Kodak Digital Camera - The DCS200

August 1992, Kodak launches second camera

 

In the 90's photography needed to be more desirable, products which captured the imagination and aroused a yearning to be possessed.

The Kodak DCS200 was such a product. In 1992, it was a state-of-the-art digital camera, packed with up-to-the-minute technology and highly desirable because it was "compact", easy to use, and offered quite remarkable quality for its day.

 

Yes, the DCS200 became the most desirable digital product of its time, potentially defining the future of all digital cameras as we know it today.

 

In August 1992 Kodak launched the DCS200. This camera was not a replacement for the original DCS100, but complemented it as the DCS200 offered complete portability.

 

Yes, there were other digital cameras but, at the time, they were all tied to the studios and needed powerful computers. The use of such cameras were also restricted to tripods and still life subjects because of the long exposure times - up to half a minute - required for the three sequential exposures through red, green and blue filters.

There were no other portable professional digital cameras quite like the DCS200 from Kodak.

 

Announced at MacWorld Boston in August 1992, the DCS200 targeted desktop publishing rather than photojournalism. In sharp contrast to the complexity and cost of the original DCS100, the DCS200 was the simplest DCS camera ever. Everything but the imager fit onto one circuit board. 2.5-inch hard drives had just appeared and were just the right size to tuck under the camera body. The 8008s was the least-expensive Nikon body with a removable back. The DCS200 camera was conceived and commercialised in less than a year and shocked a market expecting minor improvements to the original DCS100. The original plan to sell the low-cost back without the body was eventually scrapped.

 

In total 3,240 cameras were sold from 1992 to 1994.

 

The DCS200 camera was unique as it was completely self-contained. No umbilical cable. Again it was based on a Nikon body - this time the autofocus N8008s, or 801s as it was known in the UK. The CCD ratio had been changed from 1:1.25 to 1:1.5, the same aspect ratio as a standard 35mm film frame.

 

The new 1.54 megapixel chip had more pixels than before, but was physically smaller than that in the DCS100. The chip had 1524 x 1012 pixels in a 14 x 9.3mm array.

 

Unlike the DCS100, the DCS200 could only take one image every three seconds - this was the time it took to store the image in the 2Mb of on-board RAM and then the time it took to 'save' that image to the separate hard disk. The camera had a built-in 80Mb hard disk which would hold fifty images. When the fifty exposures had been made, that was it - until the images had either been downloaded to, or deleted by, a host computer. In an emergency, the last image recorded could be deleted by pressing a ball point pen into a special hole in the camera back, allowing a further exposure to be made. The only other way to record more than fifty images was by using a small battery portable hard disk, the Mass Microsystems' Hitch Hiker, strapped to the back of the camera. It was not possible to view the DCS200's images without a computer.

 

All this technology ran off just six re-chargeable AA-size ni-cads, plus four AA size alkaline cells to power the Nikon body.

 

The DCS200 was supplied in five versions: The colour version was also available as the DCS200c, without internal hard disk storage, for use only while linked to a host computer. Similarly, there were black and white versions with and without internal disks: the DCS200mi and DCS200m. There was also a 'hybrid' colour version, the 'Wheelcam', which used the black and white chip and made a triple exposure through red, green and blue filters in turn.

 

The price of the DCS200ci was about £10,000 - less than half that of the original DCS100.

 

Both Kodak digital cameras had SCSI interfaces, which meant that they could be connected to any Apple Macintosh computer very easily. PCs need a SCSI (Small Computer Serial Interface) card. All the necessary cables were supplied with the camera.

 

PC Magazine - quote from 1991

 

"What of the future? Even more pixels? Removable hard disks? Faster 'motor' drives? Maybe. What is certain is that these Kodak digital cameras are the future of imaging. And they are here, right now."