Digicam Pics: Around SoBro with the Panasonic DMC-TZ3

Playing around with the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3 from 2007.

From about the early Aughties until the early Twenty-Teens, digicams actually came in a variety of types as manufacturers tried to slice the market ever finer. The TZ3 came out in 2007, a year when Panasonic alone launched over a dozen different models that could loosely be termed "pocket digicams", not counting larger bridge cameras or DSLRs.

The TZ3 was one of two "travel zooms", hence the nomenclature. Panasonic's travel zooms were pocket-size cameras with long zoom lenses ("10X" in consumer-speak, "28-280mm equivalent" if you're a shutterbug) that should allow you to do it all when you were on a trip. You could take landscapes, closeups of architectural details, or bring that scenic castle across the river closer without having to "zoom with your feet".

The TZ3 differed from its stablemate, the TZ2, in having a 7MP sensor to the 6MP one on the lesser model, as well as a 3" LCD screen versus the TZ2's 2.5" screen. They both sported the same 4.6-46mm f/3.3-4.9 MEGA O.I.S. lens, with the TZ3 having a higher MSRP at $330.

Here's a wide-ish shot of the SoBrosaurus, a frequent test subject of mine...

It was heavily overcast, and even with O.I.S. or "Optical Image Stabilization", which is Panasonic's trade name for their lens-based image stabilization, the little camera had difficulty returning a sharp image at the long end of its zoom range in that light, fighting both camera shake and Panasonic's own heavy-handed noise reduction. In retrospect, I should have set maximum ISO at 400 and taken my chances.

Colors on the little 1/2.35" CCD sensor are somewhat muted under the dim lighting...

...but pop nicely when the sun comes out.

I guess it's back on?

I'd lamented before that my plan to do some extensive work with Nikon's 1 system of CX-format mirrorless cameras had hit a snag and I was calling it off.

Finding a working 32mm f/1.2 at Roberts (UsedPhotoPro), however, has me fired up to try again. I even have a brace of adorable miniature Speedlights!

Olympus E-300 EVOLT review, part 2…

(Continued from Part I...)

The DSLR market… heck, the whole digital camera market …was way different in 2004 than it is now. It’s even different than it was in the mid ‘teens before cheap digicams were crushed by the increasing abilities of camera phones.

Due to the price of sensors, early DSLRs were marketed directly to professional photographers, the sort of people who could write off camera purchases on their taxes as a legitimate business expense. Sure, some well-heeled amateurs bought the early Nikon D1’s and Canon D30’s in 1999-2000, but interchangeable lens digital cameras remained a phenomenon reserved for people who could blow quite a wad on one. 

By early 2004, the first “inexpensive” DSLRs had hit the market from Canon and Nikon. The Digital Rebel from Canon (sold elsewhere as the 300D) stickered for right at a grand with a kit zoom lens, and Nikon’s D70 went for the same sticker price for just the body; adding a lens to the Nikon took the tariff to twelve ninety-nine.

Looking back at the DSLR market from its sunset years, it’s common to refer to the lowest price models in any manufacturer’s catalog as “entry” or “beginner” cameras, but you couldn’t really classify these cameras that way, since they had to serve two market niches. One niche may have been actual beginners, but the other was photography enthusiasts who just hadn’t been convinced to spring for a “serious” digital camera yet.

Bear in mind that the thousand dollar Rebel or D70 in 2004 was selling for the equivalent of sixteen hundred bucks in 2023 dollars.  These days that’s a sum of money that will get you solidly into the ranks of “prosumer” cameras.

When Olympus jumped into this market in 2004 with their second DSLR, the EVOLT E-300, they had to make a camera that wouldn't intimidate novices, but would offer enough control to avoid alienating advanced amateurs.

So the dial on the top offers the usual PASM modes for the latter, as well as the little icons of a face, a mountain, a running dude, and the cryptic hieroglyph that signifies a backlit subject to appease the former. In addition, there's a "SCENE" setting on the dial that drops you into a menu of more than a dozen other presets, to include everything from "fireworks" and "night portrait" to "museum" and "document".

Bobbi's rental Tiguan in the foreground, my '94 GT in the background
Olympus E-300 & Zuiko Digital 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 

In 2023, the E-300 has several downsides.

While it's capable of taking perfectly adequate photos in capable hands as long as one stays within its limitations, those limitations are pretty severe.

The camera's ISO range is limited to 100, 200, and 400 settings, and the vintage Four Thirds CCD-type sensor is hella noisy by the time you're at 400. Compounding this problem is the fact that, if you pick up a used example and nobody's bothered to update its BIOS, it will only work with the old Four Thirds kit lenses that existed when it was new. I have several good pieces of fast Four Thirds glass, but the first time I tried mounting the 12-60mm f/2.8-4 on the camera, I thought I'd bricked it. It took turning it off and removing the battery for a hard reset to get the thing up and running again.

Further, the Porro finder is a dim and cramped little tunnel that will leave you pining for the subpar pentamirrors found on a D3000 or Rebel XTi.

All in all, unless you are just chasing a retro experience for giggles, collecting old Olympus DSLRs, or trying something a little challenging, I'd probably pass on an E-300 for actual use.

My pal Bug behind the bar at Fat Dan's in SoBro.
Olympus E-300 & Zuiko Digital 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6

Fossils at the Fair, Part 1

The Canon EOS 5D Mark II hit the market in November of 2008. It sported a 21MP full-frame sensor and was the first Canon DSLR (and the first full-frame DSLR from anyone) capable of recording 1080p HD video. The 5D Mark II was used to shoot things as diverse as the opening credits of Saturday Night Live, whole episodes of House, and scenes in Hollywood movies like Act of Valor and The Avengers.

