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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
Kodak DCS-420 / Kodak NC-2000E Stories
David Boily, Photographer
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Montreal | QC | Canada | Posted: 11:09 PM on 10.25.10 |
->> I kust bought a Kodak NC-2000E which is the AP version of the DCS-420 released in '94 I think. Basically the first DSLR.
Anyone ever use one of these? I love to hear your stories of using it.
Please share ;-) |
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Jim Colburn, Photo Editor, Photographer
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McAllen | TX | USA | Posted: 11:14 PM on 10.25.10 |
->> $19K and what? 2 Mega-Pixels? Maybe 3?
Paint it gold, mount it on a nice piece of cherry wood and you've got the coolest door stop on the block. |
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Erik Markov, Photographer
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anywhere | IN | | Posted: 11:34 PM on 10.25.10 |
| ->> Never used one but did see some around. Let me say I am forever grateful to those "guinea pigs" who took a bullet for the rest of us. I imagine without that first step it would be tough to be where we are right now with D700's and dslr's that shoot video. |
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Bob Ford, Photographer
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Lehighton | Pa | USA | Posted: 12:17 AM on 10.26.10 |
->> I had (still have somewhere), a Kodak DSC 200. It was an earlier model of the camera you just got. When the DSC 200 first came out it was $8,995, and it was 1.3 megapixels.
No viewing screen on the back, no compact flash cards, and mine ran off of an external battery pack. If I remember correctly it shot at ISO 50, 100 or 200. It had a built in 60 MB hardrive, and attached to a computer with a SCSI cable. I'm pretty sure it also saved the images as a special Kodak file that had to be imported through a Kodak program and exported as a jpg.
It was great for the time, but I'm glad I'm not shooting with one now. The worst thing I found about the camera was how slow it was. You didn't shoot at frames-per-second, it was seconds-per-frame. I remember pushing on the shutter button harder and harder, but no matter how hard you pushed it wouldn't take a picture until it was ready. |
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Steven E. Frischling, Photographer
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| | | Posted: 9:01 AM on 10.26.10 |
| ->> I loved my NC2000c more than the NC2000e and I am pretty sure it was 1.3mp. Oh man that camera was a dream and a nightmare all rolled into one! |
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Steven E. Frischling, Photographer
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| | | Posted: 9:02 AM on 10.26.10 |
| ->> Oh ... the NC2000c was better than the NC2000, the ones I used had battery issues and write failures constantly ... but they were sharp. Probably still the sharpest digital body I've ever used. |
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Bruce Schwartzman, Photographer
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BALTIMORE | MD | | Posted: 9:24 AM on 10.26.10 |
->> If you would like to learn more about the history of the digital camera, here is an interesting site ...
http://www.digicamhistory.com/ |
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Stew Milne, Photographer
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Providence | RI | USA | Posted: 1:00 PM on 10.26.10 |
->> I still have a Kodak DCS-520. It was my first digital pro-body. I bought it used from a newspaper at a steal of $3500.
Steven: It's in a box and waiting for you.
I used one of the NC2000 models during my thesis. My friends at AP let me borrow it to do a comparison between film and digital.
-sM |
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Steven E. Frischling, Photographer
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| | | Posted: 2:51 PM on 10.26.10 |
->> Stew
...and I want it when I can free up the cash for it!!!
The DCS520 is still my favourite digital body ever! |
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David Boily, Photographer
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Montreal | QC | Canada | Posted: 6:04 PM on 10.26.10 |
->> Unbelievable how far we've come in a relatively short time.
This is purely a collection piece for my shelf. I don't have a SCSI drive and not even sure it works.
I heard that you could only shoot about 5 innings of baseball, then you charged it for a couple of innings so you could get the last inning. |
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Mark J. Terrill, Photographer
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Simi Valley | CA | USA | Posted: 8:56 PM on 10.26.10 |
->> David,
Just curious. Can you say what you paid for it? I used one for several years starting in about 1993. I'd love to have one for my collection as well.
