Almost all DSLRs will soon be fossilized...

The cutoff for a piece of consumer electronics to qualify as a "Digital Fossil" on this blog is ten years.

Nikon's newest DSLRs, the D6 and D780, are both six years old now, and its next newest DSLRs, the D850 and D3500, are only a year off from official fossil status. Similarly, Canon's last DSLRs, the EOS-1D X Mark III and Rebel T8i, are also six years old.

Even Pentax, who have steadfastly nailed the flag of their corporate identity to the mast of the SS Moving Mirror, last released a new DSLR in 2022.

Heck, Canon's modern mirrorless age was launched by the EOS R, which turns eight years old in October.

Size Medium

Back in the early days of DSLRs, when full-frame sensors were rare and very expensive, I'd sometimes hear people refer to full-frame, only half-jokingly, as "digital medium format".

This is both accurate and inaccurate. Accurate in that some of the earliest full-frame DSLRs, the Canon EOS-1Ds series, were used for the sort of shooting that traditionally had been done with medium format film cameras: portraits, landscapes, studio work, that sort of thing.

When the EOS-1Ds Mark II came out in 2004, its 16MP full frame sensor inspired talk about "out-resolving" lenses. (This isn't a thing that happens, for what it's worth. What happens is you now have the resolution to notice flaws that would otherwise pass unseen.)

Inaccurate in that actual digital medium format had been around since nearly the dawn of digital photography, in the form of digital backs for existing medium format film camera systems, but those cost insane amounts of money and were almost never seen outside studios. Further, Mamiya released the first dedicated medium format DSLR in 2004, a 22MP beast with a price tag over ten grand.

It wasn't until Fuji launched their first medium format digital mirrorless camera in late 2017, the GFX 50S, that prices started to get more normal. Oh, sure, they still cost as much as a top-of-the-line pro body from Canon or Nikon, but at least it was used car money, not new car money.

Thing is, they've been on the market long enough now that the oldest ones are nearing Digital Fossils territory. Looking at MPB and Adorama, good used ones are fetching something like $1,500. That's a price where, if someone really wanted to try their hand at digital medium format, the cost is not prohibitive.

I'm kept away by reminding myself that I already have the 50MP Canon EOS 5DS that I hardly ever use.

But that doesn't stop me from kinda wanting to play with one.

Time Continues to Fly Like an Arrow...

When I first got into DSLRs over a dozen years ago, the D4 was still the king of Nikon Hill. It was still a year or so away from getting supplanted by the D4S (which, as the name implies, was a fairly modest improvement not worth incrementing the model designation over) and stickered for something like six grand.

Now you can pick up nice used ones in the $5-700 range, less if you're willing to go with a cosmetic beater or high shutter count. (And when looking at shutter counts on used cameras, be aware that the Kevlar/carbon fiber unit on the D4 was supposed to be good for 400,000 activations, and there are examples running around with a lot more. Pro Nikons are ridiculously overbuilt.)

This was Nikon's second generation of full-frame pro body and featured a 16MP CMOS sensor and a continuous frame rate of up to 10fps for action shooting. This one has one CF slot and one XQD slot, although other configurations were available.

These beasts were built for pros whose work would wind up on the pages of National Geographic or Sports Illustrated. (In fact, Nikon and Canon pro bodies tend to iterate on cycles that roughly coincide with the Summer or Winter Olympics.)

It's a bit of overkill for casual photography around the neighborhood, but hey, there's no kill like overkill, amirite?

Most of my shooting with this one's been done with the supremely versatile 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G VR superzoom.

Fossilized!

When I bought the Canon EOS 5Ds as an open box item back in 2019, it was the most I'd paid for a camera to that date. I think it may still hold that title.

Yesterday I thought "Y'know, I haven't actually used the 5Ds in a while." Even though it’s one of my newest, nicest cameras and technically my main work camera, I hadn’t shot it since… [checks most recent picture on card] …Jesus, TacCon ‘24. 