At launch, the MSRP for the camera was $2,699 without a lens. Nowadays you can pick up a nice used body for $350 or less, which is about as inexpensive as a good full-frame DSLR gets. A lot of these cameras were picked up by enthusiastic amateurs based on the hype and then sat largely unused until their owners decided to trade them in on some new mirrorless hotness or other. Batteries are still available new and of course you can use the entire library of Canon EF lenses without having to worry about an adaptor.

One of the attractions of using the Canon EF lens mount are its "L"-series lenses, identified by their red rings, high quality construction, premium optics, and (typically) enormous price tags.

The latest version of the L-series midrange zoom, the 24-70mm f/2.8L II, goes for something like eighteen hundred bucks at BezosMart, but you can get the older version from the 1990s, the 28-70mm f/2.8L, for around six bills at KEH Camera Brokers if you're willing to settle for "Bargain" grade. (And you should be, because KEH grades very conservatively. Their 'BGN' would be 'VG+' most places.)

Introduced in 1993, the 28-70mm f/2.8L was noted for its optical qualities and indeed still holds its own at DxOMark. I use mine on my 50MP EOS 5DS without worrying about it not being sharp enough on the super high res sensor.

So there you go. If you're willing to shop used, you can get a very competent professional DSLR body and lens setup for eighty percent off.

(Cross-posted at the other other blog.)

What counts as a fossil?

Ten years is my cutoff line for "fossilization" for electronica.

With the march of time, that means that cameras like the Canon EOS 5D Mark II qualify. It was introduced at the end of 2008, just in time for Christmas shopping, and discontinued in December of 2012.

Still, though, it feels weird to call a 21MP DSLR that's capable of shooting HD video a "fossil".

Time marches on. The Sony Mavica was a wonder in its day, too.

Taken with an EOS 5D Mark II

E-300 update...

Just needing to gather up some more photos with the Olympus E-300 EVOLT to illustrate the second half of the review.

Here's a loaded baked potato shot in indirect sunlight at base ISO of 100 and a pistol shot on a heavily overcast morning at the max ISO of 400. (Well, maximum unexpanded ISO. But it's noisy enough without faking ISO 800 or 1600.)

Both were taken using the Zuiko Digital 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens, more about which in the closing part of the review.

Old Enough to Vote

Had the Nikon D1X out to keep the shutter exercised yesterday. With a 21-y.o. camera, you don't take that for granted. Sooner or later it will snap its last photo...but that day wasn't yesterday!

The staff at Fat Dan's is friendly!

The problem with the D1X for indoor work by available light is my paucity of Nikon DX lenses. The best DX lens I have for the purpose is the 16-80mm f/2.8-4E VR, but the D1X is too old to control the electronic diaphragm on that lens. There's the 17-55mm f/2.8G, but it's not stabilized and it's a bazooka of a lens; very unsubtle.

I went with the 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G, which is also not stabilized, but at least is compact and light. The 18-70 was originally a kit lens for the then-new D70 in 2004. The lens was discontinued in the early 'teens, but is a hidden gem in the Nikon DX lineup. Inexpensive and tack sharp, even dudes like Thom Hogan speak well of it.

With an old camera like the D1X, your maximum realistically usable ISO is 800, and even that's pushing it, as you can see by the noise in the portrait I shot.

It's hand-held, 1/125th of a second at f/4 at a focal length of 34mm in aperture priority mode with the lens cranked as wide open as it would get.

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Digital Fossils

In a Telegram conversation, I remarked that the 7" Kindle Fire tablets that Amazon is selling for the price of dinner for two at Applebee's would have been props on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Marko replied "If the Fire had existed when TNG was still running, it would have been the most powerful computing device on the planet by a fair margin. Weird to think about."

He's not wrong, either.

I remember back in the days of dialup and BBSes, call it 1990 or so, one of the rotating sig lines in my SLMR (Silly Little Mail Reader) file was "And you may tell yourself 'This is not my one gig drive'."

My boyfriend at the time had a 386DX 33 with an HDD that was so huge that it had to be partitioned into virtual drives. Like eighty whole megabites or something like that!

Coincidentally, the SD card slot on my computer right now is occupied by a 64GB card from an old Nikon D7100. Each 24 megapixel RAW image file takes up over 30MB. 

My wristwatch has higher screen resolution than a Sega Genesis.

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Olympus E-300 Review: Part 1

Olympus launched their first DSLR, the E-1, to much fanfare in 2003. Not only was it the first DSLR from Olympus, it was the first interchangeable lens system camera designed from the ground up for a digital sensor, rather than being adapted from a film camera.

Unlike Canon and Nikon, Olympus didn’t have a huge installed user base of autofocus lens owners they had to lure to digital, so they started with a clean sheet of paper for their sensor and lens mount.

As part of the Four Thirds consortium, along with Kodak, Panasonic, and Fuji, they used a smaller sensor, which would be less expensive, an important factor in those days when image sensors were still phenomenally spendy. The E-1 had a ruggedized, weather-sealed magnesium alloy body, an innovative ultrasonic vibrating sensor cleaning mechanism, and resolution equivalent to or better than the contemporary Canon EOS-1D and Nikon D1X despite only costing $1699 (about 2800 bucks in 2023 dollars).

Almost simultaneous with the launch of the Olympus E-1 came the next shot fired in the DSLR wars, from Canon, who announced a stripped down consumer DSLR with a plastic body shell for under a grand. The 6.3MP EOS 300D, sold in the US as the Digital Rebel, hit shelves for $999 with a bundled 18-55mm kit lens. Olympus returned fire in 2004 with their second DSLR, a consumer-grade 8MP camera named the E-300, which sold for $999 with a Zuiko 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 lens included in the box.

The E-300 had three selectable autofocus points, had an ISO range of 100-400 (expandable to 800 or 1600, but don't bother), shutter speeds up to 1/4000th of a second, and could shoot 2.5 frames/sec...at least for four frames, at which point the buffer was filled.

