The Kodak NC 2000e - a Prehistoric DSLR

The Kodak NC 2000e came from the auction site along with a massive Nikon 300mm F/2.8 ED manual focus lens. The Nottingham seller said it was from a print works. It's a very early DSLR consisting of a Nikon N90S cobbled on to a Kodak 1.3MP digital back – they can be separated after removing a long screw from the base, revealing the sensor. It dates from around 1995 and retailed I believe at $15,500. I plugged the power supply on and the tiny LCD came on, but no power came through to the camera, so it's not working.

It came with two 110MP PCMCIA cards, so I bought a PCMCIA reader to see if there were any pictures. One was blank, the other held just six TIFF files. Photoshop opened with no problem, somewhat to my surprise, but into Adobe Camera Raw which seems to recognise them as Kodak NC2000 RAW files rather than standard TIFFs. I processed them to find what I think might be a scene in a newspaper office (most were the same image).

I've not really got any hopes of getting this thing working, no doubt the internal battery - which is hard wired inside and not user replaceable – is dead. So I'll probably just sell it as a display item.

And keep the lens of course.

Here's the full kit that came: I hope this was of some interest, and thank you for looking.

One-point-three Megapixels? Whoohooo!

How the heck will your computer cope with that workload? Better get another 1 gigabyte hard-disk on order. Or a box of writable CDs.

Even so, they were bought in numbers by news organisation etc (AP = Associated Press), and used, apparently very heavily, judging from the surface wear on my example. Such was the immense advantage of getting image files back to the office without the hassle of developing and scanning film.

It would be interesting to know how much the 110MB PCMCIA cards cost back then. I believe it could also accept a hard drive.

I did remove the camera and tried it with a F90 battery pack, but it still wouldn't power up. I wonder if they were modified in some way.

Good video about this camera -

Eric Sande

Interesting video. I never used one of these primarily because of cost. After Nikon’s D2 series came out I found a D1 sitting around. Not an X or an H, simply a D1. After trying it out just for fun I can say that had it been my first digital I would not have walked away, I’d have run. It was simply awful. I suspect the N2000 would have been the same though I like the N90S.

Rick H.

I've just got around to watching the video, most interesting, thanks for posting. They had to rig an external battery pack, I think Kodak's worst decision with this camera was the hard wired non user interchangeable battery.

I once did some infrared with the slightly later Canon EOS1n based DCS520, as here:

LINK -- Infrared with the Kodak DCS 520 / Canon DC2000

This is the viewfinder, with the very heavy crop frame lines.

And, of course, it wasn't only Nikon. Kodak also did over some Canon models, as well as some others:

Long ago, I did a very flawed report on these developments; and (Odin willing) I will get back to them again, sometime.

It's both ahistorical and ironic when people say 'Why didn't Kodak get into digital earlier?'