History of Digital Cameras
November 5, 2007
Origin of Digital Technolgy The first ever digital camera was developed by Steven Sasson of Eastman Kodak in 1975. Prior to this attempt, Eugene Lally who was working with Jet Propulsion Laboratory discovered that a mosaic photosensor can produce still photographs in digital format. Lally and his associates were involved in a project to invent a new system that can provide navigation information to astronauts when they are onboard during their space travel. This system included a camera which captured still images of celestial objects like stars and planets to detect their locations thus aimed to provide assistance to the astronauts while the spacecraft was orbiting and landing. Sasson was an engineer and before he conceptualized the digital camera, an analog camera which does not need a film to capture an image was built by Texas Instruments in 1972. Sasson saw that image sensor chips made up of CCD can be used in his camera. This camera was heavy as it weighed more than three kgs and was very slow in capturing images as more than 20 seconds were needed to take photos using this camera. A cassette tape was used to store the photos which were black and white images with resolution of just 10,000 pixels. Beginning of handheld analog cameras In 1981, Sony gave a demo of its product Sony Mavica, a video camera which recorded the images on a magnetic tape or a floppy. This analog electronic camera could store fifty images as separate frames in its floppy disk when field mode was chosen and 25 images in a single disk in frame mode. However, Sony did not roll out this camera in market. It was Canon who launched the first ever analog camera for commercial use. Canon RC-701 which was used to provide pictures of the events of 1984 Olympics to the newspapers, however, failed to attract the customers as it was expensive in addition to their lack of picture quality. High-end printers and other accessories which were very expensive then were also needed to print images captured by this camera. All these factors made many customers to shun away from these cameras. Later, in 1988, Canon rolled out its RC -250 Xapshot which did make much stir in the market. However, Nikon came with its analog electronic camera, Nikon QV-1000C which had some advanced features and produced images in greyscale and were stored on floppies. Digital cameras Fugi DS-IP was the first camera to record images in files that can be stored in a PC. Launched in 1988, it had an internal memory card with 16 MB capacity which was used to store the images in memory with the help of batteries. However, this camera did not hit the commercial market. 
Dycam Model (Logitech) In 1990, Dycam Model 1 which had the basic features of a modern digital camera was rolled out for sale under the name Logitech Fotoman. It had functions like using CCD light sensor, recorded the images in digital format and used a PC for transferring the images as storage. The new jpeg and mpeg formats (that became standard for image files) also had a great role in making the gradual, growing popularity of digital cameras as they enabled the digital cameras to store their images in compressed data that can be easily transferred to the PCs. Kodak came with Kodak DCS-100, a professional digital camera (SLR) which could produce outstanding picture quality with its 1.3 mega pixel image sensor although its price was a bit expensive (13,000 US dollars). The first ever digital camera that had a LCD screen on its rear side was Casio QV-1 which hit the market in 1995. Followed by it, in 1996, Kodak introduced flash light (CompactFlash) with its new model - Kodak DC-25. 
Kodak DC-25 Digital camera Until 1997, the pictures captured by digital cameras lacked sharpness of details as the cameras used low resolution image sensors. It was only in 1997, digital cameras with more than a mega pixel image sensor started showing up. Two years later, Minolta’s RD – 3000, a digital SLR with image sensors that can produce a resolution of 2.7 mega pixels hit the camera market. Minolta provided 5 lenses and zoom lenses with this model. This SLR camera soon become popular with professional photographers until Minolta added new features like Alpha 7D to its Dynax digital camera which was introduced in 2004. 
Minota RD-3000 digital SLR Other notable digital cameras that hit the market during the last four years include Canon 300D, the first digital SLR which has an amazing 6 megapixel image sensor and a price tag below $1,000.
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