Despite the lack of a viewfinder hump (due to its odd Porro finder system) and small Four Thirds sensor, the E-300 wasn't meaningfully smaller than its competition from Canon, although it offered more megapixels for less money.

Part two of this review will have some photo results and conclusions!

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Portrait Photos With the Olympus E-510

Olympus's DSLR cameras have been discontinued for more than a decade now, but that doesn't mean they can't still snap a decent picture.

The E-510 was their midrange offering from 2007 that introduced the Panasonic-designed MOS sensor to the Oly DSLR lineup, replacing the Kodak-manufactured CCD sensor used by the earlier cameras. 

Its predecessors had already introduced dust reduction and live view to the DSLR market, and to those features the 10-megapixel E-510 added in-body image stabilization, previously a Pentax exclusive.

I've been out shooting with my E-510 lately, using the excellent Zuiko Digital 12-60mm f/2.8-4.0 zoom lens, which has a field of view equivalent to the classic 24-120mm focal length zoom lens on a full-frame sensor.

Here are a couple of casual portraits snapped with this setup at my neighborhood hangout, Fat Dan's Chicago Style Deli...

Time Machines

The D2X is long in the tooth, but I still get a ton of use out of mine.

Just think about it, when the Nikon D2X was new, that Camaro was only twenty-three years old!

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Sensor Sweep

Interestingly, I happened to get photos of the same subject at the same time of day, albeit about a month apart, with two different cameras of broadly similar vintage and capabilities.

It's midafternoon, I'm sitting out front of Fat Dan's on College Avenue, and here comes that gorgeous Elm Green Volkswagen Karmann Ghia!

The first time is August 31st, and I've got the Nikon D700 wearing the compact 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6G super zoom.

The D700 came out in 2008 and packed the 12MP full-frame CMOS sensor and EXPEED processor of the previous year's pro D3 camera into a smaller body. Priced at $2999, two grand less than the D3, it lost some features, like the vertical grip and larger battery, the second card slot, and was downgraded from 9fps to 5fps, but it was still ruggedized and weather sealed. 

The 28-200 lens mounted on it favors compactness and focal length range over ultimate optical performance, but it's a Nikon and still does a pretty good job.

This was shot at a focal length of 95mm in Program mode with the camera set at its base ISO of 200, and the camera went with 1/400th of a second at f/10.

About a month later, early October, I'm sitting the same place around the same time when here comes the Karmann Ghia again!

This time I had a Canon EOS-1D Mark IV with the excellent EF 24-105mm f/4L IS general purpose zoom lens mounted.

Released in 2009, the $4999 EOS-1D Mark IV was Canon's top-of-the-line pro camera aimed at sports and wildlife photographers and photojournalists. It had a 16MP APS-H sensor, slightly smaller than the full frame one the company used in its studio & landscape oriented -1Ds series. This is because it prioritized frame rate; the Mark IV could blaze away at 10fps until the buffer filled.

The 24-105/4 "L"-series lens has a field of view equivalent to a 31-137mm lens on the 1D, due to the 1.3x crop factor of the APS-H sensor.

I was shooting in Aperture Priority mode at f/5.6 to ensure reasonably fast shutter speeds at the base ISO of 100 in the late afternoon sunlight.

Both images were shot in RAW and minimally processed through Photoshop's Camera RAW convertor.

It's interesting that a decade and a half on, the prices of the cameras have decreased dramatically, but the relative price gap remains fairly consistent. Nice used D700s are running around $300-400, while a 1D4 is still going to set you back six or seven hundred bucks.

Both lenses are discontinued. The 24-105mm f/4L IS has been replaced with a "Mark II" version. The handy little 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6G, a marvel when it was released, lacks an internal focusing motor or any kind of stabilization, and is therefore not amenable to being used on mirrorless cameras or most Nikon DX DSLRs.

It's fun to use these old pro cameras I never could have afforded when they were new. They were built to last and plenty were traded in with a lot of life left in them. There are D700s running out there with a million documented shutter actuations; if you run across a used one with only a few thousand on the clock, it's barely broken in.

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Two is one and one is none...

So what do you do with dual card slots in a camera, you ask?

Well, it depends.

Back in the day, when you had the one SD slot and one Compact Flash slot, it was common to record a JPEG to the SD and the much larger RAW file to the CF, since read and write speeds on Compact Flash were higher.

It's as common these days to have both cards of the same type, but some folks still use them like that. Others will have the second slot set up as an overflow when the first one fills.

I shoot everything in RAW these days, and so I record simultaneously to both cards, using one as a backup in case a corrupted card is unable to be read. That way if I shot a whole day's worth of photos at a class or event or something, all is not lost if a card craps the bed.

The only time I do differently is in the Fuji X-T2. I love Fujifilm's JPEG film emulations, and so I'll record RAW to one SD card for post-processing in Photoshop or Lightroom, and then a film emulation JPEG of Velvia or the like on the other card.

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Grumble...

Here's a gripe...

Olympus's E-3 DSLR came out in late '07 and was roughly comparable to the Nikon D300 and Canon 40D. It had two card slots: A CF card slot like a normal camera and a slot for Olympus's almost-proprietary xD card. It couldn't record to both simultaneously, and you couldn't even set it to switch over automatically when whichever one you were using filled up. Oly was just clinging to xD like grim death and wanted to sell cards, I guess.

Anyway, a couple years later the E-5 came out. An updated E-3 with HD video, 2MP more resolution, and some other tweaks, it was the last gasp of Olympus's Four Thirds DSLR system, and the closest to a true pro body they'd yet made. They even bowed to the inevitable and replaced the xD slot with an SD slot like a normal camera.

Guess what? You still can't write to both slots simultaneously.

WTF, Olympus?

