I Tried WEIRD 90s Cameras

[@stevehageman6785]

I was actually a subcontractor that worked on that Poloroid Camera. The Poloroid project managers used to carry around really nice looking wooden mock-ups. They had lots of zeal but It just didn't take. They just priced it too high, at the time people didn't realize that you had to give away a 100 million dollars to 'make a market'. They had a patent on the Sonar, so naturally they had to use it, but it was odd ball. To be fair, IR focusing does not work through windows either. They also wanted to use their patented flat batteries from the Poloroid instant film packs, but gave that up eventually. Nice to see that some still survive.

[@peciiii]

It's crazy that even a 0.014mp camera can still take good quirky photos depending on who uses it.

[@PauliusGiedraitis]

perfect cameras to hunt for UFO's

[@ColtonMatocha]

The gameboy camera and printer are both Nintendo being totally unhinged in the best way possible! I love it! Still have my gameboy!

[@funtaril]

6:16 what a wonderful photo, literal illustration for "gear doesn't matter"

[@cdrkennon]

You really could open a digital photography museum.

[@marochruiz1019]

So true

[@Ivandotjpeg]

Here’s a fun story for you. In 1999-2001, I worked at an ad agency in Miami and we used that Polaroid digital camera to shoot coupon circular images. We used it in tethered mode. The images sized down actually looked decent. We shot the higher res cover images on a 4x5 camera on positive trans and film lab down the street would turn around our 4x5s same day and then we would drum scan the transparencies. These were the old days….

[@WhoIsSerafin]

You are king of dedication for old digital cameras, that's for sure.

[@NorthWolfPhotography]

One small correction: The Floppy Disc based Sony Mavica actually came out in 1997 not 1999. The first models were the MVC-FD5/FD7. It's just really rare and hard to find, so the second gen (for example the FD73) are what a lot of people are able to find and pick up and shoot with

[@snappiness]

That's right, that's my mistake. The irony is that I checked in my drawer right now after you said that, and I also have an FD5. D'oh xD

[@chrisgullett4332]

Small correction, it is floppy disk, not disc.

[@chrisgullett4332]

​@@snappinessYou should try those memory stick floppy disk adapters in these Mavica cameras.

[@LoFiAxolotl]

Ahhh i remember the Apple 100... i was working as a Journalist at the time and they sent us one with a really long letter about how it'd revolutionised taking pictures... I think it was used once and never again.. It was super uncomfortable for small hands, it was TERRIBLE in anything but bright sunlight... No hotshoe... no manual controls whatsoever... The 90s were such a great time to be alive

[@nikytamayo]

Babe, wake up, it's snappiness time! This is such a trip. Amazing how fast technology moved in the 90's. You had that crazy expensive Kodak and crazy expensive digital backs one year, and then you had things like my first work digital, the Oly C2000 before the end of the 90's, which had 2 megapixels, and just enough resolution for us to do print portraits in the school yearbook (though these were too jagged to ever print out bigger than that). That Kodak, man, how you get some of these is crazy.

[@JulioBomfim]

This video is wonderful! A true history lesson on consumer cameras from the 90s. Thank you very much!

[@DenisRicardo]

I absolutely love the GB Camera! The reason why its menus are like an RPG is because it was developed by Game Freak, the same team that made Pokemon. In the sticker mode, they even included stickers of Pokémon that hadn’t made their US debut yet.

[@tatocorvette]

I still have my first digital camera, the Ricoh RDC-300 from around 1998 but I can't make it to turn on. I also have two Sony Mavicas. I think one of them is FD83. Then I moved to the Fuji S3000 before finally going DSLR. I usually restore (cosmetically) old digicams friends and family give me and test them. They have come a long way. As a camera collector, Thanks for keeping the history of these alive.

[@bhume7535]

4 AM video wooooo. I can hold off sleeping for another 12 minutes...

[@WyattOShea]

Was about 7:30pm here :P

[@TheFinnGamer]

I did a school internship at a german public broadcaster in the early 2000s and needed a digital camera for the report I had to write. They offered me a bunch of old floppy storage cameras to take the pictures which were pretty fun to use.

[@martonbauer2666]

Not that it probably matters too much, but the Ricoh batteries look a lot like "gumstick batteries" used mostly in later Sony MiniDisc players. If I'm not mistaken there are new ones, maybe even higher capacity than the originals.

[@joe_tographer]

Great series, would love another

[@rollingtroll]

Lovely little overview. Small correction; the first mavica was in 1997, not 1999. 1999 is when they got good though :D.

[@Paul_Wetor]

My first digital camera was the Casio QV-10 which took 320x240 pixel photos. It had an LCD screen and ate batteries like crazy (rechargeables were a lifesaver). It was so amazing to take useable photos and have them visible on the little screen.

