Who needs a card reader - get a Coolpix instead!

[@sp0ck1p]

I'm getting to that point with these videos where I have watched all the "modern" ones (with the current style and production value) and each time a new one comes out it feels like a treat. Excited to watch this while I eat lunch!

[@xWood4000]

Same!

[@lizipancake-personal]

Me too!

[@stereorealist9531]

That Sony camera you showed in the beginning actually has a neat design quirk that lets you non-destructively turn it into a full-spectrum camera and then back to normal at will: the IR cut glass is on a mechanism so it can swivel out of the way when the camera gets put in night shot mode, but you can trigger the mechanism during manual mode by holding a strong enough magnet against the bottom of the lens barrel. It's a great camera for dipping your toes into the world of full spectrum/IR photography on the cheap.

[@benjaminschwartz7616]

I had that camera and remember loving that feature... But having very little practical use for it.

[@kittinplus4]

still have that camera stashed somewhere, also got a fish eye lens for it from an architect that sold the camera and discovered the left over lens afterward. Was a pretty neat camera for its money and quite a few people bought it, I keep bumping into people mentioning they had one. There was another model they made in that same configuration too.

[@Aaron48219]

That's really cool. I used to have a Sony Hi8 camcorder that had the "Night Shot" or whatever it was. I remember a big stink about how pervs we're using it as a way to see through thin clothing.

[@LarsLarsen77]

You can pop the IR cut filter out of a cheap USB webcam.

[@fonesrphunny7242]

@@LarsLarsen77 Yes, but that's not an intended feature of USB webcams and in many cases it's a destructive process.

[@softchassis]

The battery pack using the natural shape of four batteries to make a hand-grip is the true sign of some designers wanting to make a Good Product Tee-Em, if you ask me. Also it's interesting to me that the "warmth" I typically associated with analog cameras of a certain era is also present in the digital cameras of the era. Also I had a laptop with one of those slots and assumed it was a mid-2000s invention. Digital stuff progressed a lot faster than I thought thanks to growing up with so little money as I did

[@CathodeRayDude]

AA batteries are about finger sized. *that's god's plan in action*

[@aprofondir]

I think one of the Gameboys or its knockoffs did the battery hand grip thing too!

[@Cody_Istre]

@@CathodeRayDude Yeah, but they're not as tasty as bananas.

[@cdigames]

@@aprofondir The Japan-only Game Boy Light, based around the Game Boy Pocket but with an Electro-Luminescent backlit LCD screen! The battery compartment was upscaled to fit AAs instead of the pair of AAAs the Pocket ran on, and so the designer, instead of making it rounded like the later Game Boy Color, made it scalloped!

[@maxheadrom3088]

You can keep one eye on the viewfinder and the other on the action.

[@DrRusty5]

PCMCIA = "People Can't Memorise Computer Industry Acronyms"

[@catfish552]

I love the sheer delight at the camera being a PC card. And while it doesn't surprise me after the studio tour, it's great how many other cameras you have on hand to demonstrated various design features on. It's really cool to see that done "in camera", so to speak, instead of just cutting to photos of them.

[@CathodeRayDude]

thank you for validating my hoarding tendency lmao. But seriously that is EXACTLY how I feel. Jpegs are all well and good but you can get those from google images. I much, MUCH prefer to have physical props on hand so I can turn something around and SHOW you what it does, not just tell you. I ain't wikipedia over here.

[@karolisr]

@@CathodeRayDude it's not a hoarding tendency, it's a business expense.

[@DrRusty5]

The Nikon Coolpix camera was amazing as it interfaced with microscopes and a pretty unique internal focusing system.

[@razgar02]

the moment when you revealed the big deal with this camera made my fucking week; i love seeing you that happy so much. and you are correct, the fact that contemporary design got so boring is so sad. i mean, i guess it's because we know what works and what doesn't, but we've sacrificed so much of the fun part of technology and the human spirit in the process. okay, i apologize if i went over the top with that last bit, but my point remains! designers should have a will to experiment again! it's what made the past so memorable and interesting in my eyes, and it makes me wonder what we have to leave behind as of now, other than boring and/or awful decisions on all fronts whose sole purpose is to keep the economy afloat, i guess.

[@CathodeRayDude]

Things are so much better than they were back then, and many of the wacky ideas were just wacky - but man, at least we got to see new things.

[@razgar02]

@@CathodeRayDude exactly! you get it so well!

[@D3M3NT3Dstrang3r]

Im sure they have the will, it's just not what the shareholders want anymore. It can be difficult to set out to do things on your own without the resources available where you design you other products too.

[@bacon.cheesecake]

The coolpix 100 has a very similar formfactor to a smartphone, making it weirdly ahead of its time in a way

[@Exarian]

Kinda reminds me of those Flip cameras from the late 00's

[@Larry]

Neo Geo's also used PCMIA cards as memory cards. Well the actual card, an off the shelf one needs to be modified slightly to make it compatible.

[@TemporalOnline]

Oh, hello you!

[@MegaTrojan21]

Love seeing people I know in the comment section. Love your narration LBJ!

[@Gatorade69]

@@MegaTrojan21 Lyndon B Johnson is here in the comments section !?