Project Evolution...

Sometimes I get a little carried away with a project idea...

Nikon F5 > D1X > D2X > D3

The need for speed...

One thing I noticed when I was shooting the D1X last month was how quickly the buffer filled up. I popped off several shots at that Caddy as it rolled by and the camera made me stop and let it catch up at something like seven or eight.

This confused me as all the media about the camera, even when it was new, claimed the D1X could shoot three frames per second for 21 consecutive shots before the buffer filled. 

The sports-oriented D1H had less resolution but could blaze away at 5 FPS for forty shots before it bogged down. That's a full eight seconds with the shutter button mashed; enough time to cover an NFL play from the snap.

The disconnect, as I soon figured out, was that I was shooting in RAW, which was not as often done in the earliest days of digital. That buffer that held twenty-some JPEGs only holds six or seven .NEF files (Nikon's proprietary RAW format.) You can count "two Mississippi" and then you're done until the buffer's flushed out, or has room for another image.

From a retrospective on the D1X's predecessor, the original D1:

The super fast speed was partially hindered by the settings. While JPEG processing was really fast and almost instantenious, switching to RAW cause the camera to crawl. Storage time went sky high, 45 secs per photo not uncommon. People complaining today about slow CF/SD cards shoud respect that a microdrive could only deliver 0.5 MB/sec and the D1 electronics limited the fastest CF Cards (12x Lexar) to data rates well below 1 MB/sec.

I was using a 133x Transcend 2GB card, probably capable of receiving data a lot faster than the old D1X could send it, so at least the buffer probably cleared faster.

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Built like a tank...

I had my Nikon D1X out yesterday. I'm not sure of the shutter count on my example, but it's an old one. D1X serial numbers started out in 2001 at 5100001, and mine's number 5100496. The 17-55mm f/2.8 DX glass on the camera wasn't much newer. The serial number would indicate it was an early one, too, probably made in 2003.

Still takes a decent photo...

This would have been top flight pro kit in 2003. Six grand worth of body and next thing to two more of lens. 

I got the lens, cosmetically well-worn but functionally fine, for a bit less than five bills at Roberts. For use on crop-sensor Nikon DSLRs, the 17-55/2.8 has largely been supplanted by the excellent 16-80mm f/2.8-4E. The latter has a greater focal length range, spiffy new nano crystal coating, and vibration reduction to more than make up for the stop of aperture it gives up at longer focal lengths. Thing is, it uses an electronically-controlled diaphragm that the D1X is too old to communicate with.

I don't know if a camera store or pawn shop would even give you any money at all for a D1X these days. Used ones are bringing about a hundred bucks or thereabouts.

Still takes an okay photo. Nikon builds their pro bodies like tanks; you could bludgeon a dude to death with one of these and then take pictures of the crime scene with it.

Practical Pixels

In 2004, digital cameras had become mainstream, but sensors were still expensive. Digital SLRs with 35mm-sized "full-frame" sensors were exotically expensive, being limited to the Canon EOS 1Ds and some Kodak hybrids.

Point 'n' Shoot compacts, now commonplace and offered by every manufacturer, were still generally a couple hundred bucks. Most were in the 5-6 megapixel range and had built in zoom lenses, video recording ability, and other gimmicks to offset their physically tiny sensors.

The interchangeable-lens DSLR had just dropped below the thousand-dollar mark with Canon's 6.3MP Digital Rebel (aka the 300D) and there was something of a format war in the category.

Canon and Nikon were constrained by the need to woo customers who already had substantial investments in their 35mm film camera systems. In order to allow the film camera lenses to be usefully ported over, the sensors couldn't be too small, or else they'd not work well. This also allowed the two makers to essentially convert existing film camera technology to digital; indeed, their early DSLRs were based on 35mm film camera bodies.

The solution was a sensor size that became known as APS-C. Canon & Nikon used slightly different sensor sizes, with Canon's offering an effective 1.6X focal length multiplier to existing lenses, and Nikon's multiplying by 1.5X.

Olympus and Panasonic, on the other hand, went with a clean sheet of paper: an all-new sensor format called Four Thirds. About the same size as an old 110 Instamatic film negative, these small sensors were cheaper than APS-C to make, and had a 2X crop factor relative to a "full frame" camera. In other words, a 50mm lens, which is a standard mid-focal length on traditional film cameras, would act like a 100mm lens on a Four Thirds camera.

In 2004, the super coolest most ultra APS-C camera was probably Nikon's D2X pro camera. Boasting a 12MP sensor and a $5,000 price tag, this would be the camera used by photojournalists everywhere from NFL sidelines to the war zones of the Middle East.

Meanwhile, Olympus had just launched their second Four Thirds camera, and their first one targeted at consumers rather than pros and enthusiasts. The E-300 used a Kodak-manufactured CCD sensor, and it had two-thirds the megapixels of the top-of-the-line Nikon, and could be had for a fifth of the money; while five grand got you a Nikon D2X with no lens, just a box and a battery charger, the Olympus EVOLT E-300 could be had for $999 with a 14-45mm zoom lens included in the kit.

With more and more people viewing pictures on screens, what was the practical difference? Here are some pics shot with an E-300 and the 14-45mm kit zoom, compared to ones shot with a D2X and the 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G VR II.

E-300

D2X

E-300

D2X

E-300

D2X

Truthfully the biggest visual difference to me, after accounting for the mangling effects of compression, is actually one of sensor technology, more than size or megapixel count.

The Nikon D2X uses a Sony-sourced CMOS sensor, while the Olympus E-300 uses a Kodak-made CCD sensor. While CCD sensors have been more or less completely replaced by CMOS ones, there are holdouts who insist that the CCD had "more pleasing" images, sometimes providing facts, but often with a level of hand-waving woo reminiscent of vinyl discs and vacuum tube amps.

