Poll - Could you go back to your first digital camera?

[P_Stoddart]

Yes, but I enjoy the power of raw shooting now.


But hey some of us did not start on digital. How about going back to your very first camera.

[GeoffR]

My first Digital was a Fuji S2 Pro. The images were, in general pretty, good but the handling was dire, mainly because I added a battery pack so that I could use exclusively AA batteries but didn't gain a second shutter release. It was also slow and, unfortunately, not a patch on the F5s I was shooting film with. So I would rather not go back to it.

I could go back to my second digital camera though, a Nikon D2h which is still around and even used occasionally.

[surf_digby]

But hey some of us did not start on digital. How about going back to your very first camera.

My very first was 110 format, and while I thought they were dead futuristic looking at the time, the image quality was a bit pants.
My first 35mm camera was being used last week, up until there was a sensation very much like that of the sprockets tearing.

I took my old Fuji digital out with me today to get a quick shot to look at it with my more modern demanding eyes. Being Fuji though, I have no XD reader on my laptop, and I have no idea where the USB to pointlessly-small-USB-that-only-Fuji-use cable is.

[AndyTake2]

konica minolta z1

OK for web, and I did use it for some commercial shots, believe it or not.
When it came to landscapes it was a load of pants - the slightest haze would see the autofocus running around like a headless chicken.

[0lybacker]

Yes, it is in Slovakia with a friend of friends of mine. I think. Still. (If she hasn't upgraded.)

Looks like a great place. Must visit sometime.

As for the second one, I've sold it so the answer if DD is interested in that one is 'No'.

[attack_donut]

My 1st dSLR was a Samsung GX-1L (6.3mp, with Pentax mount) and although it's a tad small for my hands, it ran fine and still (AFAIK) still runs fine today (an ex-gf has it) so I could easily still use it

My 1st digital camera? Not really it was a sub megapixel thing I found one day. Terrible quality.

[Zou]

I took my old Fuji digital out with me today to get a quick shot to look at it with my more modern demanding eyes. Being Fuji though, I have no XD reader on my laptop, and I have no idea where the USB to pointlessly-small-USB-that-only-Fuji-use cable is.

Mine was on Smart Media - remember that? Pretty sure I had a 16MB card.

[Benchista]

Mine was on Smart Media - remember that? Pretty sure I had a 16MB card.

Which was I think the biggest SmartMedia card made! My oldest digicam also took Smart cards - a 3MP Oly 3000z. And no, I couldn't happily use it regularly now.

[Zou]

Come to think of it, it will be ten years this summer since I got my first digi. Doesn't time fly. It's mindblowing how quickly the tech has moved on.

[Done_rundleCams]

I still dig out my Canon G2 from time to time

Jack

[IvorETower]

I recall that my first digicam was a 0.3MPix Sharp thing that came "free" as part of a bundle deal with a long-replaced home computer system. It had a rotating lens on the top of the unit and also shot (poor quality by modern standards) video clips.
It was OK as an introduction to digital photography but the photos were outclassed by scanned 35mm negs from my Canon film SLR's of the time.
The Sharp packed up after just a few years - even with fresh batteries the "low battery" warning came on and the unit shut down on its own. A phone call to enquire about repair costs meant that it was consigned to the recycle bin. After a gap of some time with no digicam, I bought an Olympus 3MPix thing with sliding front cover that protected the lens. One reason was that it came with a free 128Mb smartmedia card which at the time sold for around £100 on its own! I think the camera cost me around £300 from memory.

[Malcolm_Stewart]

My first digital camera was a 2MP Nikon 775 and it still works, but it's more bulky than the slim 7MP Fujifilm Finepix Z10fd which gets carried everywhere with me. My second was a 4MP Nikon 4500, which no longer works correctly in that it has lost large parts of its menu. Pity, because it's more useful on a microscope than the others.

My various DSLRs, all Eos, started with an Eos 10D, and they al work well. The 10D gets quite a bit of use doing time-lapse, and I used it quite a bit recently when it snowed.

[MartyG]

Which was I think the biggest SmartMedia card made!

SmartMedia went to 128MB, I have a couple of them - my first digital camera, bought Dec 1997, was the Olympus C-420L with a maximum resolution of 640x480. You could fit plenty of images on the 128MB card.

I still have it; it's slow, eats 4AA batteries in no time, looks ugly, but at the time it was pretty awesome, even astounding folk at being able to see their photos right away.

I occasionally use it now and again, but no, I wouldn't want to go back to using it as my main camera.

[Scphoto]

My first digital was a 2.1mp thing, I probably could use it now to be honest - though I think I'd have to tailor what I shoot to get around the limitations of it. I'm sure it's in the house somewhere.

[surf_digby]

Here we go. Apart from resizing it from 1600 x 1200, this is unedited. The colours are a bit restrained for my tastes, and there's a bit of clipping in the cloud and the lion's flag, but I'd say that's perfectly useable.



Not that I'd ever likely take a crop from the corner, but quality is still not horrendous in this 100% unsharpened crop. Certainly better than what I can get off my current (or previous) phone.

Round one to Fuji circa 2003.

[DaveS]

My first digicam was a S/H Olly E20, I've still got it somewhere.

But the small sensor, fixed lens and horrendous noise at anything above iso 80 makes it a no-go. Noise at iso 320 was as bad as today's DSLRs at 6400.

I currently use a 5D (Original) for photography and a 550D for movies, but will probably replace it with a Black-Magic Digital Cine Camera.

[Atavar]

Our first family digital camera came in a bundle with a PC in the late nineties (With a TIME computer, Probbably '98? Maybe earlier), and only held about 40-odd shots and had a very poor battery life with ate up AA cells like no tomorrow - almost to a point of what you saved in film you spent in batteries (!).

So no, i would not really go back to that first machine, as two rolls of film in any instamatic you could care to mention would produce superior images and be rather more practical in use.

[Fuzzypiggy]

Oh dear Lord no!

It was a huge clunky Kodak DC120, 1 megapixel! It took 6 AA batteries and the highest res it could manage was 1280 x 960! LOL!

[Nod]

To use my first digital camera, I would first have to pry it out of my wife's clutches.