[@yoymate6316]

@@MegaTrojan21 ikr LeBron James has an amazing voice

[@chouseification]

@XRDev oh not even close... the Neo Geo (cart-based) games were like $200 each, with a few titles going for $300. The machine itself was $700. That was a LOT back then.

[@bskull3232]

The extra fuse footprint does not cost any extra copper. It is just an extra opening of the solder mask. The copper underlying is still there regardless the solder mask is open or not. My bet is back then when component level servicing was a thing, they left a second parallel fuse footprint on the exposed side to make it easier for technicians to repair without having to take the board out of its mount.

[@ailivac]

Some of these "weird" form factors perhaps aren't so strange if you think about the history of cameras before the 1970s when things coalesced around the "conventional" 35mm SLR and point and shoot designs. Remember flat shaped 110 format cameras? TLRs with waist-level viewfinders? Collapsible press cameras?

[@AaronOfMpls]

Polaroid SX-70 cameras where most of the camera hinged away into the base, so you could put it in a purse or a (large) pocket? (My grandma had an all-black one from the 1970s or so, with the gold-colored sonar thing.)

[@MarjaMariachi]

It really got weird when they made fancier 110 cameras. The Minolta 110 Zoom SLR kept the flat shape of other 110s, and you'd hold it like binoculars. The lenses were somehow taller than the camera's front, and adding a regular flash would make it look even more squat.

[@brhfl2812]

Isn't the Kyocera Samurai a half-frame camera, though? (Mine is, but I know they made a bunch of models... including a later video floppy model!) The vertical orientation means that when you're shooting half-frame, your camera is still designed around producing landscape orientation photos. There were others, like the clockwork-driven Canon Dial 35, and while I definitely prefer the landscape-by-default concept over, say, the Olympus Pen approach... they are wildly awkward.

[@DavidG2P]

It is. Amazingly, they even made a left-handed version

[@mfbfreak]

I own a Canon Dial 35. They're way better than they have any right to, as such a gimmicky camera. Razor sharp images, much better than i ever expected from such a tiny negative size.

[@mhausb6436]

Yes, the Samurai was half-frame (as you can see when he opens the film compartment). In my opinion, the orientation makes total sense.

[@brhfl2812]

@@mfbfreak They are really neat little cameras! Awkward to handle, but feel nice and solid and take great pictures as you said! I still have mine as well, but I only got a couple of rolls through it before the clockwork mechanism failed.

[@cdigames]

It amazes me how chunky the Samurai was, the Konica AA-35/Recorder was also half-frame landscape, but about the size of a pack of cigarettes, though not an SLR.

[@MrHack4never]

Other than using an enclosed connector, I can also imagine that the shorting issue wouldn't exist if Nikon added a small switch that detects that the battery is inserted into the camera Or just run GND through the pc-card connector, that would also make it harder to short on accident unless you walk around with loose steel wool in your backpack

[@zwz.zdenek]

...Or just place the power rails to the far ends of the connector, as opposed to what most engineers do - one "group" together!

[@KertaDrake]

And it would be a lot easier to short out than most people would realise. You have to remove the battery pack to plug in the camera, after all. If you set it down somewhere outside and there's a little rain and a droplet shorts out the contacts, fuse blown. If you set it down on a metal bench or chair in the wrong way, fuse blown. Even just tossing it on the table with your keys could have a key touch the contacts!

[@SarahIsWeird]

The entire time I thought, “how is the camera gonna be the storage”, and right before you showed it, I got it. It’s amazing! I wonder if someone ever made a camera like that, but with a different connector. USB? Although that might be too flimsy for a heavy camera. Awesome video as always :D

[@Magicnaners]

Closest thing I can think of would be the old Flip cameras where the usb flipped out the side of the device.

[@SkylarsTerribleMemes]

my mom had one of those kodak flips about a decade ago, i thought it was the coolest thing ever back then

[@realityshotgun]

Didnt they come with a little male/female extension usb cable in the box? Maybe I'm tripping but I thought those flips came with one for exactly that reason

[@abhimaanmayadam5713]

the closest I can think of as a modern camera is a sony camcorder with a built in USB cable. It is hidden in the handle.

[@tomysshadow]

I owned a Kodak HD video camera that basically did that with USB. It just flipped out the side of the camera and would hang there. It only worked because it was a pretty lightweight pocket camera.

[@BuckeyeStormsProductions]

I worked in crash investigation several years ago, and we used modern digital cameras. The more experienced among my colleagues were around when the digital transition occurred, and these are the exact sort of cameras they used. Glorified point and shoot which were dead simple, and relatively indestructible. I think you are spot-on in who this was marketed toward.

[@GrantSpencer-Purple-Circle]

Having dealt with the design and manufacturing process for different companies, the initial design probably had the spring protector on the battery side for the reasons you outlined as the designers would have been well aware of its function. However during the tooling phase someone probably figured that it would be easier to make or would at least save them time or money during manufacture if the plastic spring protector was on the camera side instead. This would seem fine to someone not aware of the function of the plastic spring protector. "It's only on one side, it shouldn't matter if we just swap it to the other"

[@CarletonTorpin]

2:00 - Thank you for reminding the world about the Samurai! The Samurai is the WORLDS BEST 35MM CAMERA! It's half-frame, so you get twice as many photos per roll of film, it has an amazing zoom range, and it basically is a tiny movie camera that records 1 frame at a time.