[@CPD0123a]

I LOVE my Mavica. I have the 2mp version that was very late in the line, and gets 4 frames per floppy. It's a really fun camera to use for stupid things.

[@Hey_Beau]

Legitimately laughed out loud at bop-it + starship enterprise 😆

[@derrenleepoole]

Great video. How quickly technology moves forward. You’re showing cameras here that predate the Canon 5D by 6-7 years, and that camera and sensor hold up today. I was shooting mine last night at a party, and the files are so nice and clean.

[@danMdan]

As far as I know there is, in 2024, not one single illustrated history book dealing with the story of early digital cameras.

[@erichstocker8358]

Always enjoy your videos. First digital I ever bought was a strange looking Fuji that had 1 Mpixels.

[@classic.cameras]

James you should do a nostalgia video on your first digital love. Mine was the Canon Powershot A60. 2mp of joy that literally made me stop using my 35mm film cameras and go full digital in 2005. I was going to play with the A60 again but mine died and the price they are these days? nah.

[@jusbubz]

the price part is so relatable. wanted to get a powershot like the one i had growing up but had to change my mind when i saw it going for hundreds online...

[@snappiness]

Thats a great idea! I had two candidates for that - a family camera and then finally my very own camera - both were canon PowerShot A series :)

[@c222]

In the later years of the Mavica, some cameras were compatible with a floppy-to-memorystick adapter. The adapter only worked in those cameras, not any computers, but it let the Mavicas live a little bit longer once Sony had added memorystick readers to all the computers they sold.

[@GeorgeHolden]

Man you always find the pure hidden gems! These are amazing 🤩

[@inregionecaecorum]

My first digital camera in 2000 was a Fuji Finepix 1400 Zoom which turned out a healthy 1280 x 960 image, which surprisingly does not look too bad printed out at A3 size.

[@miguimau]

There’s a fantastic 2001 camera that originally cost $1500, but I bought it new in 2005 for just $150: the Sanyo IDC-1000 iDshot. I assume Sanyo was late with its release because it's a typical expensive/weird camera from the late '90s. It’s a 1.5-megapixel digicam that uses 730 MB magneto-optical disks, with USB and FireWire connections, and it shoots in both JPEG and TIFF! It even has built-in stop motion animation and time-lapse features. 100-400 ISO, great macro…I think you’d enjoy reviewing all these high-end features combined with its now-obsolete specs. Anyway, the photos from the CCD sensor have a really warm feel. Mine still works great, except for a couple of dead sensor pixels.

[@areallyrealisticguyd4333]

The Ricoh and Polaroid cameras really look like 110 cameras with their flat horizontal designs. they look really interesting!

[@fosterb300]

Amazing video! Very clever of Polaroid to incorporate their Sonar AF. Gives it the perfect nostalgia touch

[@mz-pv9ki]

that ricoh camera's batteries are super similar to the gumstick batteries used in minidisc players from around the same time, they are still available on amazon and provide much better performance than the old worn out ones

[@snappiness]

I'm going to look into those, thanks!

[@hurlibuz1]

Love your videos, cool stuff ❤

[@cl995]

Love your videos! I was watching this last night, only to find and purchase the PDC 3000 at a local non-profit for only $40, cables and software included! Seems to be similar except this version uses Compact Flash instead of an internal hard drive. Nearly lost it when I saw this sitting on the shelf!

[@ilpoheikkila4773]

Great video!

[@ethand4784]

im sure youve been told but those batteries from that first camera are simple gumstick batteries and theyre absolutely made still, however the ones you have there look like a higher capacity, still im sure a new smaller battery would be still a lot better than those old ones if you could make them fit somehow

[@marochruiz1019]

Great to see the old timers 💾

[@emc_1994]

Any time I get a Snappy notification, it's a great day!! LOVE this channel!! :)

[@rertnerfurtheng3771]

Kinda crazy impressed by the quality of some of the shots you've managed to get. Playing around with a 0.3mp mavica it took a lot to try and get a good picture out of it (thankfully transferring it was much eaiser).

[@NPJensen]

What a wonderful collection. I miss digital camera designs, that don't look anything like film cameras. I wish modern cameras still took advantage of the fact, that digital sensors are much more versatile than film.

[@TheDamnGarage]

Those are all in surprisingly good shape!

[@countskippy]

I've actually been really intrigued by that Sony Mavica line of cameras. There's the floppy disc version, but they also had CD storage versions eventually. I love the look of them, but I don't have floppies or writable CDs just hanging around much anymore despite how cheap/easy to obtain the cameras are now.

[@lzwnn]

Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

[@Doellimann]

You can still get these gumstick batteries ☝️😁👍

[@kcliffordphoto]

I have a Polaroid Impulse AF and it’s got sonar, it’s impressively accurate for its time!

