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.

[@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

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@DrRusty5]

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

[@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.

[@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"

[@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

[@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.

[@i-am-ber]

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

[@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.

[@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!

[@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.

[@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.

[@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!

[@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.

[@TooLazyToFail]

Your unbridled joy starting at 14:00 absolutely made my day.

[@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

[@GeneralHadouken]

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

[@Zdude3313Z]

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

[@PurrincessDiana]

How is this man not blowing up. He is funny, charismatic, has so much knowledge about everything he talks about. Definitely one of my favorite channels. No matter how big or small the sub count.

[@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.

[@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!

[@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]

😳

[@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.

[@Jonoth]

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

[@weaseal]

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

[@ibullard]

Thanks!

[@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

[@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.

[@importmanteau6389]

I rarely comment on videos. I always enjoy your content....... But I cackled with absolute glee - out loud, by myself - for the "The part you clicked for" segment. Pure and utter bliss. Thank you!!! 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

[@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

[@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.

[@MrMegaManFan]

This is the earliest I've ever gotten one of your new videos in the recommended tab before I even saw it in my subscriber feed. Bless the algorithm!

[@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!

[@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!

[@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.

[@Seawolf.Gaming]

0:47 OH THATS BIG NUGGET!

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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)

[@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.

[@ayol1011]

Dude I'm dropping a comment because I like how confident you sound. After a quick perusing I feel like the content of your channel is very niche. I like the old school gadget stuff and I feel like your channel have more room for improvement. You are a very good presenter and your breakdown of the product is very good

[@bohican]

"We have flown so far from the light..." I love this sentiment, the enthusiasm, the brilliance! I completely agree.

[@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.

[@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!

[@dbozan99]

17:50 Oh weird. I wasn't expecting to see someplace that I used to work. I worked the Front Desk at the Gridiron for a few months when it first opened.

[@realityshotgun]

Hmm I worked at the back desk right before it closed

[@kelownatechkid]

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

[@tahvohck]

The absolute joy when you showed us how it installs, man... I love it

[@DrRusty5]

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

[@jdatlas4668]

*immediately clicks* I love that I discovered this channel around Christmas.

[@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

[@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.

[@jetjazz05]

24:00 - I only know what I gleam from engineers here on KZbin and I might even be misquoting, the reason that part might be used is because it was made for something already and the cost of making a custom piece vs using an off the shelf part would cost more.

[@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.

[@Addictedtocollecting01]

I'm so glad i watched to the end, your enthusiasm made it all worth it

[@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.

[@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.

[@ylitvinenko]

Спасибо!

[@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.

[@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".

[@simondann7371]

Your content just keeps getting better and better!

[@thecodeprofessor]

Thank you sir. I was smiling when you showed the rotating lens cameras but you made my day with the pcmcia reveal. I would be happy to use a portion of this video as my desktop pattern, with no shame. :)

[@speedyspeeds]

Your videos are so refreshing and interesting.

[@JessicaFEREM]

5:16 I can immediately see this being used as a motorcycle POV cam. looks like you'd attach it to a motorcycle and then the cord would go into a shirt or jacket pocket I think sony made an action cam that looks like that but they cut the cord off. I don't know the model but it's also about 80% of their action cams that are the similar shape.

[@nataliealliepage7155]

You are quickly becoming my favorite KZbinr.

[@ablebaker99]

You flashed (0:53) a SanDisk Sansa and said "most people are pretty happy where things ended up". That is really true of me. I have the SanDisk Sansa since 2008. Use it almost every day for 14 years. Easy to read LCD display in bright sun. Runs on a AAA Ni-MN bat. It is near perfect.

[@amd2800barton]

I wonder if the PCFR stamp is at all related to Intrinsically Safe design. I worked in a refinery, and needed up take pictures, but anything that can spark, even low voltage cell phones, was prohibited in the area I was doing engineering work in. Flashlights, radios, and cameras had to all be IS rated to be used around certain equipment. The operations engineer I was talking with had a nearly identical looking digital camera (no picture display, vertical orientation, top LCD with battery & pic count). They brought that along for me to snap some pics to put in my report.

[@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.

[@lusher00]

This brings back so many memories! I was born in 82 so I can remember posing for a lot of pictures when all the moms brought their cameras out for the big events.

[@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

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@barevids]

just found this channel - absolutely love this guy!! Love your energy and vibe my bro.

[@caleblebrun7346]

Great video! You do a fantastic job of keeping the information rolling and keeping it interesting. Great stuff

[@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

[@thesledgehammerblog]

I immediately recognized the location when you showed the viewfinder shot, since it's only a couple of blocks from where I used to work (next to the stadiums in Seattle.)

[@LN997-i8x]

1:40 The way you hold that is somewhat reminiscent of how some old compact Super 8 cameras were set up. I guess one of the designers was familiar with them and thought it was a good idea for some reason.

[@KarlSander]

As soon as it dawned on me how it would work, I got physically excited for what was to come (whacking the camera right into the laptop)

[@Valacosa]

I love the slow burn, the buildup to the anticipation of the weird. Squealed with giggles when the reveal finally came 🤣

[@DIYAudioGuy]

I had one of those Nikon twisty cameras.

[@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!

[@vwestlife]

I got a Nikon camera I love to take a photograph

[@andreasu.3546]

In 2009...they took our Kodachrome away.

[@Brokkoliverschwendung]

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

[@imark7777777]

15:00 I was waiting for that it wouldn't have been that hard I would think? There used to be a PC card camera for palm top PCs.

[@Bubu567]

The pivoting handle was an amazing feature in handheld cameras that was sorely missed when it went away.

[@dreoneful]

I love this channel as a kid I remember walking around 42street and looking at all the electronic stores for some reason all the cameras takes me back in time

[@DerMarkus1982]

12:28 Ohhh. I see where this is going. Are you supposed to remove a cover from the "bottom" of the camera and slide the whole thing into a PCMCIA slot? 😆

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.