[@codesigma]

It reminds me of the Canon Photura that my dad owned. It is barrel shaped with the flash on the back of the pop out lens cap

[@SuperZarkosis]

it's also one of the only half frame cameras that shoots a horizontal image rather than upright because of it's strange shape.

[@peetiegonzalez1845]

I was gonna comment on that. It would lose a lot of quality being just half-frame. Worse, even than APS which had a brief popularity before everyone went digital.

[@SuperZarkosis]

@@peetiegonzalez1845 Half frame is actually a fairly large format, it's only half a 35mm frame, which ends up being larger than APSC but a little smaller than APS film but you get many many more shots. It's probably one of the larger cheap formats of that era, much much bigger than 110 and disk film. If you shoot any half frame cameras today the resolution you can get from them is actually incredibly surprising, and it's definitely enough to print larger than 8x10. I wouldn't print 110 film past a 4x6. If you wanted to save money on film and developing costs, half frame was the way to do it, and something like a pen-f has incredible glass and is significantly smaller than any of the other slrs of the same time. Half frames were fairly popular because of this. The samurai was strange but many people bought them as vacation cameras, tiny and was easy to use and fast as well.

[@stheil]

I love this! This was before my time but I know I would have wanted one of those as a child XD The concept reminds me of an organizer I have that is also a PCMCIA card but with a display on it. The entire thing vanishes inside the slot! Annoyingly it's powered by two coin cells and it eats then up very quickly ^^

[@CathodeRayDude]

Oh yes, those are wonderful little gadgets, always wanted one but probably wouldn't find it all that exciting, haha

[@stheil]

@@CathodeRayDude Yeah it's not all that useful, especially because it's read-only outside of a computer. But I guess if you have a lot of phone numbers and appointments to remember it would have been neat. Btw just want to say I love your video style, just recently came across your channel and binged almost all of your uploads :D

[@Supermunch2000]

"We have flown so far from the light" - I had to pause as I was laughing way too hard.

[@doc_sav]

Despite initial hesitations, I would definitely give this presentation a number of gold stars.

[@tigerstein]

I think it isn't a design flaw. Nikon just thought to protect the more expensive side of the camera. It is cheaper to replace the battery holder in warranty than the camera itself.

[@scottlarson1548]

Also they needed a fuse so the battery pack wouldn't start a fire if it was shorted.

[@TheSimoc]

Adding an interlock switch or other kind of protection would not have undone that advantage, so not a relevant point in context. Sure, would still have added a few cents of manufacturing costs, though.

[@TheSimoc]

@@scottlarson1548 Yes, actually surprising to see such, not usually seen a fuse in a shortable battery pack. Good for safety. Btw, I think the reason having the fuse pads on both sides of the PCB is that it is easier to repair as you can solder the replacement fuse without taking out the board, while simplifying the manufacturing process by having the original fuse soldered on the same side as the other components, which there seemed to be a lot on the other side, and on the "replacement fuse side" only few solders, which may have been done manually or by some other less cost-efficient means than the other, component-populated side. And having the extra copper for the replacement fuse pads actually adds no cost, because the PCB is already double-sided, supposedly for other reasons, and PCB traces and pads are usually formed on a "blank" by removing the unwanted regions from prelaminated fully-covering copper layer of the blank, not by adding the needed copper on a copperless board. Great and interesting video, btw, as always, dude!

[@letthetunesflow]

I loooooved my old Sony that allowed you to move the lens separate from the screen. Not sure why you thought it was awkward. I thought it was very intuitive and comfortable to use. Especially with how dim screens were, having the ability to tilt the screen separate from the lens was a huuuuge advantage! Best camera I owned from that time period around 2001-2003. Also the lens on that thing was pretty Damn amazing!

[@kittinplus4]

exactly! The swivelling body was a great plus in many awkward angle shoots and indeed the lens was amazing. Tripod thread was on the lens part so it was stable as a rock while you turned the body to whatever angle suited you. It's a paltry 5 MPixel resolution and pretty useless now but I've still kept mine.

[@tookitogo]

A friend of mine had the Sony F717, so I got to use it quite a bit. What a great camera it was! It was fast, flexible, and had that ingenious hologram laser autofocus illuminator that let it focus with zero ambient light. I am absolutely baffled as to why the laser illuminator didn’t become widespread, since it worked so very well. Even Sony quit using it shortly thereafter. (I’m sure there is a reason why it went away, but I’ve never found out what that reason is.) At the same time, I had the Nikon Coolpix 4500, the direct successor to the Coolpix 990 in the video. That was a nice camera too.

[@oopszie]

I have the coolpix 4500, which is the last model in the 990/995 split body family. It has a pop up flash, and I also have the fisheye lens and teleconverter. It's a fantastic camera, it's just limited in megapixels. Wish they had continued to make them in that format.