 I fell hard down the Micro 4/3 hole for pretty much all of 2025.

Jeez, I don’t own a single interchangeable lens camera… or any camera, really …made in this decade.

The E-M1X and EOS R are my newest cameras, followed by the X-T2 and then the 5Ds, and I just realized that, having been introduced in 2015, the 5Ds is technically old enough for the ten-year cutoff for this blog!

This Can't Be a Fossil Already, Can It?

The "fossil" cutoff here at Digital Fossils is ten years old and, while it feels like the Nikon Df is still a fairly new camera, it was actually released in time for Christmas of 2013, so it's a dozen years old.

I wanted one but they were $2,750 for just the body when they came out. By early 2020 used ones had dropped down to a grand or so, but between inflation and the fact that they started getting desirable, the price kinda hovered right around that spot. In fact, nicer ones are back up in the $1100-1200 range last I checked.

Finally one with a low shutter count (under 12,000 actuations) and enough cosmetic wear to make the price bearable came out on the shelf at Used Photo Pro downtown, so... happy early birthday to me!

It's an interesting combination of parts bin stuff from the cheaper consumer full-frame Nikons, the 16MP FX sensor from the pro D4, and those retro controls. Thom Hogan's review I think does it justice.

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Better, Yet Smaller: The Pentax K-7

In the summer of 2009, the K20D was supplanted at the top of Pentax's DSLR lineup by the new K-7. While it had an APS-C sensor with in-body Shake Reduction and a 14MP resolution just like its predecessor, the new camera was smaller and more rugged, with a magnesium body shell and better cold-weather resistance.

Top shutter speed bumped from 1/4000th to 1/8000th of a second, and it was rated for 100,000 activations.

Like before, there's "TAv" position on the mode dial. This allows you to set your preferred aperture and shutter speed and the camera will automatically adjust ISO to compensate. There's also the "Sv" mode to allow you to use the rear dial to adjust ISO on the fly. The other modes are the same as you'd expect. The top panel LCD can be briefly illuminated blue by rotating the power switch past the "ON" position.

Despite the K-7 being physically smaller than its predecessor, the rear LCD screen has grown from 2.7" on the K20D to a full 3" on the newer camera. This required relocating the vertical stack of buttons that used to live on the left side of the monitor. The relocation was done sensibly, with the playback-mode-only "Play" and "Trash" buttons moving to the upper left, and "Info" and "Menu" moving over to the right with the other menu navigation and activation buttons.

Despite all these improvements, MSRP for the K-7 was $1,150, which was over a hundred bucks cheaper than its forebear, and one of the best deals of the cameras in the category.

DSLR Pics: Red cars with the Pentax K20D

It's not likely to blossom into real fandom for me, but having put in a fair amount of time with the K20D and the K7 now, I can see why Pentax has a loyal following. They're compact, rugged, and have sensible control layouts.

DSLR Pics: Doggos with the Canon EOS 7D

The Canon EOS 7D was a big hit and stayed in production for what felt like an eternity at the height of the DSLR wars, staying in the catalog for half a decade before getting replaced by the 7D Mark II.

It's still a capable camera to this day, eleven years after it was discontinued.

DSLR Pics: Cars with the Nikon D2H

In the early days of DSLRs, manufacturers faced a dilemma with their pro bodies. Fairly high-resolution sensors were available early on... they had crossed the 5MP threshold at the dawn of the new millennium ...but that level of resolution created an image processing bottleneck that hampered sports and wildlife photographers who tend to shoot bursts at a high frame rate in hopes of capturing the money shot.

So both Canon and Nikon had dual tracks of pro bodies in the early '00s, one that emphasized maximum resolution and the other which accepted lower resolution in exchange for a higher frame rate and bigger image buffer.

For 2003, Nikon released their second generation of high speed sports-oriented pro body, the 4MP D2H, which was capable of shooting at eight frames a second until the buffer was filled. It was joined the following year by the 12MP D2X which only managed five frames per second at full resolution.