You can embigennate the pics and judge for yourselves.

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Premature Fossilization

I don't really have a hard & fast rule about what makes a piece of electronica a "fossil". Generally, ten years is enough in the world of computers to make something pretty thoroughly obsolete.

At this point only the very oldest of Canon's EF-M crop sensor mirrorless cameras meets that definition, Canon having been slow off the blocks in the mirrorless fad. The original EOS M, with its 18MP sensor lifted from the Rebel T4i DSLR, didn't launch until the middle of 2012.

The M6 in the photo above launched in 2017 and its 24MP sensor and DIGIC 7 processor makes it one of the most modern cameras I have, but the latest news from Canon would seem to indicate that the days of the EF-M series are truly numbered, which would prematurely fossilize a five year old camera.

While the body of the M6 is marked Made in Japan, Canon is coy about marking cheaper lenses with where they're manufactured. Given that the now-shuttered Zhuhai plant made millions of lenses a year, and the fact that pretty much all EF-M lenses are cheaper lenses, this probably signals the looming end for the EF-M crop sensor cameras.

The final nail in the coffin will be the launch announcement of a crop-sensor body using Canon's newer RF lens mount from their full-frame mirrorless line.

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Big in Japan...

I feel like I'm ahead of a trend for once in my life! Old digital cameras are getting popular, especially in Japan...

Alright, it’s a valid question. Why would I want to spend my precious time using an old digital camera that takes subjectively poor-quality photos? Why use a camera that’s painfully slow, gives an unnatural front pocket bulge, and makes you look even more like the geek-a-zoid you already know you are? Yeah, many reasons to toss the old digicam in the recycle bin. (Please remove the battery, thanks). Yet, before you toss the digicam away forever, ask yourself “Wouldn’t it be cool to take pictures with your grandfather’s camera?” “Oh, how grand it would be to hold an object that so many memories were taken with?” This is, after all, what many of us said about film cameras not long ago.

Bargain Basement Shootout

If the end of the beginning for serious digital photography was the 1999 launch of the Nikon D1, the first all in-house digital single lens reflex camera from one of the Big Two Japanese camera makers, then the beginning of the end for film SLRs was in 2003. It was triggered by a digital SLR price war caused by Canon's launch of the EOS 300D.

Known in the U.S. as the Digital Rebel, the 300D sported the 7-point autofocus system and 6.1MP sensor like that on Canon's semi-pro EOS 10D, but where the 10D sold as a body only for a $1,999 MSRP, the Rebel could be had for $999 complete with an 18-55mm zoom lens.

How was this done? Well, firstly some features were deleted (and some disabled). Also, the bright, but heavy and expensive, glass pentaprism viewfinder was replaced with a lighter, dimmer, cheaper pentamirror. Finally, the rugged magnesium shell of the 10D got binned in exchange for a thinner plastic body.

The launch of the Digital Rebel brought DSLR cameras in range of the casual photographer and kicked off a price war between Nikon and Canon that reached its apogee... or perigee? ...in 2008-2009, the years that arguably saw the final maturing of the DSLR market. Since then changes in DSLR cameras have been mostly evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

The five years between the introduction of the Rebel and '08-'09 saw furious competition between Nikon and Canon as each tried to grab a bigger share of the entry-level DSLR market by packing ever-cheaper beginner cameras with ever-better features until something had to give.

So Canon and Nikon each peeled off an even cheaper model to serve as an enticing price leader in boxed kits sold in big box stores, leaving the original entry model to continue accruing more advanced features without as much of an eye toward absolute minimum MSRP.

Canon followed the original 300D/Rebel with the 350D/Rebel XT (8MP, same $999 kit price), then the 400D/Rebel XTi (10MP, $899 kit), and then the 450D/Rebel XSi (12MP, $899 kit). Then in 2008, while the Rebel XSi was still fresh on the market, Canon slid an entirely new camera beneath it in the lineup: The Rebel XS, called the 1000D overseas; in Canon's numerical marketing, the fewer the digits, the higher-zoot the camera, with the ultimate pro DSLR body being the 1D series.

Relative to the Rebel XSi, the Rebel XS lost the "i" suffix, as well as a handful of features. It recycled the 10MP sensor from the XTi, and the 7-point autofocus system from the XT. While the XSi had moved to a higher resolution 3" rear LCD display, the XS used the same 2.5" screen as the XTi. These and other shortcuts allowed Canon to drop the price of the basic kit with an 18-55mm zoom lens to only $699, a price point starting to put the squeeze on higher end point-'n'-shoot "bridge cameras".

From this point on, Canon designated their better US-market Rebels with a "T" prefix and an "i" suffix: T1i, T2i, et cetera. The cheaper entry-level models lost the "i", like the T3 below.

Canon didn't iterate these bargain-bin models as frequently, so the 2011 T3 is the direct successor to the XS. It picked up the 12MP sensor and 9-point autofocus system from the XSi, the DIGIC 4 processor (then-current across the Canon DSLR line, but long in the tooth and about to be replaced in the higher-end models), and added the ability to shoot 720p video.

So in 2011 the customer who went looking for a DSLR at Best Buy or in the camera aisle at Walmart or Target (hard to believe now that just ten years ago Wally World and Tahr-jay had a whole aisle of cameras) had their choice of two boxed Canon kits: the 18MP T3i with an 18-55mm lens for $899, or the 12MP T3 with the same lens for only $599.

The price-conscious shopper wasn't going to care about details like a body shell of smoother, thinner plastic, the lack of a separate door for the memory card (it shared the compartment on the bottom with the battery, which was cheaper, but precluded swapping cards while mounted on a tripod), or the fact that the T3 was built in Taiwan rather than Japan. The T3i also had a bigger, articulated LCD screen on the back, the ability to shoot 1080p HD video, and other details... but three hundred bucks is three hundred bucks.