[@tookitogo]

I had the 4500, too! Took quite a few great pics with it! I still own it, but haven’t used it in yeeeeears. Once I got a Nikon D70s DSLR, the Coolpix only got used for the occasional video.

[@francesconicoletti2547]

It was my first digital camera. It’s small sensor size and fantastic lens lent itself to macro photography like no other camera I have ever owned.

[@Just.A.T-Rex]

This is the content I have been searching for! Thank you for being you and doing what you do. Top tier man, top fricken tier Also, look at those subs grow!! CRD SEASON 3 FTW

[@bluetoes591]

Man, I really liked those Nikon CoolPix with the pivot in the middle. Really good for taking detail shots of stuff. Unlike articulating LCD screens, the two handed pivot approach both set up the shot and your viewing of it in one motion. Oh wow, the Mavica with the floppy disk! I'd completely forgotten about those. My high school had one, first digital camera I ever used.

[@novelezra]

Oh my god. I had the Creative Jukebox Nomad. It honestly felt like the future and the thing was a BRICK.

[@CathodeRayDude]

Absolutely I had one and adored it.

[@novelezra]

@@CathodeRayDude I remember when the ipod came out and people were like "dude, that thing is huge" And I would like "Yeah! 6gb huge". I mean, how long did it take for mp3 players to catch up to that? Years I think.

[@babyboomertwerkteam5662]

@@novelezra Other MP3 players, at least the hard disk based ones, caught up very quickly. First iPod already was 5GB (so your Nomad wasn't thaaat much huger :P ), 2nd gen in 2002 got you up to 20GB. Flash media always stayed behind thanks to it being expensive.

[@blobbytables3127]

9:05 - curious, how does rotating the lens change its focal length?

[@CathodeRayDude]

Well it's the focus distance rather than the focal length, and there's likely a helical thread or cam track in the lens barrel that forces the rotated element to move slightly forward or back to adjust the focus.

[@realityshotgun]

@@CathodeRayDude ur lyin theres a lil guy in there pushin it closer or pullin it back hes just hard 2 see 🧚‍♂️🧚‍♂️🧚‍♂️👀👀👀

[@realityshotgun]

@@CathodeRayDude how do u think the pics get in 2 the computer😒😒😒 the guy throws them through the slot📮 like the mail man 🙄🙄🙄 idk what u were sayin in the video but can u use one of the other cams 2 get a pic of the lil guy

[@Sevenigma777]

Hey dude I just want to say thanks for doing what you do and the work you put into your videos just for the sake of my free entertainment. Your videos legit make my day happy and I enjoy them immensely. I hope you find much success on this platform and any others you choose to use. You def have the skill to be so. Thanks again man and good luck!

[@Lp-ze1tg]

Back in 2000, I bought my first digital camera. It was a point and shoot Agfa 0.7 megapixel camera. It has nearly no adjustment except an optical viewfinder and a tiny display at the back. The picture quality was a hit and miss. I complained to the local Agfa office and their manager apologized to me! She took the camera back and gave me an upgraded model. It was a 1.3 megapixel camera!

[@stitchfinger7678]

My first real camera was a Nikon Coolpix from the mid 2000s. I was probably 12 Sub-HD but very clear, decent color. Came with a beefy SD card for the time as well.

[@electrofreak0]

My guess is that they used that circuit board in multiple cameras and perhaps other models used that other unpopulated side of the board for other components. It may have been cheaper to order one 2-sided board for all applications rather than 2 different boards for the different models.

[@workaholica]

There was a light rail system in Germany called the "ET 420", used in almost every major city (Munich started it for the 1972 olympics). Those trains were pretty dope.

[@CathodeRayDude]

that's so dank

[@audiodood]

😳

[@GeneralHadouken]

I love this guy. Always putting out content I didn't even know I needed. Well done brother keep it up.

[@jeffreyonline]

Those bubble pack cameras we sold at our camera store as "disposable digital" and they were miserable to work with, customers/we had no idea why you couldn't reuse them

[@Ck87JF]

After seeing the pictures produced by those cameras, I'm not sure why anyone would WANT to reuse them!

[@TheSimoc]

Never seen those heard though. Wondering if they have one-time programmable read-only memory ;)

[@SkaterDeeVlog]

I was fully prepared for you to say that you mail the camera back to some kind of shop that pulls the images and then prints/stores them for you before sending the camera back, and then was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't quite that ridiculous. But then I thought I remembered that there actually WAS a single-use digital camera that did this at like CVS or Rite-Aid, and now I'm not sure if I'm remembering some bizarre dream I had or if this is even real life anymore. Also, the "that's the weed number!" had me laughing hysterically.

[@Stoney3K]

It's a Nikon, not a Kodak.

[@SkaterDeeVlog]

@@Stoney3K This tracks. That would be an incredibly Kodak thing to do.

[@shibolinemress8913]

I remember single-use cameras being available at zoos, theme parks and such, especially to kids.

[@i-am-ber]

Came for the channel name, stayed for the awesome content.

