My First Digicam: The Optio S

drd1135

Zen Snapshooter
Location
Virginia
Name
Steve
I was moving some boxes in my basement when some stuff slipped out of one and slid gently to the top of another box. The small silver rectangle caught my eye. It was the very old 3.2MP Pentax Optio S, my first digital camera. It was a real monster as you can see below, posing with the gigantic Pen F and big brother RX100 III. Now that camera was pocketable. I love the rear shot of the 1.5 inch diagonal LCD. It will have a place of honor with my collected cameras decorating my bookshelves.
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That camera was on my want list years ago, due to its diminutive size and what I believed to be an audio recorder function. Eventually, I bought the Casio Z750 for those qualities. That Pentax sure is tiny!
 
Sweet. A good friend of mine moved from one Pentax to the next back then while I got stuck with Canon Ixus's. Thinking about it I took some of my alltime favorite shots with these puppies.
 
Steve, mate, how about posting a frame or two from the old girl?
...maybe she could indulge us in a rendition of one of the other younger cameras?
 
OK, got the battery fully charged, banged in down a few times and it appears to work fine. Unfortunately, it can't handle any the SDHC cards I currently have. It has internal memory, but I have no idea where the proprietary cable is to download directly to my computer. Maybe I'll go search the net for an old SD card. Looking on the little screen, the image saved to the little LCD looks fine.
 
OK, got the battery fully charged, banged in down a few times and it appears to work fine. Unfortunately, it can't handle any the SDHC cards I currently have. It has internal memory, but I have no idea where the proprietary cable is to download directly to my computer. Maybe I'll go search the net for an old SD card. Looking on the little screen, the image saved to the little LCD looks fine.
I'm liking the sound of this process! Be such a feeling of accomplishment once you transfer that first image from the camera to the new fangled computeriser thingie-me-jig ;)
 
Given that the manual listed how many images could be stored on a 16 MB card, I suspect I have to search the net a bit to find a likely candidate.
 
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16 MB card came in for an investment of about $12. It works again. It was a dark day a little hard to hold it steady, but this one is fine.
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Memory lane. I still have my copy of the little Optio S4i, which I think was my second digicam. I used it for bike touring mostly because of it's tiny size. Turns out I had it for a few years and have quite a lot of shots from it. I don't think I still have the charger, but there's still a battery in there and a compatible old SD card of some sort. But it's just a small paperweight for me these days.

Here's the camera with the huge by comparison Canon G7X, my smallest currently operational camera, with a chip that's about, what?, 100 times larger than that in the Optio?

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Optio S4i samples
by Ray, on Flickr

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Optio S4i samples
by Ray, on Flickr

Here are three from a bike trip I did in Utah and Colorado in 2004, including as much of the horseshoe bend as I could manage:

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Optio S4i samples
by Ray, on Flickr

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Optio S4i samples
by Ray, on Flickr

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Optio S4i samples
by Ray, on Flickr

My Dad, who I still miss every day, in the last year of his life, on his last visit to a cabin my brother and I built together back in 1975:

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Optio S4i samples
by Ray, on Flickr

And pics of much MUCH younger looking versions of my wife and I - jeez, 12 years really is a loooong damn time...

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Optio S4i samples
by Ray, on Flickr

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Optio S4i samples
by Ray, on Flickr

Thanks for this trip down memory lane - for the camera for sure, but more for what the camera does best - record people and places in times you'll never get back... That little tiny sucker did it's job...

-Ray
 
Sometimes I miss the days when I just tucked a small p&s in my pocket and headed out into the woods. IQ wasn't up to that of an ILC, but lenses and camera bags were not a concern.

Yeah, tell me about it. For years, I couldn't leave the house without a compact, a DSLR, and a film camera. I'd sometimes lament that loss of innocence, of when I was able to go out with just one little camera and not worry about lenses and multiple bodies and whatnot.

The closest I get these days is with the Panasonic LX7 or the Ricoh GR. For the sake of security, there's always another camera in the bag, but there are days when I only use the LX7 or GR, and the freedom is great. All hail the tiny, solo camera.
 
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