Shooting with that camera was very challenging. I learned to pick my frame real quick. Incidentally, I've only had two Time covers in my career and they were both with that camera.
Mark |
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Mark Smith, Photographer
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Elk City | OK | USA | Posted: 9:50 PM on 10.26.10 |
->> I still have a DCS-620 with a blown shutter.
I keep thinking I'm going to make a lamp out of it. |
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Steven E. Frischling, Photographer
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| | | Posted: 10:20 PM on 10.26.10 |
->> Mark
I sold my NC2000c for $250 and saw a 2000e on eBay in the last few months for $100 |
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Robert Scheer, Photographer
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Indianapolis | IN | USA | Posted: 11:34 PM on 10.26.10 |
->> I only shot with that monster a couple of times. The only time I recall shooting with it is during the Outback Bowl in Tampa, 2000 I think. The Purdue kicker missed the game winning field goal, which sealed a loss to Georgia, I think.
I hooked that bad boy up to a Macbook 3400 or something, and each image was more washed out and more magenta than the previous one. Nasty, nasty image quality, but I got something back on deadline via the dial up modem. It's been ten years since, and I can't imagine what the cameras will be doing ten years from now. |
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Thomas E. Witte, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Cincinnati | OH | USA | Posted: 11:47 PM on 10.26.10 |
->> Do you have any idea how many years of therapy I had to go through to get over the NC2000E? I'm not even referring to camera itself, I'm talking about how I thought my eyes were deceiving me and that the color red didn't exist and that brick walls were held together by rainbows.
If you never dealt with the camera you'll have no idea what I'm talking about, but those of you that have will remember editing house fires and seeing pink and white flames. If the fire happened to occur at a brick home with an asphalt shingled roof you hit the trifecta that resembled technicolor vomit run through a spin cycle. |
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Michael L. Palmieri, Photographer
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Ned Mulka, Student/Intern
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Urbana | IL | USA | Posted: 11:12 AM on 10.27.10 |
| ->> How did the bulk of this camera affect holding it? I'm imagining a 80-200 on it and thinking the height of the camera and weight would be very inhibiting. |
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Brian Blanco, Photographer
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Tampa / Sarasota | FL | USA | Posted: 11:34 AM on 10.27.10 |
->> The thing I remember best about those cameras is that whenever you carried one, you couldn't get any work done because it was so large and "cool" looking that everyone (shooters and non-shooters alike) within 100 yards of you had to come over and ask you about it.
It was like a magnet for annoying camera talk questions... the most common being, "How much did that thing cost?", which, given the actual cost, you never wanted to answer truthfully.
It's amazing that something that cost as much as the GDP of a developing nation could be worthless within a couple of years. |
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Fred Greaves, Photographer
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San Diego | CA | USA | Posted: 12:24 PM on 10.27.10 |
->> I picked a working one up at a photo swap meet held at a local community college a few years ago for $100 (it still works... but I have nothing that I can read a typeIII PCMCIA card with.)
While working at the San Diego Union-Tribune as a staffer in the 90's I was given one to go shoot a story with on deadline in Yuma, AZ.
The paper's photo lab manager at the time handed me the camera body and charger and said that whatever I do, don't break it or lose it.. or if I do, it'd probably be better that I just don't come back. (I found out later he was kidding.)
I have always been a Canon shooter, so I was using a very picky Nikon based digital, having to shoot with lenses that focused backwards, and a flash that I had to use in manual. Everyone that had used it warned me to check the images on the computer frequently because the meter did not always give an accurate reading. Using the flash was even more dicey.
I ended up shooting a bit, running across the street to the hotel where I would download the card to my laptop, look at the images, then come back to keep shooting... chimping on steroids!!
I used them quite a few times while working there. By today's standards they were terrible cameras, but at the time, it was pretty cool to shoot a story on deadline and crank out the images on a laptop. No finding one hour labs to soup film or turning a hotel bathroom into a darkroom with black plastic, gaffers tape, a cooler and a devtek.
