Author Topic: Old Digital Cameras - Still going strong  (Read 21101 times)

LEE

  • "Shut Up Jens" - Legs.
Old Digital Cameras - Still going strong
« on: 06 February, 2018, 11:09:02 pm »
Any older digital cameras out there still going strong?  Are you resisting the marketing hype to get that new, state of the art camera?


Since I bought a used 2005 Canon 5D "classic" recently I thought it may be of interest to report back.  I was looking forward, to a 6D Mk2 or a 5D Mk4, when I started hearing that the amazing pro cameras of the past, like the original 5D, didn't suddenly become bad cameras.  So I grabbed one, for <10% of the price of the latest 5D.



The 5D is a 13Mp full frame but my "modern" 20Mp 6D is no spring-chicken any more (launched 2012).  My S120 12Mp compact is from 2013 so I have a camera bag full of fairly old, in Digital Camera terms, technology.

I have to say that, when used correctly* at 100-400 ISO, the old 5D is perfectly good enough for my use (portraits, street & landscape).

*By correctly I mean you need to get your exposure spot on, it clearly doesn't support "pushing" an underexposed image very well, it gets noisy very quickly.

I'll throw some test shots up when I get time but it's clear that the 6D handles poor exposures a lot better, I'd estimate 2-3 stops better. 
I certainly never worry about missing an exposure by 2 stops with the 6D.

I think I'd be happy to use the 5D to its 1600 max ISO in good lighting, for a portrait (You can expand it to 3200 but it's a bit grim)  The noise looks like the grain I used to get when pushing FP4 to 1600 ISO (ASA) and I don't mind grain in a portrait.

I think I may default to shooting 3 bracketed images on the 5D, to make sure I nail the exposure.

Mainly though, it's a superb camera, built like a bloody tank and as close to an old 35mm film SLR as you can get (no video, no live-view, just a camera with a relatively limited ISO range).  It makes you concentrate on taking a photos and getting it right.

Certainly it makes for a more than adequate backup to my 6D.

£260 for the body off of of Ebay.  A Classic in the making.

My S120 on the other hand gets used less and less, as my Samsung Galaxy S7 is mostly good enough for the type of images I was taking with it*. 
I won't sell it though, it's something of a classic (the Canon S series are built superbly well) itself.

*Like the photo of the cameras above.
Some people say I'm self-obsessed but that's enough about them.

IanDG

  • The p*** artist formerly known as 'Windy'
    • the_dandg_rouleur
Re: Old Digital Cameras - Still going strong
« Reply #1 on: 06 February, 2018, 11:20:56 pm »
Still using my Olympus E620. First picture taken was 2010

Dance 1 by ian, on Flickr

Re: Old Digital Cameras - Still going strong
« Reply #2 on: 06 February, 2018, 11:22:54 pm »
I've still got my Pentax K110D (launched in 2006). It was very much the low end, and possibly one of the cheapest DSLRs ever produced. It's fine for most of my purposes, but a bit limited with flash and in low light. Not massive resolution, but I mostly view images on screen, and it has more pixels than my screen does.

I have a K30 as well now, which I use more often, and is itself not exactly the latest model.

I've also still got some ME Supers and a Super A. But I haven't used those for quite some time.

LEE

  • "Shut Up Jens" - Legs.
Re: Old Digital Cameras - Still going strong
« Reply #3 on: 07 February, 2018, 05:52:44 am »
I sense a Photo-challenge.  >10 year old Digital cameras only perhaps, to show that you can do this on the cheap, on Ebay bargains.
Some people say I'm self-obsessed but that's enough about them.

Re: Old Digital Cameras - Still going strong
« Reply #4 on: 07 February, 2018, 06:58:46 am »
Our consumer level Sony Alpha 350 is ten years old this year.  14.2 MP aps-c sensor.   The Samsung Galaxy S7 is our 'go to ' these days as we both have one and they are very convenient.

I'd be happy to join a 'challenge' though my contributions will be at the point, shoot, share end of the spectrum as I really don't do post image processing.

Ever wondered what a blind man sees?

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: Old Digital Cameras - Still going strong
« Reply #5 on: 07 February, 2018, 08:04:01 am »
My Y2K 1.3 Mp Olympus E-100RS still works, and I could even get the pics off it if I had a CF/SD adaptor. However, its old Smart Media card doesn't fit any of my readers and it can no longer communicate via its Neolithic USB interface.

This was taken in 2004:



And this in 2014 with a Nikon 1 V1 and an 18-200 zoom

I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

Re: Old Digital Cameras - Still going strong
« Reply #6 on: 07 February, 2018, 08:27:50 am »
I'm not into photography (like you guys), but I have a Canon Powershot A580  from 2010 and I'm very happy with it.