In 2009, Canon's biggest competitor reorganized their entry level line as well. The big box store DSLR shopper would find a pair of kits from Nikon: There was the D5000, which competed head-to head with Canon's T1i. It had 12MP, an articulated LCD, could shoot 720P video, and came with an 18-55mm lens for $850.

Competing with the cheaper Canon Rebel XS was the new Nikon D3000. It was extremely stripped down relative to the D5000, and much smaller. It lacked video recording and an articulated screen, but this wee little DSLR came with a wee little price tag; with the kit lens included, the tariff was only $449. 

Essentially, Nikon was using the 10MP CCD sensor and 11-point autofocus sensor from its old D200 semi-professional camera, hooked to the new EXPEED processor.

The D3000 had a built-in tutoring "Guide Mode" for novices, and had a minimum set of physical controls, with fewer buttons and most settings controlled via a menu on the rear LCD screen.

Comparing the extreme entry-level cameras from the two companies (and it's a generalized comparison as the T3 is an iteration newer than the D3000), the Nikon feels more solid in the hands. It combines beginner friendliness in its minimal buttons and "Guide Mode" with features of more expensive cameras that the budget Canon lacks, like the soft textured rubber on the handgrip and the separate side-mounted door for the memory card. The viewfinder on the Nikon is noticeably brighter, although that's relative; both are cramped and dim compared to the pentaprism finders on pro cameras.

The kit lenses both have pretty much identical specs, including "VR" Vibration Reduction on the Nikon and "IS" Image Stabilization on the Canon, as well as the same range of focal lengths and apertures, and are (other than the lens elements themselves) constructed of plastic from the filter ring to the mounting flange. However the Nikkor AF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR feels much more upmarket compared to its rival; once mounted on the camera where you can't see its plastic flange, you could be forgiven for thinking it cost a good bit more than it did, while Canon's EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS II never stops letting you know it came in the box with the camera like a prize with some Cracker Jacks. 

Literally the only place the Nikon feels chintzier is in the diopter adjustment for the viewfinder, which is a fiddly sliding bar arrangement instead of the normal dial on the Rebel T3.

When I'm done with this DSLR project, I'm going to sell or give away the Rebel T3, but I'm keeping the Nikon D3000. When you get done with Guide Mode and don't need the beginner's training wheels, you can do like I did and go into the menus and switch the status display on the rear LCD screen from its cartoon-like simplified graphic look to the normal white-on-black status display other Nikons use. While in the menu you can also correct the only real physical control shortcoming by reassigning the "Fn" function button on the front of the camera, which comes from the factory set to start the self-timer, and switch it to be the ISO control button.

The basic 10MP CCD and 11-point CAM-1000 autofocus core of the D3000 is still plenty for solid work; after all, it's the same guts as the Nikon D200 I used as my main camera for years, just in a smaller and lighter package.

These entry level cameras were key to Canon & Nikon's marketing plans for over a dozen years, intended to bring in new buyers and entice them to move up inside their respective manufacturer's ecosystems to bigger and better things. The Nikon entices you by feeling like a real camera, while the Canon makes you maybe wish you'd spent the extra money for the next level camera from the start...or maybe bought the Nikon in the showcase next to it.

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Random Old Camera Notes

One thing about using older cameras is that even if the camera is sold as "includes battery and charger", that doesn't necessarily mean the battery is worth a damn. 

The original Canon Digital Rebel I gave Bobbi six or seven years ago has spent most of the intervening years sitting on a shelf on her desk behind her computer monitor. Over that time, the BP511 battery pack in it has quietly gone (mostly) toes up. You can power up the camera, it shows a full charge, and by the time you've set the date and time and taken a single photo, it's down to one bar on the little segmented battery icon. 

The irony is that this is the battery pack on which someone had scrawled "NEW" on in Sharpie at sometime in the past. The EN-EL4 that came with my Nikon D2X was in the same shape. Being fair, these batteries are probably at least a dozen years old. Fortunately, both are still in production and available thanks to huge installed user bases. Canon used the BP511 and BP511a in probably a dozen models, up to 2010 or so, and the EN-EL4 and -EL4a powered Nikon's top-of-the-line pro bodies for eight years, as well as its final film camera, the F6.

I've also noted that the original Digital Rebel is wonky when writing RAW files even if you don't turn it off in the middle of the process. It seems to do fine with JPEGs, though.

SOOC large, fine JPEG

The thing with a digicam like this is that it's entered its disposable days. Use it, have fun, but don't plan on repairing it or anything when it finally grinds to a halt. In perfect working order and top-notch cosmetic condition, this is a fifty dollar camera body. In the shape this one's in cosmetically, its real street value couldn't buy lunch for two at Chick-fil-A.

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Black Friday

KEH Camera Brokers is having a site-wide 10% off sale for Black Friday, the discount code is BF21E.

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Time Capsule

Check out this Best Buy sales circular from 1996!

Remember when games for your PC came in a box and didn't require an internet connection to play? Good times.

(It was a good thing, too, because it'd take forever to download a couple CD-ROM's worth of data at 28.8 kbps...)

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Writing Time

So, if you're out shooting with an original EOS Digital Rebel, a creaky silver plastic 300D, and it has only, like one bar of battery left so you're turning it off after each shot to conserve juice...you should probably remember to wait for a solid five- or six-Mississippi to flick the switch to "OFF" because it takes that thing FOREVER to write a RAW file and if you turn it off in the middle of the save process it just corrupts the data.

Just throwing that out there. No particular reason.

Have a colorful photo shot in RAW...after I noticed that glitch.

That was shot in RAW and processed in Adobe Photoshop Bridge, just hitting "Adobe Vivid" and the "Auto" correction button.

For contrast, I switched the camera over to the Large Fine JPEG setting and shot the same scene...

