
Here is my collection of 600+ “old” digital cameras - stevewilhelm
http://old-digitalcameras.com/
======
tialaramex
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.

~~~
trhway
>There's no JPEG, just raw data

isnt't raw data a feature available only on high-level Canon DSLRs and not
available PowerShots, even on pricey ones?

~~~
the8472
Used to be. Times have changed and even some smartphones will export raw data
these days, so camera manufacturers had to follow suit and provide that
feature on their lower tiers too.

------
Spare_account
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.

~~~
dingaling
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
"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
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)

------
glup
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.

~~~
RL_Quine
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
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
[https://obsoletemedia.org/sony-memory-stick-floppy-disk-
adap...](https://obsoletemedia.org/sony-memory-stick-floppy-disk-adaptor/)

------
timonoko
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)

~~~
leejo
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_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_products_manufactured_by_Kodak#Kodak_professional_digital_cameras)

~~~
ams6110
> 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 think this is often used as an example of the "innovators dilemma" i.e.
Kodak's cash cow was film sales. Every digital camera sold would potentially
eliminate a film customer forever. So internally there was just an
unwillingness to admit that the future was digital. So many people thinking
things like "serious/pro photographers will never abandon film" or "digital
will never have the quality of film" and for a little while they were right.
By the time they realized they were wrong it was too late.

What's also odd is that they had really great image sensor technology, used
heavily in scientific and medical instruments, and somehow lost the lead there
too.

~~~
mrobins
You're spot on and what happened to the company as a result is tragic. Kodak
pioneered digital camera technology, patenting their first digital camera in
1978 and developing a digital SLR in 1989. Unfortunately they chose to shelve
it all rather than market it in fear of cannibalizing film sales.

------
ams6110
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
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
And of course you get this wonderful site too:

[http://terriblerealestateagentphotos.com/](http://terriblerealestateagentphotos.com/)

------
j45
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
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
Taking photos with that first QuickTake and publishing it in a Pagemaker felt
like it was science fiction.

------
exabrial
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.

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

------
zan2434
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)

------
marpstar
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
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/...](https://www.amazon.com/Olympus-D-360L-1-3-Digital-
Camera/dp/B00004R8V6)

It had a smartmedia (like the Rio 500) and I too got it from Staples or
somewhere with a price match too

------
smacktoward
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.

------
phonon
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/Ka...](https://www.digicammuseum.de/kameras/detailansicht/kamera/Kamera/show/pdc-2000/)

[http://www.digicammuseum.com/en/cameras/item/pdc-3000](http://www.digicammuseum.com/en/cameras/item/pdc-3000)

~~~
icanhackit
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
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)

------
rchaud
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.

------
flexer2
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
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...](https://www.cnet.com/products/kyocera-samurai-2100dg-digital-
camera/)

[http://www.digicammuseum.com/en/cameras/item/kyocera-
samurai...](http://www.digicammuseum.com/en/cameras/item/kyocera-
samurai-2100dg)

------
writeslowly
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)

------
kerrsclyde
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.

------
seymour333
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.

------
codazoda
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.

------
o_nate
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
I remember the Coolpix 950, quite a beat for the time with the rotating bezel

------
Tepix
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
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?

------
timzaman
No Apple QuickTake 100!?

~~~
Corrado
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.

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

------
jelliclesfarm
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
I was just looking for the G1 too. That was my first digital camera. I loved
it!

~~~
geerlingguy
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
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
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.

------
tryum
Wow impressive collection !

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

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

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

~~~
ljf
[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_.jp...](http://ecx.images-
amazon.com/images/I/412DZQG69QL._SX300_.jpg) 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!

------
earlz
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.