Re: Old Digital Cameras - Still going strong
« Reply #7 on: 07 February, 2018, 09:17:52 am »
Still got the Olympus E500 I bought with some of my redundancy money in 2006 and it still works fine. Only 8MP but to be honest since we don't blow things up massively that's fine.
A nice simple SLR. The only thing I wish it had is a traditional split screen focusing screen so it was easier to use old non digital non autofocus lenses with it.
To be honest except for the fact that its quite big and my Fuji EXR300 was dying and had no viewfinder anyway (essential for Mrs Pcolbeck these days) I would not have bothered buying the Olympus E-10 I mainly use now ad the E500 was perfectly adequate.
We have a rule you cna only buy one expensive camera every 10 years or so, the one before the E500 was a Nikon Fsomething or other film SLR (its in the attic so I cant check) :)
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

Re: Old Digital Cameras - Still going strong
« Reply #8 on: 07 February, 2018, 09:35:28 am »
This thread has just motivated me to order a replacement focusing screen for the E500 from China. It may or may not work but for £15 its worth a try.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

LEE

  • "Shut Up Jens" - Legs.
Re: Old Digital Cameras - Still going strong
« Reply #9 on: 07 February, 2018, 11:07:44 am »
My Y2K 1.3 Mp Olympus E-100RS still works, and I could even get the pics off it if I had a CF/SD adaptor. However, its old Smart Media card doesn't fit any of my readers and it can no longer communicate via its Neolithic USB interface.

This was taken in 2004:



And this in 2014 with a Nikon 1 V1 and an 18-200 zoom



10 years!! That's one annoying Moth.
Some people say I'm self-obsessed but that's enough about them.

LEE

  • "Shut Up Jens" - Legs.
Re: Old Digital Cameras - Still going strong
« Reply #10 on: 07 February, 2018, 11:12:07 am »
My elder relatives get my cast-off cameras.

I sort of wish I'd kept my first, a Fuji Finepix 2.1Mp from 2001.  It cost me £300 + £50 for a 256MB memory card !!!  Significant cash.

Bloody awful now, bloody amazing at the time.
Some people say I'm self-obsessed but that's enough about them.

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: Old Digital Cameras - Still going strong
« Reply #11 on: 07 February, 2018, 11:46:48 am »
I'd even like to have my 8 Mp Panny TZ3 back. The lens was brilliant and the default JPEGs sparkled.  I gave it to my daughter when I bought a TZ30, which I quickly came to detest.
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

Woofage

  • Tofu-eating Wokerati
  • Ain't no hooves on my bike.
Re: Old Digital Cameras - Still going strong
« Reply #12 on: 07 February, 2018, 11:52:31 am »
I've got an Olympus C220 P&S from c.2002. 2MP, I think, and it takes a 128MB smart media card. It still gets used as a chuck-about-in-the-pool holiday camera in a waterproof bag. It runs on AA batteries so no proprietary battery to worry about.
Pen Pusher

Re: Old Digital Cameras - Still going strong
« Reply #13 on: 07 February, 2018, 12:01:33 pm »
I've still got my first digital cameras from around 1999.

https://www.dpreview.com/products/fujifilm/compacts/fuji_mx1200

It still works (flash doesn't), only I don't know how to transfer from the smart media card to my pc. I used a 3.5 inch disk adaptor. I no longer have a pc with a disk drive, and none of my adaptors work with smartmedia.

LEE

  • "Shut Up Jens" - Legs.
Re: Old Digital Cameras - Still going strong
« Reply #14 on: 07 February, 2018, 02:20:57 pm »
I've still got my first digital cameras from around 1999.

https://www.dpreview.com/products/fujifilm/compacts/fuji_mx1200

It still works (flash doesn't), only I don't know how to transfer from the smart media card to my pc. I used a 3.5 inch disk adaptor. I no longer have a pc with a disk drive, and none of my adaptors work with smartmedia.

Quote
Max resolution   1280 x 960
Other resolutions   640 x 480

640x480, just in case full resolution was too much and blew people's minds.
Some people say I'm self-obsessed but that's enough about them.

fuaran

  • rothair gasta
Re: Old Digital Cameras - Still going strong
« Reply #15 on: 07 February, 2018, 02:40:46 pm »
I also have one of those Fujis, was my first digital camera. Think it still works, though the screen broke years ago.
The lower resolution was useful if you wanted to fit more photos on a memory card. You could only get about 10 full resolution photos on the 2MB card.

LEE

  • "Shut Up Jens" - Legs.
Re: Old Digital Cameras - Still going strong
« Reply #16 on: 07 February, 2018, 02:43:59 pm »
Some of last night's testing with my 5D and 6D

The scene...(Canon 24-105 L set to 50mm)
]

Here's a 6D crop.  100 ISO and good exposure under various artificial lights (White Balanced using white card you can see above)
You can click and zoom for more detail.

]

Here's the 5D equivalent.  Apart from less detail from thw 13Mp sensor there's no difference.  Totally acceptable.

]

Here's a 6D at 1600 ISO and "pushed back" 3.7 stops of Ev. That's quite a test and it does pretty well.  It's usable if you consider this is a tight crop.  The full image seems fine.

