Monday, July 28, 2003		Feature

Digicam’s odyssey since 1976
Tobias Wiethoff

ALMOST everyone has an analog camera, but the same isn’t true for the digital cameras yet. Those looking to jump into the world of film-free photograph often still feel a little like pioneers, even if millions upon millions of the devices were sold last year.

That’s because the digital camera has made inroads at a breathtaking pace. Yet its development has hardly been smooth: high expectations and deep disappointment have often gone hand in hand.

Kodak developed the first digital camera prototype in 1976. Proponents of chemical photography were probably not very worried. Twenty-three seconds were needed to create a single black-and-white picture with a resolution of 10,000 pixels – a far cry from this multiple make pixels offered in today’s cameras. These trial runs were not even released to the public.

The Sony Mavica took a different approach. The device was introduced to consumers in 1981 at the Photokina industry fair in Cologne, Germany. Mavica stands for Magnet Video Camera: captured images were stored on magnetic disks, although in analog, not digital, form. Yet Mavica still possessed all basic features that distinguish digital cameras today, and, of course, chemical development was no longer necessary.

The Mavica was not alone for long. "The Photokina fairs thereafter saw a series of new prototypes," says Constanze Clauss, a European photography industry representative. In one notable field test at the 1984 Olympics, Canon tested the transmission of electronic photos to a Japanese daily newspaper. A version of that device came to the market two years later as the RC-701. It was the first electronic camera that retail customers could purchase.

The current phase of technological development in digital cameras was initiated in 1990 by Kodak, which had been quietly researching digital photography for some time. Its DVS 100 was based on a Nikon casing. Its electronics, including monitor and a 200 megabyte hard drive, were housed in a 5 kilogram pack. The first functioning digital cameras were bulky monsters. "I had my first experiences exactly ten years ago with a professional camera from Sony," remembers Martin Knapp from the Research Group for Digital Photography in Freiburg, Germany. "It was an adapted television camera."

The attempt to introduce digital cameras to the mass market came from hardware manufacturer Logitech, better known for its computer mice. At 16.8 centimetres, its Fotoman model, released in 1992, was small but bumpy. "And it has just one single control: the shutter release," says Jan-Markus Rupprecht, who runs the digitalkamera.de Internet service.

The introduction of new technology kept the industry in flux. A variety of firms better known for their entertainment software or computer peripherals - Sony, Panasonic, or Hewlett-Packard -joined the big names in traditional photography in camera making efforts.

It is ironic that Kodak and Fuji made their names as producers of film. "We recognised early that the digital market would be expanding," says Fuji’s Achim Obermueller. The firm’s first digital cameras for amateurs came to the market in 1996 with a resolution of 3,10,000 pixels.

Much has changed in the interim, particularly with resolution. Cameras with 4 million pixels can now be purchased for very little and found just about everywhere, even in supermarkets.

Yet a resolution of even 2 or 3 million pixels is sufficient for the purposes of amateur photographers. The major pricing factor now as then is the lens, still one of the most expensive parts of any camera, analog or digital. Many of those supermarket cameras cut their corners by offering inferior optics. — DPA