Jeff Keller's Rise and Fall of the Compact Camera

For the 25th Anniversary of DPReview (the name stands for Digital Photography Review), now owned by Gear Patrol, Jeff Keller, formerly of DCResource (Digital Camera Resource), which ended in 2013, has written a brief but interesting post called "The rise and fall of the compact camera." He was one of the earliest writers about digital cameras among those who are still around. Like DPReview, he's a survivor. I wish he had expanded on his personal thoughts more, but what he offers here is instructive and interesting. He's particularly good at providing revealing graphs that reflect important data.

Some of us here lived through that entire period and had already been photographers for years before 1995, when Jeff started writing about compacts. I recall distinctly when the new term "megapixel" began to circulate—one million pixels! Wow. It seemed exotic and unfamiliar at first. I also remember the first one-gigabyte CF (Compact Flash) memory card I bought. It cost $150 used. But—a whole gigabyte. That seemed marvelous as well. The first digital camera I ever used was an Agfa that had 350,000 pixels and bragged of having a glass lens (fancy). Like many early compacts, it was made by Sanyo. I thought it was tremendous fun to use—too bad the image quality just wasn't anywhere near even 35mm film, making it unusable for any deliberate or serious work.

Jeff ends on a wistful note, with his final line being, "Please responsibly recycle your old electronics!"

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

louis mccullagh: "I have been on the Internet since 1998 but prior to that I was involved in computers as far back as 1978. I remember on Apple II with a hard drive of 5- or 10MB the back up was to a VHS recorder. When I moved to digital after using a Nikon scanner the first time I brought up a digital image from a Canon 10D(?). I was nearly ill. The image looked so like plastic in comparison to the grain of my scanned film. There was at the time a lot of people who said raw was not needed, JPEG was 100%. I found photographers, ad agencies and photolabs had no idea about colour profiles for anything. It was a hard time to get quality prints."

Comments

[Graham]

As an aside, wasn't DPReview acquired by Gear Patrol after Amazon decided to kill it?

[Matt O’Brirn]

My first digital camera was a Nikon (because I always wanted Nikon) compact… a full 2Megapixel. I bought it in an airport to play with, as my flight was delayed for several hours.

I used it on the trip to capture images of the flipchart pages,used at the meeting I travelled to. My assistant, at the time was delighted, as these were more understandable than my notes… and the meeting attendees were gobsmacked (all CIO of large corporations).

The key point… if I did not buy the compact…. I would not have bought the dslr when it arrived.

[Frank]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Photography_Review

Not owned by Amazon

[Frank]

typo on DRPeview ;-)

[David Miller]

Good morning Mike,

Just a typo notification:

First paragraph — "Like DRPeview, he's a survivor."

David G. Miller, inveterate proofreader

[Amazing how many mistakes I made in this short little post. I was rushing because today's pool day and I wanted to get it up before my friend got here. But no excuse.

Anyway, proofreading is always appreciated! --Mike]

[Sean]

My first digital camera was a Sony Mavica FD73. I remember loving it and thinking capturing pictures onto a floppy disc was very cool. But I don’t have a single picture from that time, which can only mean one of two things: either I had ultra-high editing standards, or I thought I’d always have a floppy disc drive

[Stephen Cowdery]

I started out in digital with a couple of
Samsung compacts, an NV10 and an EX-1 (TL500).
Both had really great Schneider lenses but mediocre sensors and quirky interfaces.
A newer version of the EX-1 with a 20mp BSI sensor and IBIS would be tempting, similar to the Sony Rx 100 I—which is hard to beat at that size. I think Samsung got out of the P&S camera market due to Sony's success.

[Richard Alan Fox]

25th anniversary and Amazon no longer owns DPReview.

[Andrew L]

I'm sure many others will correct you on the recent history of DPReview. It was fairly dramatic, given Amazon's merciless intent to delete all of the accumulated testing and coverage of digital cameras on the site. Whatever else DPR is, it is a storehouse of information of the digital photography era.

I followed DCResource and it was the first photo forum I joined back in the day. It was primary in convincing me to buy a Nikon D40 DSLR soon after that camera's release, which really slingshotted my budding interest in photography (my previous camera was a 2MP Olympus compact camera, and, before that, cheap film compacts). The roughly $650 I paid for that camera was a lot of dough for me, back then. In retrospect, I would have perhaps been better off getting a used D50, which wasn't much older technology-wise, and had a built-in focus motor which would have made many more Nikon AF lenses from the recent past easier to use. The D40 only supported AF-S lenses, which were more expensive, rarely available used. I made do manually focusing with a 50mm f1.8D for a long time. Shocked that I managed focus as well as I did with that small, dim viewfinder, but my eyes were young!

[Doug Vaughn]

Thanks for the link to the article. My first digital camera was the Olympus C3040Z in 2001, replaced by my first digital Rebel in 2003. I was amazed by the power of digital after shooting film for 20 years prior to that. The Olympus captured a shot good enough to land me on the cover of a German beekeepers magazine with a bee in an almond blossom (my only crack at "fame", LOL).

I had to chuckle at the mention of the expensive 1GB CF card. Back in 1996 or 1997, while I was the controller for a large Taco Bell franchisee, we installed our first networked computer system. We were on top of the world running Novell software with something like 15 PCs linked to a single server. I remember our discussions about splurging for a 20GB hard drive on the server and whether we would ever really need all that space. It all seems very quaint now. Those were the days when the finance guy (me) could put on his IT hat when necessary and run the whole show.

[Albert Smith]

I bought my brother a Canon digicam back in the early '00s because he wanted one, while I was still in my "I'll never shoot digital" mode. It was a 1.3mp camera that took CF cards. He was taking a trip and wanted a "bigger" capability with his card, so we went to Walmart and he got a 256K card for $79, about 25% of the cost of the camera. He gripped, but I reminded him how little a dent $79 would make in my photography for film and processing.

