Oddball early digital camera

[lars_sobaskie]

There was a camera sold by Blacks photo in maybe the early 2000s. Its strangest feature was that the memory was not accessible. You had to return the camera to the store to have them download the photos and purge the card and then give it back to you. I remember a whole hacking community grew up inventing ways to hack into the camera and change settings, etc. If any of this sounds familiar, do you remember the name of the camera? If there is a better forum to take this to, please let me know. Thanks.

[JDMvW]

I don't know of any digital camera that had to be returned for download, but of course, some of the first Kodak roll-film camera had to be sent back and were returned with prints and a fresh roll of film. There may have been some pre-loaded plate cameras as well.

 

 

https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_760118

Edited October 1, 2023 by JDMvW

[Niels - NHSN]

I have no recollection of such a camera, but one could skim through the product timeline of DPReview covering that era and see if something rings a bell:

https://www.dpreview.com/products/timeline?year=1999&category=cameras

[ben_hutcherson]

I seem to recall "disposable" digital cameras being a thing at least for a period of time. I never really looked at them seriously, partially because by the time they were on the market I was pretty deep into using my film SLRs for everything(which, lets face it, were better than most inexpensive digitals). From what I remember of the disposable digital cameras, they used the same sort of plastic mensicus lens as a film disposable and were-I thought-horribly expensive. I seem to remember them being $20-30 or so when a regular film disposable was $5-10. I BELIEVE that with those, you would take them to friendly neighborhood drug store/grocery store/Wal-Mart(okay maybe not so friendly on that one) where they'd print and burn a CD for you.

At the time, pretty decent digital P&Ss(something like a the pocketable PowerShots or Coolpix) could be had for $150-200 depending on what exactly you wanted. It didn't take too many digital disposables to pay for something like that. I don't think they were ever really a starter.

I know not exactly what was asked about here, but it seems the same general idea.