[@zebragrrl]

The following is pure supposition: Based on my own experiences with tech from this era, it feels like there was probably intention (that never made it to market due to lack of demand) to offer rechargeable sealed Ni-Cad battery packs. That board and socket seem purpose built for back-charging the cells, and the whole assembly just has that "quick change" feeling to it. Of course with the minimal capacity of 1MB on the PCcard, only being able to take 25 -50 pics before pulling the camera head off, it's far more likely you'd be swapping camera modules on a single power unit than using multiple power units. To me this has the feeling of a planned "System" (like you now see with power tools, think Ryobi), where you might be able to swap in and out multiple camera modules, upgrade to rechargeable power packs, a video camera add-on, plug it into a docking station to use as a webcam, etc.. a system that just kind of flopped out of the gate in a very competitive market.

[@KevinVinck]

Man, that brings back memories. That Minolta Dimage V was the first digital camera my family ever got. I still have the photos and the SmartMedia card from it. It took 640x480 pictures on a SmartMedia card and it plugged into the serial port and if I remember right took about 15 minutes to download a 4MB card of photos.

[@JackPinesBlacksmithing]

Hey, south of Seattle here. If you ever want to hang out with a blacksmith, see me at work, or try your hand at the craft, drop me a line.

[@Brokkoliverschwendung]

In terms of style, the camera would fit the Motorola StarTAC very well.

[@ZXRulezzz]

My first "digital camera" was a Panasonic GD87. Had some weird quirky filesystem that could keep files with duplicate names in the same place, but couldn't handle files larger than 48KB (I think?). Remember specifically seeking out well crafted MIDIs under a certain size for ringtones and such. It took photos with resolution of whopping 132x176 pixels :P Never had a data cable for it, so it was a painful process of "align IR ports, do a little dance so it would sync to computer, and *don't breathe* while it's uploading" I'm going to get a Hi-MD Walkman tomorrow, lol

[@SUPRAMIKE18]

I had a thought as to how it could have gotten shorted out, the PC card body is metal right? Maybe previous owner bumped the pins with the edge while trying to put the pieces back together?

[@ramirorodriguez2988]

Same

[@DavisMakesGames]

Had this cool, weird Sony DSLR camera (DSC f828 if I remember correctly) where the lens could be tilted and angled up and down a good 30 degrees or so. Upgraded recently but it took pretty great photos. Edit: Hah, I had jut made it to the Nikon but the next camera was the similar Sony DSC! Edit 2: Hah, you think your weed number laptop is cool? I've got one with 2 PC card slots that has the FCC ID "H8NTAI".

[@mIRChele]

I had the same photosmart 215. It was really awful. I used it until it got replaced by the less awful 320. It could even make videos, but ugly, without audio and max 30 seconds. But it was so cool to younger me! The 215 instead always looked uselessly big for me, and the picture quality wasn't good

[@der.Schtefan]

My grandfather had one of those Kyocera cameras. It was amazing to use for him, because he lost control of one of his hands, and using that camera allowed for one handed operation. (He used to be a photographer)

[@Groovewonder2]

Part of me wants to find a busted one of these and somehow stuff a Pi camera module and Pi Zero inside it. Could even repurpose the battery compartment and cut out the separation ridges to make room for a lithium battery pack and tiny BMS board. Install one of those Stem attachments that turns it into a flash drive and blam, you have a modernized version.

[@Nick_Lavigne]

Sony Venice cinema camera has a detachable sensor block that you can use an extension cable with. It was designed to do that because the director of the new Top Gun needed that for Top Gun Maverick cockpit shots.

[@1D10CRACY]

I had a Toshiba PDR-5 that had a PCMCIA card built into it back in the late 90s. Look it up, it was a pretty cool camera!

[@CathodeRayDude]

Oh WOW! I'm gonna have to get one of these!

[@applesushi]

I agree that we have lost the quirky, weirdly functional, but insane designs. My Digisette cassette-tape-shaped MP3 player comes to mind. It could even record, IIRC, directly from your tape recorder, one record head to another. I kinda wish I still had it.

[@computersales]

I am sad it doesn't work in the PCMCIA slot, but it makes sense with how it is powered. Granted I would be shocked if the PCMCIA connector interfaces with anything other than the internal storage.

[@clomads]

I remember the old Palm and Windows CE devices used to have third-party cameras attached via CF card in a similar manner (tho data was also being passed instead of just power) - also if you want a fuse, use the leg of a 1/4 or 1/8th watt resistor insteat of the wire - they're equivalent to about a 5 amp fuse wire - I used to do this when I was making 18650 battery backs

[@vwestlife]

I got a Nikon camera I love to take a photograph

[@andreasu.3546]

In 2009...they took our Kodachrome away.

[@emmettturner9452]

Oh yeah, regarding serial port card readers: the first digital camera I ever used was a Kodak EasyShare with CF and a serial cable. That meant the camera was essentially a 9-pin serial CF reader.

[@SiskinOnUTube]

My friend paid a silly amount, back in 1997, for a camera which had 640x480 resolution. It cost so much, he never took it outside of the house.

