right here on mikeeckman.com. In This Episode What Exactly is 'Vintage Digital'? / Differences Between Still Video and Digital Cameras Kodak Had the Most to Lose with Digital But Pioneered it Anyway Apple Quicktake 100 / The Kodak DCS-100 Was Used in the Gulf War Did Kodak's Involvement in APS Impact Their Role in Developing Digital Cameras? Early CCD Sensors Were Extremely Difficult to Make, Resulting in Smaller Sensors The Sony Digital Mavica Was the Beginning of the End for Polaroid The Digital Mavica Was Also the Introduction of Digital to Many People Floppy Discs Gave Way to PCMCIA Cards and Eventually Flash Cards So Many Different Formats, MemoryStick, SmartMedia 3v and 5v, Compact Flash, etc Minolta RD-175 DSLR / Early Digitals Didn't Write JPGs / Converting Extinct Formats Sony Cybershot DSC-F828 / Sony's Night Shot Feature and How it Worked / Digital IR Photography Early Digital Cameras Had Weak IR Filtration, Throwing a Color Cast on Images / Hot Mirror Filters Why Did Digital Cameras Switch from CCD to CMOS Sensors? / Live View and Video Recording Problems with Sony Sensors / Canon and Fuji FinePix Pro SLRs / Leica M9 Sensor Problems Early Live View Sensors Would Overheat / Externally Cooling Camera Sensors What Drives the Popularity of CCD Sensors Today? Larry and Paul Love the Canon G