The first DSLR camera ever

[bogdan_gavrus]

I have had a question for a few days now and i have tried to find an adequate

answer but did not manage to. Which was the first Digital SLR camera ever to be

launched on the market? If anyone knows the answer i would really appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

[garrison_k.]

Be interested to know this myself but I think the first one was an F3 with a Kodak back? The first one I touched and fired was an F4/Kodak back in the mid 90's. Monster of a thing, around 1.3 or 1.5 meg or something. Silly by todays standards and todays standards will be silly in 10 years too no doubt.

[bobatkins]

I don't think today's cameras will look silly in 10 years. The technology has matured a LOT since the early days. Leading edge stuff always does, but DSLRs aren't leading edge anymore.

 

Those early $30,000 DSLRs weren't nearly as good as film. Today even entry level DSLRs are close to 35mm film. I don't think we're going to see huge advances in that since current cameras already deliver 95% of what 95% of their users will ever need or want in terms of image quality. You certainly couldn't say that about the early attempts at DSLRs.

 

Unless people start making 4ft x 6ft prints from everything, I really don't think there will be a lot of demand for a 100MP DSLR.

[garrison_k.]

Kindly disagree with you, Bob. We haven't seen anything yet. Walking around with a 12 meg bulky dslr will soon equate to walking around with a 4x5 field camera :)

 

Bogdan made me go to google. Memeory lane,

 

http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/companies/nikon/htmls/models/digitalSLRs/index.htm

[bogdan_gavrus]

Indeed, i also found that page after you've mentioned about the F3 and kodak model. Thank you very much the hints have lead me straight to the answer. I wonder now what made me ask myself this questions. Was it the fact that knowing the levels of some points that the DSLRs have reached since they first appeared until the present day could help us predict the future evolution of the digital photography? i tend to agree with mr Bob Atkins. The demand for higher resolutions is dropping. I do believe that there is absolutely no necessity for a camera that can provide an image that is larger than 25MPx. Of course there is a lot of room for improving the quality of the sensors and all the software that the manufacturers integrate in the cameras. Who wouldn't dream of a camera that could take photos of the same quality as a 1d mark II or a D3 and that can also be stuffed in the pocket. I do believe that 10 years from now the quality of the images that the high-end cameras provide will be a standard for all the cameras but i cannot imagine a 100mpx camera as mr Bob has said

[garrison_k.]

Yes, I agree with Bob in terms of mega pixel size and our needs. Not much need for the average user to go beyond 8 meg for fridge pictures. But physical size? I wouldn't be surprised if something the size of a Bic Lighter was taking great photos in ten years.

[joe_jackson4]

"I wouldn't be surprised if something the size of a Bic Lighter was taking great photos in ten years."

 

Aye, with a 0.5" Ultra-HD widescreen display... :)

[KenPapai]

"dream of a camera that could take photos of the same quality as a 1d mark II or a D3 and that can also be stuffed in the pocket..."

 

The law of physics forbids such a high quality small camera. The size of the lens is determined by sensor size... 135 format (current high end FF DSLRs) is actually already "too small" and compact.

 

The DSLRs from early 2003 (five years ago!) still hold up pretty well while the junky ones from 7+ years ago are just that -- paper weights.

 

Today's modern DSLRs will more than hold up well 5-6 years from now.

[bogdan_gavrus]

i wouldn't worry about the size of the LCD. I believe that the images will be displayed as holograms so the size won't matter in the end :DDD

[ellis_vener_photography]

I first used a DSLR in August 1992 at the Republican Convention in Houston's Astrodome. I forget the resolution but it was a Kodak adaptation of an N90 (or was it an 8008?) body and the camera was tethered to a storage device about 18" square and about 6 inches thick. I like d it becasue it turned a 60mm f/4 into an 1800mm f/4. Also because I was able to transmit to a photo agency within a couple of minutes of downloading files to the Mac Quadra work stations Kodak had set up.

 

According to that link Bogdan provided it must have been a prototype of the DCS 200.

[waltflanagan]

If you can't imagine something then open your minds. I design computer chips for a living. The computer revolution, the digital revolution, it's still in its infancy.

 

You can already get a 138 megapixel large format scanning back for $23,000.

 

http://www.betterlight.com/products4X5.html

 

Will most people have a non-scanning 138MP camera in 10 years? Probably not but some people already need it now.

[bogdan_gavrus]

Yes Ken, but think about this, the laws of physics cannot be broken and still when the passage from the normal focal distance of film cameras to digital lenses was made the ratio was 1.6x. The pancake lens act as 50-80mm and they are only 20mm thick. No one can predict the further evolution of technology. I totally agree with you. Today's high-end DSLRs will be 100% eligible in the upcoming years.

[garrison_k.]

"Today's high-end DSLRs will be 100% eligible in the upcoming years."

 

Certainly. Just like I can use a K1000. But nevertheless, they as well will be in garage sales for $50 at some point too.

[steve torelli]

Some people have unbridled confidence in the inevitable advancement of technology. But, like Bob said, every given technology matures and slows down. Like DSLRs today. I think it will be a long time before the current crop are considered "paper weights".