This D2H got snagged from Roberts Camera in Indianapolis for just a c-note, along with the battery, charger, a memory card, and a 50mm f/1.8 AF lens.

The pics below were snapped with the excellent Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8 DX zoom lens.

DSLR Pics: Cars with the Pentax K7

I was having some early issues with the Pentax K7 and the picture not being composed the way I thought I saw it in the viewfinder. Getting a few frames ruined by thinking I was filling the frame, only to look at the RAW file and find one of the bumpers lopped off by the edge of the shot.

I know that, unlike its predecessor, the K20D, which had a viewfinder that only covered 95% of the image area, the K7 has a viewfinder with 100% coverage. I don't think that's the problem, though, as I use cameras with 100% finders fairly often and try and keep a reasonable border around cars to allow cropping and leveling if necessary.

Anyway, it bears investigating...

Soulless?

I’m not really a huge fan of any one camera brand, nor am I really a hater of any. I’ve used and enjoyed all kinds of cameras, made by numerous manufacturers.

I will say that the only one that I’ve felt any antipathy toward is Sony. Don’t get me wrong, they make fine photographic appliances, but so many of them feel like just that: an electronic appliance for making photos. The only Sonys I’ve really bonded with in any way so far are the a700 DSLR, which hardly counts since Minolta did most of the heavy lifting on that one and Sony basically showed up in time to slap their name on it, and the wonderful little RX100 pocket camera.

Other than that, I’ve used Mavicas and CyberShots, NEX mirrorless bodies, as well as using an a7 and an a7 II as my work cameras for most of a year, and just never really warmed to any of them. Their menus and interfaces always feel like they were designed by someone who transferred over from the clock radio or stereo division last week.

I mean, Canons and Panasonics are pretty soulless, too, but not in that way.

You know who knows how to really nail that camera vibe? Fujifilm. They’re probably the best at it these days. Olympus and Pentax, too. They’ve got the whole camera vibe thing figured out. When you’re using one of their camera, you know that there were serious camera nerds involved in the design of the thing.

Of the big two classic Japanese camera makers, Nikon does it way better than Canon, but their attempts at retro ring hollow when compared to Fuji’s.

Big Little Camera: The Olympus E-3

Olympus was unique among the big camera makers in that they had not pursued autofocus technology in their interchangeable lens single lens reflex cameras, and therefore when they designed their first digital SLR they were essentially starting from a clean sheet of paper.

Since they didn't have to accommodate an existing lens mount and its associated library of glass, they were free to use a physically smaller sensor, working with Eastman Kodak to create the Four Thirds System.

This allowed for small cameras and small lenses and this was hyped for their early consumer and enthusiast DSLRs, but which probably came back to bite them in the butt when the E-3 was launched in late 2007 because the E-3 is not a small camera.

The thing is, the E-3 wasn't intended to be small and light. It was intended to be a professional camera and the cues are everywhere, in features that you'd normally only find on its Nikon D3 or Canon EOS-1D Mark III contemporaries.

The body was magnesium alloy, rugged and weather sealed. Rather than a mode dial, you cycle through your PASM by holding a button and spinning a control wheel. The battery and memory card doors are secured by positive latches. There's a built-in mechanical shutter to cut off light from the eyepiece for long exposure low-light photography. About the only distinctively "pro" feature it lacked was the built-in vertical grip. Also, thanks to the smaller 10MP Live MOS Four Thirds sensor, it lacked the $4-5,000 price tag of its APS-H and Full Frame competitors, boasting an MSRP of only $1,699 at launch.

It had an articulated 2.5" LCD screen, unlike the competition because, also unlike the competition it could shoot in live view. It sported Olympus's IS in-body image stabilization, a maximum shutter speed of 1/8000th, and could shoot in burst mode at 5 frames per second.