I also found out that Batteries+ can rebuild the nicad packs in the NC2000 type cameras for about $30.
Enjoy your new camera! |
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David Boily, Photographer
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Montreal | QC | Canada | Posted: 10:09 PM on 10.27.10 |
| ->> Mark, I paid $99. Not even sure if it works because it doesn't hold a charge. I don't really care, its not like I'm gonna use it anyways. It makes a great conversation piece especially with all your stories. |
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Thomas E. Witte, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Cincinnati | OH | USA | Posted: 11:48 PM on 10.27.10 |
->> Ned- Very uncomfortably.
Since there wasn't a vertical release you had to shoot it with your right hand cocked under it to be able to help support it. Then you were constantly fighting the 39 pounds of camera torquing to get back upright.
Shooting with a wide angle lens presented it's own oddities. You had to use a 6mm fisheye as a portrait lens (okay not really) for starters but because the drives dropped down several inches under the camera, you actually had to reach around the side of the camera to focus.
It was just plain awkward. |
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Steve Ueckert, Photographer
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Houston | TX | | Posted: 12:24 AM on 10.28.10 |
->> There also was the too cool feature of the DCS-520 that you could play Pong on the rear display.
I think Nikon needs a firmware update for the D700, Pong anyone, perhaps Asteroids? |
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Steven E. Frischling, Photographer
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| | | Posted: 10:37 AM on 10.29.10 |
->> Steve
The reason I went with the DCS520 over the Canon D2000 (which is technically an identical camera) is that the Kodak branded DCS520 came with Pong ... while Canon branded D2000 had Pong removed from the camera.
Oh memories of standing on a press riser waiting around and playing Pong on my DCS520 :0) |
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Jock Fistick, Photographer
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Brussels | Belgium | | Posted: 11:54 AM on 10.29.10 |
->> I had one stolen from my luggage when flying back from Cuba through Miami after the Pope's visit in '98. The newspaper self insured - so they had to eat the loss and I wasn't my photo editors favorite person for a while after that :-)
A few weeks later a theft ring was busted at the Miami airport - apparently baggage handlers were ripping stuff off - and professional camera / video gear was at the top of their hit list. So I felt somewhat vindicated. |
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Rodrigo Pena, Photographer
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Beaumont | CA | USA | Posted: 1:40 AM on 11.01.10 |
| ->> Probably the worst camera that I have ever used was the NC2000. I don't remember much about it, only used it a couple dozen times. One time to cover a Laker game, one time to cover the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles when Al Gore was running for president. One time covering NASCAR in Fontana. I just remember hating the way the photos looked and thought to myself, "Digital sucks, I want to go back to film." I think everyone was thinking that. BUT....for deadline stuff in a remote location, it was certainly easier than setting up a color negative darkroom in a hotel bathroom. I still have some images that I found using that monster. But I don't have the software needed to open the images up. I should have saved my photos as TIFF's or JPEG's. I will say that the images weren't too bad in the studio. With nice light, it was almost acceptable. Thomas is right, the pink was annoying. I still can't believe the newspaper paid $20,000 for our camera. It was so expensive that we could only afford to have one pool camera to share with 5 photogs at my small daily. I remember no one wanted to shoot photos with it for a while so my photo editor asked me if I would shoot a few assignments with it to justify the cost. I took one for the team. LOL! |
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Clark Brooks, Photo Editor, Photographer
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Urbana | IL | USA | Posted: 8:37 AM on 11.01.10 |
| ->> I had a pair of Canon D2000 for a year or two that I bought from a paper switching to Nikon. Shooting with a 2mp camera really flattens the learning curve on the concept of shooting tight and filling the frame. The bodies were H-E-A-V-Y, need three batteries to shoot a football game and built like a tanks. Shot in rain, snow, sleet and hail with 'em. They always delivered. What was really nice is they bodies doubled as dumb bells for flies, alternating shoulder press, wrist curls and lateral raises :-) Fun part was always handing one to a curious shooter and hearing them say, "Wow, that's heavy! And you have two!!!" |
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