Value of money and cost of technology

Just having a sort out and decided to get rid of an old digital camera.

I found the receipt inside. I paid $350 for it - it only has 3.2 megapixels. It was bought in April 2004

Reply to
DerbyBorn
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I vowed never to be an early adopter...saved a fortune on tec over the years.....

Reply to
Mannequin of mirth ...

That's more than a HD TV so it should produce acceptable results for up >65" at the right viewing distance.

Reply to
dennis

But not if you want a large print which will be limited to about 1/2 plate or at most 10x8 inches (~A4). Which is of course OK for most people or pictures on a phone or tablet.

Reply to
whisky-dave

Depends if the camera sensor counts subpixels, or pixels

Reply to
Andy Burns

Near co-incidence. I bought mine in May 2004 from Jessops. (While I was in the shop a man attempted to snatch Hil's bag by putting his hand through the open car window. She screamed and he ran away.) The camera was a Nikon Coolpix and I can't remember the cost but it was around £700 I think.

Bill

Reply to
Bill Wright

you don't need to be an early adopter to lose money on digital cameras

every new version is twice as powerful at half the price

If you are waiting for the point where prices can't go any lower, you haven't reached there yet and digital photography in the consumer space is now 20 years old (and analogue photography, outside of very few niche areas, has completely disappeared)

tim

Reply to
tim...

FWIW digital photography began in the 1970s. Anyone that hasn't seen the first digital camera should. It's come a loooong way.

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

Was it a 3.2Mpxl Coolpix? I bought mine 11 months after that for 230 Dollars Canadian (exactly £100 at the then current exchange rate - strangely, just what my brother paid for his in the UK at just about the same time).

That seems one Hell of a price drop in just a matter of 11 months even compared to DerbyBorn's $350 price tag (I wonder what that was worth in Pounds Sterling at the time? I'm guessing somewhere round the 200 quid mark).

Reply to
Johnny B Good

Similar here, although pre 2000 IIRC - a Coolpix 950 (the one with the articulation in the middle that allowed the camera bit to rotate independently of the grip and LCD- very good for getting shots from odd angles.

ISTR it was £700+ for a 2MP camera. I got it for a particular web based job, and was not expecting it to be much good for "proper" photography, but in fact was actually quite impressed with it, and used it way more than anticipated. Must get round to updating it one day! ;-) (its taken most of the photo's of my DIY projects - although I do a number with my phone these days)

Reply to
John Rumm

My first one was in 2001. I couldn't find the price, but just found the receipt for a 256MB Memory Stick for it (it was a Sony) - £35, bought in

2004.
Reply to
JoeJoe

A mate has dug up an an old Canon Powershot 600 - that one was Canon's first digital camera to support a PCMCIA microdrive.

formatting link

0.56 Megapixels

Originally sold for 128,000 yen in 1996.

That's £1600 today applying UK inflation.

Reply to
Adrian Caspersz

Today, tomorrow is not here yet.

Which is of course OK for most people or pictures on a phone or tablet.

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Reply to
FMurtz

It's all about getting development costs back as soon as possible. They know that the geeks out there will pay top whack for new stuff.

Reply to
harry

I'm reasonably confident my Lumix GX8 is currently held back by the lens (I have a medium grade tele and a F1.7 prime - can't afford anything else in the m4/3 format.

The sensor captures a very wide dynamic range by my previous standards (you can pull a sky down several EV to bring clouds and blue out of virtually nothing whilst the original exposure was generally good - Lightroom makes isolating sky for selective exposure compensation pretty easy - that's before you get to real HDR with multiple shots).

Tele lens can pull reasonable focus with reasonable depth of field (though I think it could do a bit better on the focus).

Prime is a so-so lens, good for being a compact and reasonable in caves where it can just about pull off a non flash photo with acceptable noise.

I'm sure, side by side, a really expensive DSR body with a bigger sensor of course would beat it into the ground - but for hobby work, as I said, I think money on lenses is better spent. Of course, at that point you really are selling yourself into a lens mount format.

They'll keep getting better of course, but at some point, one has to say: "this is good enough - I'll use it till it blows up..."

Reply to
Tim Watts

My first one was maybe just before then. It came with a serial lead ...

Stored 12 pics at 640x480 IIRC.

Owain

Reply to
spuorgelgoog

Youre all neophytes. My first digital camera was Kodak DC120 Zoom.

formatting link
whole one (1.2) megapix el. People thought why would you want more than one megapixel.I still have it but no programme to read the images. Must be near 20 years ago and it co st me aout £700 at the time. Prior to that most digital cameras had ab out 600 pixels and gave tiny pictures

Reply to
fred

So why are we hearing adverts for black and white Ilford film and indeed colour film. is it like vinyl and cassette versions of Paul McCartneys new album, ie another marketing ploy in this case knowing loads of 35mm cameras are in drawers only needing batteries and I know some shops are doing processing, probably not on site though. Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

No one is processing Kodachrome slide film any longer, and I wouldn't consider using anything else.

Reply to
Tim Streater

Kodachrome was always back to Kodak wasnt it?

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

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