]

And here's the same on the 5D...it's a mess.  Pushing to the "extremes" is where 8 years of sensor tech has improved matters.
My attempts to use noise-reduction to remove the terrible amounts of noise have reduced detail significantly.

It may still be OK for a social media upload I suppose but it really pays to stick below 800 ISO and nail that exposure.  There's hardly any room for errors.

]


Some people say I'm self-obsessed but that's enough about them.

Samuel D

Re: Old Digital Cameras - Still going strong
« Reply #17 on: 07 February, 2018, 02:46:01 pm »
640x480, just in case full resolution was too much and blew people's minds.

It wasn’t too much (it wasn’t enough!), but how on earth would you store 1280×960 JPEGs?

I have a Nikon D60 in regular use as my main digital camera. It works as well as it did new, which is to say very well. It was one of the first cameras to solve the big problems of digital such as shutter lag, base-ISO noise (problematic in the otherwise ground-breaking EOS 5D as you note), speed of writing to card, speed of browsing images, speed of pixel-peeping to check focus, recording raw files, CCD blooming, etc.

Since then, little progress has been made in SLRs, the big ones being live view; read-out noise to the extent that that matters; and a larger, better display. Recently a variety of radios has been added but nothing useful is being done with them. The remaining SLR problems of a poor viewfinder, poor manual-focus aids, excessive complexity, lack of metadata such as GPS position, etc., remain or have worsened because no-one is interested in solving them.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Old Digital Cameras - Still going strong
« Reply #18 on: 07 February, 2018, 02:57:44 pm »
In the early days of digital cameras they weren't so much an alternative to film for making high quality images, as they were a fast, convenient and cost-effective alternative to the faff of having to scan photographs (possibly Polaroids) to get them into a computer.  In the days when a typical computer screen was 1024x768, 640x480 was plenty for an image on a webpage.  (Indeed, isn't that the resolution that YACF limits embedded images to by default?)

And yes, flash memory was *expensive*.  A typical memory card would store a number of images comparable to a roll of film.

I experct the limiting factor for keeping these older cameras useful is going to be compatibility with the storage medium / computer interface.

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: Old Digital Cameras - Still going strong
« Reply #19 on: 07 February, 2018, 03:53:26 pm »
I've still got my first digital cameras from around 1999.

https://www.dpreview.com/products/fujifilm/compacts/fuji_mx1200

It still works (flash doesn't), only I don't know how to transfer from the smart media card to my pc. I used a 3.5 inch disk adaptor. I no longer have a pc with a disk drive, and none of my adaptors work with smartmedia.

Quote

Max resolution   1280 x 960
Other resolutions   640 x 480

640x480, just in case full resolution was too much and blew people's minds.

Back in 1993 I wrote a prog to handle images grabbed from a digital videocam.  IIRC they were 320 pixels wide and delivered in 256-colour PCX format.  I had to write a library in assembler to pick them apart and toss them at the screen, using a 2-inch thick "EGA/VGA Bible" for inspiration.

And then the bloody client says "can you put 4 small ones up at once?" That's when I learnt all about RGB/CMY colour cubes and how to share a 256-colour palette among 4 images and get the colours of each approximately right.

I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

Jaded

  • The Codfather
  • Formerly known as Jaded
Re: Old Digital Cameras - Still going strong
« Reply #20 on: 07 February, 2018, 04:07:07 pm »
The standard resolution on my first digital camera was 320×240 You could go extreme and get 640x480

It is simpler than it looks.

Re: Old Digital Cameras - Still going strong
« Reply #21 on: 07 February, 2018, 05:51:19 pm »
Just remembered:  I have a Fuji Finepix 610 somewhere.   Battery life is measured in single frames!   :o   It took decent enough shots though.

LEE

  • "Shut Up Jens" - Legs.
Re: Old Digital Cameras - Still going strong
« Reply #22 on: 07 February, 2018, 05:55:58 pm »
The standard resolution on my first digital camera was 320×240

I think the TV News use them now, to pixelate the faces of victims.
Some people say I'm self-obsessed but that's enough about them.

Re: Old Digital Cameras - Still going strong
« Reply #23 on: 07 February, 2018, 07:50:37 pm »
I still have my first digital camera.
A Canon PowerShot A20 with a whole 2.1 Megapixels.
Bought in 2001 with a serious (for me) chunk of overtime.
Still works fine. I have a card reader which worked the last time I tried. It uses the big square Compact Flash cards.
"No matter how slow you go, you're still lapping everybody on the couch."

IanDG

  • The p*** artist formerly known as 'Windy'
    • the_dandg_rouleur
Re: Old Digital Cameras - Still going strong
« Reply #24 on: 07 February, 2018, 08:35:42 pm »
Still using an Ixus that I bought in 2007 too. It need bog standard SD cards tho' and doesn't work with SDHC