 

Nobody can predict the future, but just because you can imagine it doesn't mean it will be commercially or artistically feasible. They promised us flying cars back in the Fifties, it's the 21st Century and there's a Saturn with wheels in my driveway. I suspect that everyone here sees something similar when they look at their driveway.

[bobatkins]

I though you were going to say you had Saturn in your driveway, which would be a neat trick!

 

Yes, as pointed out, unbridled optimism is rarely born out. The laws of optics and physics mean you can't get the quality of a full frame camera by using a 2mm x 3mm sensor and a tiny lens. Even if you could the DOF would be so large, it would be worse than current P&S digicams for isolating your subject.

 

I've no doubt we could see better image quality from smaller sensors than we do now, though of course we'll also see better image quality from larger sensors too.

 

My prediction is for a camera that will take both excellent still images and excellent HD video images. We still don't have that and it has to be coming. We'll see advances in processing ability and storage capacity and speed because none of that requires any rewriting of physical laws. We just have to do what we do now, but smaller, faster and cheaper. It can be done. Then we can holographically record 25MP images at 60 frames/second if we want to.

 

What you can't do is change optics so that you don't get diffraction from tiny apertures, nor can you shrink the size of pixels to smaller than the wavelength of the light they are supposed to detect without running into all sorts of problems.

 

Those who don't fully understand science don't know what's possible and what's not. Give us a few hundred years, and maybe we'll figure a way to get around some of the physical laws using hyperspace and quantum mechanics, but it just won't happen in our lifetime (certainly not mine), which is about as long as I worry about.

[JDMvW]

The first digital cameras came out in the early eighties, or so it seems to me,.. ..where was I?

 

Oh, in any case they were then called "video still cameras", since the first real digital cameras were motion picture video. I think Sony may have been the first with its prototype Mavica dSLR, shown in the Oct, 81 Pop Photography.

 

Here's the pictures<div></div>

[JDMvW]

Here's the whole article

[JDMvW]

The follow-up article in the November 1981 issue asks "How will

Sony's video camera affect photography?". (p. 130)

 

"In an historic moment he compared with the announcement of Daguerre's process in 1839, Sony Corp', chairman Akio Morita unveiled..."

 

Mavica stands for MAgnetic VIdeo CAmera.

 

Subtitle of the article is "The race between silver and electronic recording is on!"

 

Mind you, the latest camera from Canon then was the AE-1 Program. EOS was still 5 or 6 years in the future.

[JDMvW]

I also discover at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Mavica, that the released version was not technically "digital" but recorded "video signal in NTSC".

 

It's close enough for me, anyhow.

[charles_stobbs3]

By 2010 we will have virtual LCD's implanted, lenses in our foreheads, sensors in our brains, shutter releases down in our *********, wireless antennae in our scalps, and albums in our living room, all available from Walmart.

[casey_lewiston]

As far as resolution goes, even today I'd say a lot of high end numbers are unnecessary for most users; but that doesn't matter. It only matters how it's sold, and general consumers can be convinced that more is always better, even if they'll never actually see a change. They'll buy whatever's new. So that's really up to the companies making and marketing cameras more than anything.

 

Cell phones have gotten up there in resolution as well, but I don't know how the "problem" of lens size will be dealt with in the future. Hopefully it isn't. I for one don't see a future of high quality automatic cameras that fit in a pocket and cost less than a month's groceries as good for photography in general.

[yog_sothoth]

At some point the sensor size and lens quality will be the limiting factor. If you use a 200 MP FF sensor and a Soligor zoom, you will have the same (low) IQ as an 8 MP image and a Soligor zoom. The better films are lens-limited as you get away from the center of the frame, a digital sensor wont be able to improve much on what is shining on it.

[garrison_k.]

thanks for that JDM von Weinberg. I think Sony should have had a 25th anniversary and put out a body marking the event in 2006. I wonder why the marketing dept.didn't do this?

[cooltpmd]

I'm not an expert like Bob, but I am a low level computer geek and technophile.

 

We have already broken many speed and size targets that were considered impossible in the computer, which the camera is slowly becoming.

 

The interesting thing about the DSLR, is how similar it works to the product it replaces ... film SLR.

 

My caution with physics limits is that someone may think outside of the box. For example, glass optics have some real world limitations in light requirements and size ... but, what if it isn't GLASS, but some other substance ... and, what if it isn't Optics but a more calculated principal?

 

What usually happens is that someone figures out how to do a traditional task (e.g. render a photo) in a way that does not resemble how it's been done before. My guess is that this will be the front that changes photography in the future.

[bogdan_gavrus]

Yes Thomas, you've pointed out a very interesting thing but i think that a change in the materials that lens are made of is quite far. We have evolved up to a point where we cannot tell which is the next step that has to be taken.

 

We could say, for instance, that a car cannot be anymore improved because what we've been doing in the last hundred years was just to add a lot of technology on the original model.

 

Digital photography as a "science" is just beginning to develop if we judge by the fact that 4-5 years ago it was beyond imagination that a DSLR could take a photo larger than 20MPX, but i think that, for the moment, it is best to perfect what we already have rather than find a whole new way of doing something that we don't know yet how to do best :D (sorry for the circular meaning)

 

Thank you very much for sharing your opinions. I got a lot more answers than i expected.