Alas, despite the fact that equivalent lenses were much smaller than its larger-sensored competition, the idea of a pro Four Thirds DSLR just never really caught on.

A shame, because Zuiko glass is great and this thing takes nice pictures...

DSLR Pics: Puppers with the Olympus E-3

The Zuiko Digital ED 12–60mm 1:2.8–4 SWD was the kit lens originally packaged with the Olympus E-3 when it was new. With its 24-120mm equivalent focal length range and fast aperture, it's a good piece of glass and compact compared to equivalent APS-C and full-frame lenses.

DSLR Pics: Fair Folk with the Sony a700

My seventh day at the Indiana State Fair I brought the Sony a700. Of the three lenses I have available I decided to take the Sony 16-80mm f/3.5-4.5 Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T*, which is a nice high-quality general purpose zoom. 

It's not an ideal choice for me at the fair, as the 120mm equivalent maximum focal length is a little shorter than I prefer for those environs, but the 18-200 superzoom I have is too slow to focus and has too slow a maximum aperture at longer focal lengths for me to be entirely happy with it on the old Sony sensor. I was too afraid that I'd have to crank the ISO up past 1000 to get any good shots from the blacksmithing shed or in the Pioneer Village mercantile building.

I was pretty happy with the results. This lens focuses reasonably quickly and quietly and delivers pleasing images.

Maxxum Overdrive: The Sony a700

When Sony acquired Konica Minolta's camera business in 2006, the successor for the Maxxum 7D was already on the drawing board. It wound up being the second Sony-branded DSLR, since the Maxxum 5D successor had already been ready to launch and was simply re-badged as a Sony.

Whereas Konica Minolta had marketed their high-tech autofocus SLRs as "Maxxum" in the USA, "Dynax" in Europe, and "𝛼" (Alpha) in the home market, Sony went with the 𝛼 nomenclature everywhere. The Maxxum 5D replacement became the 𝛼100, while the new high-end camera was marketed as the 𝛼700. (Because I am too lazy to set up a macro, I'm just going to use a lower-case Latin "a" rather than the Greek "𝛼" from here on out.)

Unlike the earlier a100, which used an APS-C sized 10MP CCD sensor, the a700 sported an all-new 12MP Sony Exmor CMOS sensor backed by the latest version of Sony's Bionz image processor. 

Sony had a lot of experience in cameras already, both via their own popular Mavica and Cyber-shot lines of digital point-and-shoots, as well as being a major supplier of sensor chips to other makers. Additionally, they acquired a raft of tech from Konica Minolta.

The sensor featured Minolta's Anti-Shake in-body image stabilization, renamed "Super Steady-Shot" by Sony. It also inherited Minolta's Eye Start, which put a couple sensors under the eyepiece that would wake the camera and start focusing (depending on the setting) when raised to the photographer's eye. The a700 added a sensor in the front of the grip to ensure that the Eye Start sensors wouldn't mistake a tee shirt for a face when the camera was hanging on a strap.

The mode dial had the usual full-auto green rectangle, typical PASM settings, the user-configurable MR (for "Memory Recall"), and then the easy-mode Portrait, Landscape, Macro, Sports, etc. for novices.

Said novices would need to be fairly well-heeled, as the a700 sported an MSRP of $1400 (almost $2200 in current dollars), but gave you a bright pentaprism viewfinder and magnesium front and top body panels for your money.

Oddly, for such a gizmo-laden camera in this price range, there was no LCD status display up top. Instead, when powering up, the 3.0" rear LCD screen would display all the camera's current settings.

The rear panel was high-impact plastic and featured a 3" TFT display, as well as a joystick for moving sensor points and navigating menus and a sliding switch for enabling or defeating the Super Steady Shot picture.

Currently used bodies are running as low as under a c-note and the lenses can be had for a song, as the Alpha mount is essentially orphaned with Sony having discontinued their DSLR offerings.

It gives splendid results for a digital body nearing two decades old.