[@janfriedrich8326]

I used both mavica’s you showed, they were excellent! Still have the files somewhere…😅

[@beeoo9722]

that game boy camera is cool

[@MikeRinz]

Definitely enjoyed! 😄

[@quite1enough]

11:56 perfect camera for capturing UFOs

[@outwithmy]

Great video! I have the Polaroid one though mine must be a slightly later model as it uses flash memory cards. Will dig mine out and also for a giggle, see what AI can achieve re upscaling etc.

[@snappiness]

I really should have opted for the PDC-3000 for that reason. But I was able to finally get the images off! That's a whole story in and of itself!

[@allanau]

Sony in that era was amazing. Like you, I collected the floppy and I have the mini CD. Pretty neat tech.

[@GirdHerd]

I just recently pulled out my fully functional Panasonic PalmCam PV-SD4090 digital camera which looks pretty much like your Sony Digital Mavica. It is the first digital camera I bought back in the early 2000s. The camera records to either a standard 1.4MB floppy disk or 120MB SuperDisk. The resolution is 1.3MP (1280x960). The only thing I had to do to get it operational again was to buy a new battery for $18. Fortunately, I still have a floppy disk drive and the optional SuperDisk drive that came with the camera. I'm having fun shooting with it again.

[@snappiness]

That's very cool! I've seen that camera before when researching floppy stuff.

[@kalinmir]

I can totally see some indie dev using the game boy camera to make their point and click retro adventure game

[@cameralabs]

Excellent video, I love all of them! I'm trying and failing to get hold of the Ricoh, Polaroid and the Mavica at the end - did you find them on eBay? PS - if you need help getting the images out of the Quicktake, I went through the process in my review of it on my Dino Bytes channel. It took me ages to do in the end, and er, wasn't worth it! But it became a mission!

[@snappiness]

I will definitely check out that video for help. You're right it's not worth it, but I get stuck in these things too! 😆 Everything in this video was eBay, actually. The Polaroid was definitely the hardest. They are hard to get with the cable. I found the second lens before the camera haha. And people want way too much for them. The pdc-3000 has removable storage, so that's probably the better one to go for.

[@cameralabs]

@@snappiness yeah, I guess I'll just leave those eBay alerts keeping an eye open for me! I remember reviewing both that Ricoh and Polaroid when they came out, but I've never seen them since! Love that you're finding these old and quirky models.

[@KazyEXE]

You should be able to get a PC card > CF adapter. I believe the pins are 1:1 E: there it is 😅

[@mattbray_studio]

your channel is fast becoming absolutely essential viewing. amazing video, thanks for your dedication !

[@caleblatreille8224]

love the quick-hit format of seeing a bunch of different cameras side-by-side. great video!

[@TheNathanMChannel]

I fondly remember shooting the Sony Mavica in college. Some outdated tech like analog recording and sheet film still has relevance today because it's actually good, but early digital tech is pretty bad. It's fun to reminisce about years later, but the photos themselves are crap. 1990s music yes, 1990s cameras no.

[@tilerman]

fantastic content, and leaves me wondering what the future is for cameras. We have 100mp camera's, do we really need much more, and have we reached 'perfection'.

[@southendsites]

Did get the Canon Powershot 600, Canon's first consumer digital camera, released in 1996 back in the day... 800x600 of reasonable quality back in the day.

[@homg85]

I still have the FD91!

[@Murgoh]

Strange to think how fast the development has been, in the 90:s most people used film (I still do but only black and white and not for casual pictures) and digital cameras were expensive toys with very bad picture quality compared to film. I bought my first digital camera, an Olympus C-760, in 2004 or thereabouts, until then my "carry around camera" was a Canon APS (now a dead format). Only 3.2 megapixels but it has a great lens and takes better pictures than many of the later cameras with much bigger sensors but smaller lenses. I still have it and it still works, a great camera.

[@dl_supertroll]

I've been waiting for this video for 3 weeks since you posted that janky setup to get pics off the polaroid, I so wanted to know more about that

[@JonathanBloom-wr3fq]

Fantastic reviews ! Now if I can only get the images off my old digital camera watch...

[@briandipierro8865]

I've actually got two Sony Mavica's! This original one like you have, and the 2 megapixel one with a memory stick port. I need to find floppy disks and get new batteries...

[@elvinlawcc]

I still have my SONY FD88 floppy disc camera and it's still working but the LCD screen is degraded through the years. I remember I bought this in 1998 if not mistaken.

[@lachlanlau]

1:12 arent those gumstick batteries for walkmans??

[@classic.cameras]

I have the sony FD-91 disc camera as well. Paid $20 for a complete one back in 2018 and the guy thought I was nuts and just gave it to me for free. (I bought a lot of other cameras from him). Its pretty cool as its one of the first IBIS cameras I can think of. And Woof does it every look boxy, 90's ugly and awesome.

[@js2765]

Very cool. Can I ask? Which websites do you use to snap up these gems?

