Digital photography is older than many people think. I’ll keep quiet about how old I was in 1988. However, I was already hanging around Photokina. The photo proves it. It was taken back then with a Nikon QV-1000C Still Video Camera and then printed out nicely on thermal paper. The differences in the images come from different ISO settings, as far as I can remember. I found this quite exciting at the time and although the F4 had just been introduced, I already knew that this would be the future. Even though it was quite unwieldy and extremely expensive (35000 DM) for a 0.4 megapixel sensor that could only take black and white photos.
I really realized that everything would change at Photokina a few years later, when the Kodak DCS 100 was introduced. There were only frightened photographers walking around, even those who hadn’t even noticed that a new era was dawning were somehow nervous. I drew my conclusions and bought a Mac. It was also quite expensive. Even more expensive (it felt) was Photoshop 2.0, which I absolutely needed. I simply couldn’t afford the digital camera that was still missing, which took me until 1996. But I assisted a photographer who had a good scanner. So I still managed to get my photos onto the computer. But here came the next problem: how do I transfer the data? My internet connection was too slow and the photographer had no internet at all. But he had a SyQuest drive. These removable disks could hold 44MB! A USB stick wouldn’t even be produced for that today. But we could transport data back and forth!
By the way, I’m no longer at the trade fair. That’s not quite true, but I will be at the opening of my colleague Ralf Baumgarten’s exhibition on Wednesday, but certainly not because of the technology. After all, we find out everything that happens beforehand through other channels and if we really want to touch technology, the nice distributor will come by with the test stand. Although I’m still waiting for a test OM-D E-M10 from Olympus. But it will come at some point, for sure!
If you want to learn more about the old QV-1000C, you can research some digital photography history here at Nikonweb or MIR.com.my.
