First Digital Camera

My very first digital camera was a 1 megapixel Panasonic, which I don't still have. Terrible.
The Olympus D-550 is what I think of as my first digital camera, since it was the first to give me usable images, and I still have it. I made a resampled 20x24 inch poster from an image shot on that camera and it looks quite good. Resampled and resharpened in photoshop with noise control in NeatImage..

NoSeconds said:

As in design and built...?

Holy smokes, that was the year I was born...

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Yes, back in the days of "The Advanced Concepts Branch, Optical Sciences Division". Sangamo Weston T80 Tape Drive, 28 Track reel-to-reel tapes for 11GBytes of storage. Two-Channel, Infrared scanner. I worked on the Data Acquisition system, and wrote the image processing code for it. 11GBytes of data in the early 1980s was a lot of data, the "Machine Washer" sized DEC RP07 disk drive held 512MBytes of data.

The Kodak DCS200ir- was made for us, is the first IR camera sold in the DCS line. $12,400.

Experiments in Leica M8 and M9 Conversions

Adding a "Gamma Curve" to a digital image: Thinking out Loud and Experiments

I still have FORTRAN code from the original image sensors, rewrote it to work with my Leica's.

davidzvi said:

So far I guess I'm the early adopter: 2001 Pentax Optio 330 Review

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In 2001 I was still working at enlargers in custom photo labs (film based), hoping digital would remain crappy until I was ready to retire. It didn't, and I had some make-work years to fill in the gap. Now I shoot mostly digital with no apologies. But I do miss practicing the analog craft of making silver gelatin prints, something I was good at. My latest camera is a Leica D-lux type 109, that I shoot along with the Olympus Pen, E-M5, and the Leica X1. Digital got very good much more quickly than I thought it would, and I've gotten over my resentment for it's putting me out of work. My dream camera is no longer a Hasselblad (which I have and still shoot film in now and again), but a Leica M9 or Monochrome. Times change.

The M9 is my favorite digital camera- it's everything that I want in a color camera. The M Monochrom... I called Kodak when the M9 was first announced and asked what it would take to do a monochrome version. They remembered me from years before calling and asking to get an Infrared version of the DCS200. Asking for a Monochrome version of the M9 was preaching to the choir- the engineer told me they wanted to do a monochrome version of the M8.

My first digital camera was a Leica Digilux 4.3, a re-branded Fujifilm 4700 purchased in 2000 and a wonderful pocket picture taker. But, I enjoy taking table-top close-ups and the little Leica lacked three features I felt were important for such work. It had no PC flash connector, it could not use a cable release (or remote switch) and I couldn't screw my ring-flash on the lens. I built a solution to these shortcomings. Read about it here >>> ringflash.pdf

My baptism was with a Kodak DC3400 at around 1MP and costing $1000. Good light performance was good, poor light was poor. Think I purchased it pre-2000. After about 3 years I upgraded to an Olympus 5050 - loved that camera.

bilzmale said:

My baptism was with a Kodak DC3400 at around 1MP and costing $1000. Good light performance was good, poor light was poor. Think I purchased it pre-2000. After about 3 years I upgraded to an Olympus 5050 - loved that camera.

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The 5050 was a great camera, built like a tank and producing great result. I loved that camera.