[@johnc_]

Dear all camera manufacturers, please please make properly pocketable cameras again like the GRIII

[@fricki1997]

5:38 that seems a bit like a solar powered flashlight to me.... It's not very useful if it can focus, but there's not enough light to take a handheld picture. How many people do low light tripod photography at close ranges? That being said it's probably still better than a simple CCD based triangulation device.

[@HiCZoK]

fd73 is vga 640x480 and fd91 is 1024x768, so a little error with 1.3mp :P Love these cameras

[@phirewire110]

I have my original GameBoy Camera and GameBoy Color still. Can you elaborate a bit more on your setup to get the files off?

[@snappiness]

Look up "retrospy". You can buy premade stuff or diy it yourself. Pretty cool community around it!

[@revaaron]

I started my concert photographer endeavor in 1999 on a Mavica. Switched to the nikon D100 in 2002. 25 years and 1302419 photos posted of 5472 bands later and I was just photoing a concert last night with a nikon z8 and d5. 4,000 photos of 4 bands. oof... I miss the 30 photos of a band.

[@nicklatheron8795]

I got a Kyocera Samurai V-70 a few years ago (with the cradle) but never got it to work.

[@sirrahca]

fwiw I saw the sonar cam thumbnail a few times, but finally clicked when the gbc thumbnail appeared. not sure if it was the limeness or the novelty camera aspect.

[@snappiness]

Good feedback. I always test thumbnails because to be honest, I have no idea what I'm doing lol

[@AndyHamill]

much better thumbnail

[@anachronismic]

Mavica tip! Buy a vintage usb floppy drive, they are more capable than the ones on amazon now. I've had disks the mavica will write to not be readable by the shitty modern drives. I bought a sony branded one and it reads all of them.

[@panther105]

Weren't the first digital cameras amazingly inventive !? I think I got to see one of the very first Sony digital cameras at a trade show in Tokyo (88/89?). But I wasn't even allowed to touch it.

[@andrewholdaway813]

The sonar also didn't like reflecting back off shallow angles

[@thissidetowardscreen4553]

Great video Snaps! Always love to see the history of digital photography! Lest we forget where today's cameras evolved from! Think it is very important to keep records of the past. Love that these cameras can still be used today! Thanks for sharing!

[@snappy8k]

you can use a gameboy camera even as a webcam! p.s. i wish you used a pixel resolution instead of megapixels, it's like a "1 million dots" display - hard to understand and compare

[@SomeUnremarkableGuy]

I think you have already mentioned but, would be nice if you have included Minolta RD-175

[@Apexseals87]

i wonder if those arent gumstick batteries. what are the physical dimensions on those batteries? maybe they are just standard gumstick batteries. i had an old super thin panasonic cd player that used two of those types of batteries back in the early 00's too.

[@blekfut5763]

6:18 this would be a great photo if there wasn't so much free space above the head and the elbows weren't cut off.

[@leonarddaneman810]

I was hired for a last minute Passport photo a renowned rock star needed before flying to Indonesia. I had the choice of my Bronica GS-1 6x7 film camera or my SONY 1.5 mgpxl digital. I chose the latter because of the portable studio setup backstage and quick, chemical-free prints without time in the darkroom. The SONY was sufficient quality for a Passport photo.

[@TranscendentalAirwaves]

Hold up, didn't the FD5 and FD7 come first?

[@DengekiGamer]

I really love The Game Boy Camera and shoot still today with if. But with a modified one (better Lend and new Software). But you could n fact transfer your Photos back in 1998 to a Computer......if you were lucky. Mad Catz released the Camera Link Cable with Software back then. Technically the same System as same today's solutions. But the Software was so bad, that even a minor Error in the Software Setup could make it useless. And since you can't change them after the Setup and the Setting were stored....somewhere, on your PC, you needed to Set Up Windows from scratch to try it again.

[@snappiness]

Had no idea! Very cool

[@smoguli]

That’s not a wide angle adapter for the QuickTake, it’s a macro adapter.

[@hardiscodata]

What did you do to your thumbnail ?

[@ugarit5]

I see the gameboy camera,i like the video (im a simple man)

[@Merjia]

Have you seen that guy making colour photos with a Gameboy camera by using coloured lights?

[@deltacx1059]

6:49 that would be 94$ today.

[@dustinkjr]

the stupid polaroid camera is my favorite.... its so dumb..... no wonder those idiots didnt last oh yeah lets make a camera look like a piece of scuba gear there are no rules in the digital space go crazy!!! i want one

[@MicroFourNerds]

Make cameras weird again!

[@UserRedZero]

Technology peaked with the GameBoy Camera. 📷

[@Durio_zibethinus]

Wait, with this old stuffs, how old is James again? 😅

[@unfunnybruh]

Coool

[@webinatic216]

Analog horror in some of these examples.