It only takes about two seconds to record the highest quality JPEG, since it only takes up a little over 2MB on the card rather than the 6.6MB of a RAW file.

These days it's easy to forget that in the early days of higher-resolution digital photography, recording speed was a limiting factor; so much of one that Digital Photography Review measured how long it took to write files to the card.

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Question Answered?

So a couple posts ago we asked this question regarding the Nikon D1X:

But can a 5.3 megapixel CCD sensor take good photos still?

Personally, I think the answer is "Yes".

As you near the six megapixel mark, you're getting resolution equal to or better than all but the best 35mm films.

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Walking on its Fins

If you pick up a DSLR from, say, about 2005 or 2006, and one made this year, you'll find surprisingly few major differences in the way they operate. Sure, there are a few more buttons on the newer camera for things like Live View and other features that weren't present in the older camera, but the labeling conventions and such had been pretty well worked out by Dubya's second term.

Not so much with one made in 2001. They were still kinda winging it.

Looking at the front or top of a 2001 Nikon D1X, it would seem that the controls had already been figured out by then, but that's because those controls don't really differ from those of a Nikon film SLR. A Nikon F5 or N80 user would feel right at home. 

The little focus mode selector dial (Manual, Single-servo, Continuous-servo) is right there next to the lens mount where it can be operated by the left hand, on the opposite side of the mount is the depth-of-field preview button. The sub-command dial is on the top front of the handgrip, just below the power switch and shutter release, waiting for your index finger. The three position metering selector switch (3D Matrix metering, Center-weighted, Spot) is on the side of the pentaprism housing, with a lock button, just like on the F5.

It's when we get to the back of the camera and start running into digital-specific controls that things seem weird to our modern conventions.

The button labeled "MONITOR" at the top left is still there on newer Nikons...in the same place, and performing the same function...but it now has the more familiar "play" arrow-in-a-rectangle icon.

The monitor screen is tiny. Under that rubber DIGITAL I/O flap is an IEEE 1394 Firewire connector. Very 2001.

Buttons for white balance, and various menu controls are rubber chiclets hidden under a little magnetically-latched fold-down trap door, emulating the placement of some of the more obscure controls on the F5. In succeeding versions of Nikon's pro DSLR bodies, these would migrate out to normal buttons on the back of the camera and the trap door would go away.

The weirdest thing about the D1X is how it gets its high (for the era) resolution.

The bottleneck at the time was processing all the data from the sensor and getting it written to memory. So with the D1X, Nikon kept the number of horizontal rows the same as on the original D1's sensor (1324) but went to 4028 vertical columns*. Since the sensor data is read row-by-row, this allowed a maximum frame rate of 3fps to be maintained. 

The buffer still fills up in six shots when shooting at that speed, giving you a quick two-Mississippi of continuous shooting before you have to sit and wait for it to write everything to the card. This is not a camera for spray-and-pray action photography.

The downside to the weird sensor arrangement is that the NEF files may not be understandable to some newer 3rd party RAW converters from smaller companies. Adobe Photoshop Bridge still supports them, of course.

By comparison to some of the weirder features of the D1X, its replacement is utterly conventional.

*You can see how this works on the first page of DPReview's original D1X review.

The Deal With DX

When Nikon launched the original D1 in 1999, the big attraction was that it would seamlessly use any existing F-mount lenses a photographer already had. For a pro photographer, the biggest investment is in the glass.

During the autofocus revolution of the Eighties and Nineties, when Minolta and Canon left existing users behind by adopting entirely new mounts, Nikon stubbornly engineered an autofocus system that would allow the new cameras to retain backwards compatibility with older manual-focus lenses. With the transition to digital, they retained that same lens mount.

The thing is, CCD sensor technology was obscenely expensive. Elsewhere I looked at Canon's 1D, with an APS-H sensor, and its 1Ds, with a full frame 35mm sensor, and the price difference between these two otherwise very similar cameras:

To give an idea of how much the price of the sensor affected the price of the camera, the APS-H 4MP EOS 1D dropped in 2001 for $6500, and a year later the full frame 11MP EOS 1Ds joined it in Canon's lineup for a whopping eight grand. That's better than $200/MP or, looked at another way, seven dollars per square millimeter of additional sensor size. At seven bucks a square millimeter, the head of a pin would be $28 and a penny would be almost two grand.

Nikon went with a sensor size called "APS-C", which has 1/3rd less field of view than a standard 35mm negative, but is close enough to it in size to still be able to functionally use Nikon's existing library of F-mount lenses, although the practical result would be to give them a 1.5x focal length modifier.

For instance, I spent a day wandering around with a 35-105mm f/3.5-4.5 lens on the D1X. On a regular Nikon film SLR, this was a common enough walkabout lens in the Nineties; it covered a useful range of focal lengths from a wide-ish angle for street photography to a short telephoto for portraiture.

On the smaller sensor of the D1X, it was effectively a 53-158mm lens, however.

What does this mean in real life? Well, I saw this yellow house with an orange tree in the front yard and thought it was so colorful in the afternoon light that it warranted a picture...but there was literally no way to get it all in frame like I could have if it had been on a full frame camera, even by taking a step into the neighbor's lawn across the street.

It wouldn't be until 2003 that Nikon introduced lenses specifically designed to work with APS-C sized sensors, which Nikon called "DX". Where a typical all-in-one Nikon zoom for the film era had been a 24-120mm, the DX equivalent was a 16-80mm.

So, while a pro photog in 2001 who'd been using the F5 35mm film camera on the left could theoretically transition straight over to the D1X with all his kit*, he'd suddenly find himself short of wide angle lenses (but blessed with an abundance of super telephotos.)

*And the D1X is a camera that marked a lot of pros seriously transitioning. The original 2.7MP D1 was fine for newspaper photography, but the 5.7MP D1X could pretty much print anywhere 35mm film was used.