[@radio-pirol]

I remember some cardbus video interfaces with an external cameras for video conferences. Some even powered the camera from the port, some didn't. HP and Casio also made cameras to plug in the CF card slot of their pdas which could be adaptet to be used in devices with pcmcia slots. Those at least made VGA-res pictures. I still have a Casio QV-300 around that my granpda bought back in the day. It aso has a rotate function and uses a 2,5mm(?) jack to be connectet to the serial port of the pc or as a video out.

[@kbhasi]

🤯 This is reminding me of Flip Video, but many years prior! (The cameras had, in that case, built-in USB-A connectors) (15:22) You'd need to install a DOS-based version of Windows for that to happen, such as Windows 95 or 98. (16:18) I'm reminded of when my cousin got scammed in 2007 into buying such a camera for around $100-200, that didn't even work because it had weird proprietary drivers that didn't even install on Windows XP SP2 and newer!

[@reggiebenes2916]

That was a pretty clever design for the time. Every laptop up through the early 2000s had PCM slots, so this would have been viable for years. Also they could have released much larger capacity versions. Although Nikon probably realized their brand was way too high end to keep aiming at this market.

[@DanielleWhite]

I remember the PCMCIA flash memory cards. In the era I worked a job that had DEC/Compaq/HP SCSI/Fiber Channel disk arrays. The array controller firmware updates came on such cards which slotted into the controllers.

[@emmettturner9452]

I can think of a few more examples including one I bought at Target around 18 years ago. There were definitely PC Card cameras for PDAs that had a PCMCIA slot. Other PDAs used the CF or even the “SDIO” SD card slot for cameras (“SD-IO?”). I never had one but, IIRC, they stored directly to the PDA despite fitting into memory card slots. Around 2004 I had a 64MB USB key with a built-in camera from Philips. Got it on clearance at Target for $30 where I think it was originally $100. It used an optical viewfinder since it obviously has no kind of display. It charged when plugged into a PC for file transfers since, well, what USB thumb drive ever had a replaceable battery? I guess you couldn’t leave it plugged in because the instructions warn you not to over-charge. Maybe I did overcharge because it met a scary end. Around 2006 the built-in Li-Ion battery started swelling and getting very hot so I had to throw it into a metal popcorn tin until it flamed out. I later tore it apart to properly dispose of the battery which was harder than it should’ve been since they used a magnesium shell. The pictures were absolutely unusable anyway. It claimed to be a megapixel but the images may as well have been 12 by 12px once the JPEG compression was done with them (GIANT rectangular encoding artifacts EVERYWHERE). I just looked it up and it seems I had Philips KEY0079. They supposedly had a 2MP, 128MB version too (KEY010/17). Might be one to look at even though it’s essentially just an early camera phone without the phone.

[@rpavlik1]

Almost looks like a predecessor to the Flip cameras that everybody thought would be the next big thing until Cisco bought them and buried them. (I guess the concept of a small video focused camera was revived in the GoPro?) And that image quality actually looks pretty solid, especially in low light. Definitely better than some I had then, and honestly, probably even better than the 2016era VTech kids camera.

[@kevinlaity5931]

I worked in a computer store where that Creative Nomad was being sold. It actually had an internal rotational hard drive, so that's likely why it ends up looking vaguely like a discman. I don't think it sold well but it did have an order of magnitude more space than your typical MP3 player.

[@marsilies]

HDD are rectangular though, not circular, so it didn't need to be that round. I owned a NOMAD Jukebox Zen Xtra, and that was a rectangle, not to mention iPods for the longest time used HDDs, and were rectangular. I even found a review on Tome's Hardware Guide for the Nomad Jukebox, and they open it up and show the rectangular HDD. The form factor was clearly to remind people of a CD player, likely to clue people into its use, and maybe Creative thought going rectangular would make people think of a cassette player, old tech. There was no technical reason to shape it that way.

[@nrdesign1991]

You know what's even WEIRDER? One of my first phones, the Sony Ericsson T300 had support for a camera, but it was a clip-on module that clipped onto the bottom of the phone. It even had a tiny little viewfinder and a shutter button. To get the pictures off the phone you had to take off the camera and then attach a data cable. Of course it was that horrible Sony ribbon style pcb connector that gummed up immediately as you touched it.

[@sebastian19745]

I had a Siemens S55 with optional camera. It had also a viewfinder and used the phone memory to store pictures. I remember that I was very excited with that, even the photos were quite low resolution (CIF or QVGA maybe). The camera plugged into the phone`s socket that was used also for charging and data transfer via USB or serial RS232. It was not able to make video, only still photos. I later changed it with a Siemens C65 that had a whooping 10MB memory and integrated camera.

[@davefink2326]

Great video! I like the way you built up to the reveal. The Nikon cool pix design reminds me of the little 12 year old Sony audio recorder I have that sports a pop-out USB connection. Hyper-convenient to download audio.

[@domramsey]

The form factor really reminds me of the old SD card camera I had for my Pocket PC PDA, although that used the PDA's power and flash to store the pictures.

[@stiltongruyere9691]

Damn, I wish I lived that life: traveling around taking pictures, and writing my reports in a hotel room.

[@Zdude3313Z]

Love when I see a new video of yours show up in my feed!