The current fossil...

I thought I was going to be reviewing the Sony Mavica MVC-CD300 next, but it looks like I'm spared having to drag out my cheap little USB-powered CD-ROM drive for a while longer.

I'm trying to move forward through time based on when the cameras were announced, using Digital Photography Review's camera database as the guide. According to it, the CD300 was announced near the end of February 2001, while the Nikon D1X was announced earlier that month, so the Nikon it is.

The serial number on my D1X, which I bought well-used back in 2015, marks it as one of the first 500 to leave Nikon's factory. It was already quite obsolete in 2015 and by 2021 standards, it's downright quirky.

But can a 5.3 megapixel CCD sensor take good photos still? Let's find out!

Bridge to the Future

In the year 2000 a professional photographer who needed to go digital needed to shell out ten grand for a Kodak DCS system or five grand for the Nikon D1, both of which had less than three megapixels, but were compatible with all their existing Nikon lenses. If they were a Canon shooter, they were in luck because late that year Canon launched their entirely in-house D30, which had a 3MP APS-C sized CMOS sensor and could use the existing array of EF-mount EOS system lenses. Not as ruggedly professional as the Nikon-based offerings, it was still a $3,000 purchase; a lot of dough for someone not planning on earning at least a little bit of money with it.

Hence cameras like the Coolpix 990, which not only sported a 3.34MP sensor, but also allowed an enthusiast photographer to exert almost SLR-levels of control, all for $900.

The rotating power switch surrounding the shutter release button atop the handgrip would be familiar to the user of Nikon's then-current lineup of film SLRs.

The switch can be rotated from "OFF" to one of two "REC" settings, "A" for Automatic and "M" for Manual, as well as Play, which is used to review images and videos that have been recorded on the card. The three different settings also control what comes up on the screen when the Menu button on the camera's back is pressed.

In "A" mode, the camera does most of the work for you and there's not really any way to override much of anything. Toggle over to "M" and pretty much everything's up for grabs. You can shoot in Program Exposure, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, or full Manual modes just like a Nikon SLR, with the Command Dial aft of the shutter release performing the same functions. The LCD display on the top of the camera displays pertinent shooting info, again just like on an F100 or F5 film SLR.

On the rear of the camera, above the small LCD monitor, are buttons to toggle the monitor through various levels of information displayed or turn it off altogether, the Menu button, and the rocker switch for powering the zoom lens between wide angle and telephoto settings. The lens has a focal length range equivalent to 38-115mm on a full-frame camera, and is reasonably fast, with maximum aperture ranging between f/2.5 and f/4 depending on the focal length selected.

To the right of the LCD monitor is a four-way directional controller for toggling between menu settings and selecting between the five autofocus points. 

Below that is a row of three buttons that each serve two functions, depending on how they're used. The first can be used to toggle through settings for Landscape, Macro, and Self-Timer (the Macro is very useful, with a minimum close focus distance of only two centimeters.) In manual focus mode, this button is held down while rotating the Command Dial to focus. There's no focus assistance on the monitor, so the shooter needs to know the approximate distance to the subject to select the correct focusing range from fifty preset distances, 0.02M to INF.

The middle button toggles through flash modes (Auto, Off, Redeye Reduction, Fill Flash, and Slow Synch), and is used in combination with the Command Dial to adjust ISO settings. The Coolpix 990 can shoot at 100, 200, 400, or be left in Auto to select among the three for itself.

The rightmost button selects picture size and quality. Size is selected by holding the button down and rotating the Command Dial to choose between Full (2048x1536), XGA (1024x768), VGA (640x480) and a 3:2 setting to imitate the aspect ratio of a classic film negative (2048x1360). Quality is toggled by pressing the button through three different levels of JPEG compression (BASIC, NORMAL, and FINE) as well as HI quality, which saves an uncompressed TIFF. The manual is careful to point out that you'll only get one HI quality 2048x1536 TIFF on a 16MB Compact Flash card.

2048x1536 resolution, FINE compression,  ISO 400

The CF card door is on the right-hand side of the camera body and is made of thin plastic, made to feel flimsy by comparison to the general solidity of the 990's magnesium housing. Above the CF hatch is a rubberized cover over Video Out and USB/serial digital I/O ports.

On the bottom of the camera is the battery door, located close enough to the tripod socket that you aren't going to change batteries while the camera's mounted on one. The latch is a weak spot, and broke on the first Coolpix 990 I had, the one I got from Oleg. Then again, that was after a good six years of yeoman service, and Oleg reports that it's since been repaired and the camera's working fine.

The Coolpix 990 runs on four AA batteries. It's a mixed blessing, in that a set of four alkalines will be exhausted in a couple hours of shooting, especially if one is profligate with the monitor usage or leaves the camera's focus setting in Continuous mode (unlikely, as the constant whirring and chortling of the focus motor will drive the user up the wall long before the batteries fail.) But on the other hand, replacement batteries are sold...and cheaply...in every corner store; it's not like you need to remember to bring charged spares from home.

With its 3.34MP resolution and SLR-like controllability, the Coolpix 990 was a breakthrough camera. Photographer Oleg Volk used one before taking the DSLR plunge with a Canon D30. Kevin Creighton mentioned that they used 990s to supplement the hyper expensive Phase Onedigital backs they shot fashion catalogs with in the same way that Polaroids were used to supplement medium and large format studio film cameras. 2048x1536 was enough to make even diehard film shooters think that there might be something to this digital fad.

While 1999 and 2000 were the years marking the introduction of the first serious digital cameras, it's worth noting that they also marked the beginning of the end of the last generation of new film cameras. After 2000 you could count the number of film SLRs that would be released by Canon and Nikon combined without having to pull off both mittens.

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