[@Charlesb88]

I think early MP3/digital music Player form factors where largely based on the Walkman and other “walkabout” portable cassette players which is why portable CD shape digital music players where rare. The first mast produced MP3 player, the MPMan, used a rectangle shape similar to a Walkman/walkabout cassette player even though it used flash memory and almost certainly could have used other form factors (square, round, cube, etc). Early HD based MP3/digital music players used 2.5” hard drives, the same used in laptops and compact portable hard drives. This necessitated larger form factors due to the large drives size making them more like a paperback book in size. Apple got around this by having Hitachi make them a custom 1.8” hard made made specifically for Apple, though later other digital music player brands would adopt that smaller HD form factors size so as to be able to make their players as small as Apples. Budget flash players of course could use other form factors like small puck sizes, cubes, gum-stick sticks (IPod Shuffle and copycat digital music players). The portable CD player shape/size was largely based around the fact that CD’s where larger in terms of width though not thickness then cassettes. The Sony Minidisc format was a smaller version of the CD though it used.a square candy to hold the discs permanently but allowed for a smaller square form factor of portable CD players but it still limited the form factor over later digital flash music players. It was flash music players that really explored the form factor designs. Some unusual examples are the cube shaped players, an MP3 players in the form of a compact cassette that in addition to having a standard 3.55mm headphone Jack on it also could actually by inserted in a car cassette player and be played back through car stereo system (just like the cassette adaptors for playing a portable CD player or MP3 player via your car cassette deck that have a 3.55mm audio plug cable coming out of them), and even sunglasses with built-ion MP3 players. There were a lot of unusual and or novel flash music players design back then.

[@zuthalsoraniz6764]

It's kind of a shame that all phones come with a passable digital camera nowadays, because I think a modern version of this, with a rechargable battery and of course modern camera and storage electronics, and plugging into a USB port, could be pretty neat

[@tookitogo]

12:00 in 1997, essentially nobody had USB, be it on a desktop or laptop, and even if they did, there were practically no USB peripherals. It wasn’t until the iMac came out a year later that USB began to take off, and even so, in the iMac’s first year, USB peripherals were much harder to come by. PCMCIA card readers for memory cards, on the other hand, were already available, so reading camera cards into a laptop was often _easier_ than reading them into a desktop!

[@CantankerousDave]

2:00 - Sorry, but your age is showing. That Kyocera camera is clearly designed to mimic an 8mm film camera - it's not "rotated 90 degrees" in that world. Anyone who had ever used 8mm or Super 8 film cameras would *instantly* know how to hold and operate that thing.

[@weaseal]

I look forward to your videos as much as I look forward to new LGR videos. Keep it up dude, you rock!

[@This_is_my_real_name]

Having the battery pack's PCB dual-sided -- with fuse lands, _marked_ for a fuse -- but, with NO fuse on that side -- would make it _trivially_ simple, easy, and _fast_ to repair a malfunction consisting of ONLY a blown fuse. Nikon quite likely had test gear to allow the tech to insert the camera and do a quick eval to determine if it was _only_ a blown fuse, in which case two screws would be removed, the panel opened, and less than than a minute to solder in a new fuse (the dead one on the other side not needing to be removed). Just the idle musings of a former camera repairman who got out of the trade before it all went digital.

[@nodrance]

I completely agree with what you say at 14:45. Designers nowadays are too scared to take large risks and try new things. Improvements are small and incremental, we've forgotten the art of the radical redesign. Everything has converged into one standard. All smartphones are a rectangle of glass and the biggest difference in designs is whether it's a notch or an island. All cameras are a box with a lens in front. There is infinite design possibilities and we use like 5 of them

[@goodnightmilk3047]

That minolta reminds me of the Sony Venice cameras with the removable sensor. I wonder if it's literally inspired by the Minolta since Sony bought them out??

[@zecatfish2941]

"There's also further evidence that if you hand someone a camera and there's a cat nearby, they will point the camera at the cat. It has always been this way." Cathode Ray Dude, 2022.

[@eaty1232]

Kyocera is that way cuz it's half frame and half frame with horizontal film travel gives you vertical frames. They wanted a half frame that shot horizontal.

[@Nick_Lavigne]

My father's lab at UConn had that odd Coolpix p950 as it worked with his scan electron microscope.

[@SeanBZA]

The double sided board is very simple, the boards are made as a big panel, likely with the boards for the camera as part of the panel as well. Thus the PCB layout person included in there the interface board along with the rest of the camera boards, as a single panel that was then used during assembly to make multiple boards to assemble into cameras. The board itself is likely 4 layer in reality, but you do not need the inner layers, but having copper on both sides means the board will not warp during reflow soldering, so 2 sided it was. Then after all components were placed on the board and soldered, the assembly people simply used a sharp knife to finish off the cuts that held the boards together, and then quickly finished off the edges to get rid of the jagged bits, so it would fit the tight PCMCIA stainless steel case with a very close fit, and assembled the camera. Same for the rest, and then assemble the power interface, and clip in, solder the battery tabs, and send through to QC where they took a few pictures, aligned the camera lens to correct focus, and then put the case together, and packed for shipping. 1M of memory likely as that was 36 exposures at the best compression, equal to a roll of film, so was done. Remember then flash memory was expensive, and needed a few power rails to operate and erase, and also was slow, and with a limited lifetime. Compression by a early Nikon JPEG compressor chip, probably repurposed from earlier work, so it was optimised for fast and low power over compression and detail. They could also have decided that instead of flash memory they were going to use some static RAM, and put a capacitor in the camera body to give a few hours of memory retention or a separate CR2032 cell in the camera, thus the small memory size, as static ram is hard to scale while keeping power consumption low.

[@getawaybus]

I guess they placed the fuse on the same side as the button because is cheaper in production to have parts only on one side of the PCB. However, it seems that back in these days they thought about repairability and placed the copper pads on the opposite side, because its easier to access for measureing if the fuse is broken and to place a new one by hand.

[@marcelofrau8818]

Great video! Keep up the great content!! With that amount of cameras you need someday to cover a lytro camera, I remember reading and seeing a lot of things about it and it seemed a very particular device...

[@CathodeRayDude]

Valid, I know someone who has the bigger lytro so I could do that

[@Jonoth]

I love your excitement when you reveals the camera's party piece

[@WatanabeNoTsuna.]

"That's the weed number! 🤭" Fucking nerd! 😂 I love this guy! 😂

[@starsINSPACE]

wow I still feel guilty that I didn't develop some 110 film on the little camera my grandma gave me in 1999

[@redgrain3914]

A Cathode Ray Dude and LGR Oddware on the same day?! There is a God, and He is clearly a giant nerd. 😄

[@UrDomb]

I feel like that Kyocera camera was meant to mimic the form of older Super 8 cameras that would have still been familiar to consumers at the time.

[@CJT3X]

The Coolpix immediately reminded me of the phone-camera thing from the cinematic masterpiece that is Tank Girl

[@charlesdorval394]

Nice trick! I have to say, quite awesome that "just shove it in" way of handling data transfers. That 1MB comment brought back memories (...) of the first digital camera I ever used, some 1mp Kodak thing, had two compact flash cards for it, 1MB and 4MB. I wish I still had them just for the good old days feeling. Hell you can't even get a jpg that small nowadays lol edit: clarity

[@Stoney3K]

The Yashica Samurai was designed like that because it took ergonomic cues from camcorders (looks like you're missing the hand strap). It's also a half frame camera, with the film travelling vertically through the camera, meaning you can take 72 pictures on a 36-exposure film.

[@NoorquackerInd]

"D420, that's the WEED NUMBER" I can't stop laughing at this

[@kelownatechkid]

Awesome video Gravis. I appreciate the love for the design!

[@JPennDotCom]

I have one of those. Bought it new in 99' for $99.00. A colleague told me about a camera store down the street that was selling a digital camera for $99.00. I still have it. I was pretty heavy into selling on Ebay and at that time and they had restrictions on picture size uploads. It was perfect, just take your pictures and slap it into a laptop and go. Macro mode was an absolute plus. BTW same crack in the plastic above the viewfinder.

[@CathodeRayDude]

hahaha I didn't notice that crack until after shooting. extremely funny though

[@element_47]

"D-420... Thats the weed number!" lmfaoooooo that was great.

[@GirishManjunathMusic]

The only reason I didn't actually spit when you yoinked the literal entire power assembly out from around the camera PCI card was because I had just swallowed. My gods if I had the disposable income when this came out I would have bought it just for that shock factor. EDIT then you said you kept a shit laptop around because it had the weed number on it. Consider me subscribed, wow.

[@CathodeRayDude]

i lied a little, i actually love the D420 for many reasons besides marijuana

[@trinitron384]

I recently did a research paper on the history of digital photography for school, it's nice seeing this come out alongside my paper as well

[@bryanteverett8421]

How can we put your videos into mass production? (Without loosing any quality or charm, obviously). I love this channel and my only complaint is that there isn’t 10+ years worth of content that I can o.d. on!

[@CathodeRayDude]

Hey if anyone wants to swing by and offer to turn me into an LMG style Media Organization I won't say no

[@PvPene]

The slab coolpix looks like it was just made from parts pulled off the cheap film p&s assembly line and stuffed into a futuristic package. I recognize the screen and the vf from an earlier cheap nikon I have. Really austere for how much money that thing sold for.

[@lobsterbark]

Digital cameras weren't taken seriously until 2006 or so, and even then not entirely. It wasn't until 2010 that they became the default.

[@plutoniumshore]

the joy on your face was worth burying the lead for 15 minutes =P

[@davidcoghill8612]

The Kyocera camera does make sense in one respect, I guess the reason they did it this way was to fit in a longer focal length while keeping the camera overall more compact.

[@SkylarsTerribleMemes]

i thought the minolta's extension cord was nuts and then you revealed the card, honestly it makes a lot of sense but it's also just so bizarre

[@AaronOfMpls]

That extension cord on the Minolta made me think of it as like a digital endoscope. 😎 And yah, from the title and thumbnail, I guessed the Coolpix camera was gonna plug directly into a card slot _some_how.

[@ZygalStudios]

This is such an awesome device!!! I love stuff like this that's so quirky and ridiculous. Your videos are getting so professional man it's really a pleasure to watch them.