Today, I buy 10 16Gig SD cards for less than that one 256K card from 20-plus years ago. Yeah, I shoot digital, so I didn't stick to my proclamation from back then.

[Steve Biro]

I’ve been seriously involved in photography since the mid-1970s. But my first digital camera was indeed a compact: A Casio Exilim EX-Z4.

I bought it in 2004 and its 1/2.5” sensor came with a whopping 4 megapixels with a “huge” 2-inch rear LCD. The lens was built by Pentax and offered a 35-105mm zoom range and maximum aperture of f/2.6-4.8. I think the camera wouldn’t recognize anything larger than a 2GB SD card.

I remember being at the New York City motorcycle show that year where a group of Asian attendees spotted my camera and excitedly came over to learn more about it.

I continued to use it until I bought my first DSLR in 2008: A Pentax K200D.

[Tom Burke]

Interesting article, though I was aware of the basic facts. It’s interesting to compare the drop in digicam sales figures with the improvements in smartphone camera systems. Interesting, also, to recall that in his ‘One Device’ presentation, Steve Jobs spent about 15 seconds talking about the camera, it was so much just an add-on.

My first digital camera was a compact(ish) - a Canon A70, 3mp, 35-105mm (equiv) zoom. There was a small screen on the back, and even a viewfinder (which may have been why I bought it), though that only provided 84% coverage. I seem to recall that most of the missing view was on one side and the top, so I had to accept that what I saw through the vf was definitely not what the camera would capture. But I was pretty happy with it while I waited for DSLRs to become affordable. That happened, of course, with the Canon EOS 300D in autumn 2003 and the Nikon D70 in early 2004.

[Mike Plews]

Our first digital camera was a Kodak DCS215 I bought for our son Kai. He loved it but that camera was not much of a performer. It had less than a megapixel sensor and a ferocious appetite for AA batteries.
A 5x7 print from it looked horrible but my son had a blast with it.
I still have a Canon S95 and use it regularly. It remains a lovely device and effortlessly produces lovely 16x20 prints.
Also bought an S95 for Kai and he has done some fine work with it.

[JOHN B GILLOOLY]

When I purchased my very low serial# Nikon D1 for $5700 at SBI Supply in Boston, I splurged on two 64mb 1x cards that set me back $349 each. But they were each viewed as a 35mm roll of film that could be reused indefinitely. On the D1, I could shoot about 32 "jpg fine" files on that 64mb card - sort of like one roll of film. Fast-forward a year or two and we were using the 512mb then1GB IBM Microdrive, which were about 1/5 the price of their solid state equivalents. After a couple of those platter microdrives failed, I bit the bullet on a 1GB CFII card for $1249.00. I need to find those receipts!

[Stephen S.]

I think one of the key points of the article is getting glossed over, and that's just how many compact cameras were actually made by Sanyo, and one thing the article missed, which is how many lens/shutter units were made by Tamron.

There are comments here like "Both had really great Schneider lenses" and "The lens was built by Pentax" and in those cases, they were most likely cameras actually made by Sanyo, with lenses actually made by Sanyo or Tamron. It's also worth noting that for most of the heyday of compact cameras, Sanyo was owned by Matsushita, a.k.a. Panasonic.

I think everyone caught on to nearly everyone using sensors built by Sony, but when you had cameras from Pentax, Olympus, and Casio all using the exact same lens, everyone assumed it was one of those three making the lens and the other two licensing it, but the reality is that neither of those three made any part of their cameras at all - easily confirmed by the "made in" markings on the cameras listing a country that none of those companies ever had a factory in!

There are so many interesting stories from those days that haven't been discussed, like when Olympus compact cameras could be hacked to produce raw files that could then be processed by software that recognized Nikon .NEF raw files, and the reason they produced compatible raw files was that Olympus and Nikon compact cameras were being made in the same Sanyo factory, running closely-related firmware code written by Sanyo, running on the same Panasonic processor inside the cameras, taking an image from the same Sony sensor. Brand choice meant far less than people thought it did!

[Richard Tugwell]

Adding my own memories of starting on the digital slippery slope. (I've recently started exloring film again)

First digital compact was the Sony DSC-F1 around 1997. Thought it was curious but never made much use of it. Don't have any images

(source Wikipedia)

In 2000 I acquired the Olympus C-3030Z. This was a step change. Worked like a real camera and produced serviceable results. I have a few hundred images from this.

(source DPReview)

Here's a sample

(Source yours truly)

[Robert Roaldi]

For fun, I went to the compact camera listings at DPReview and skimmed through the pages and pages of compact camera models from various manufacturers. Wow, there were a lot of them! Where did they all go? They're going to clog up the camera museums.

[Ed Hawco]

The “Overflow” section of Keller’s article had me nodding and frowning. I could never find any coherence in the model names and numbers for the tsunami compact camera models, and to a lesser extent DSLRs. (Is a D500 better or worse than a D5000?)

It’s no coincidence that of the nine digital cameras I’ve owned, five are from the same brand and model line (Panasonic LX2/LX3/LX5/LX7/LX100). That LX100 was bought used, with my Olympus OM-D as a trade-in. I keep going back to the LX line because of their ergonomics. They behave and function more like cameras than electronic gadgets. Actual dials and switches for shutter speed, aperture, exposure compensation, aspect ratio, autofocus mode, etc.

Unfortunately that used LX100 has always been a bit wonky; the EFV occasionally goes out of whack and needs to be taken apart and jigged with a screwdriver to reset it, and now and then it just refuses to focus to infinity.

So where do I go next? Obviously the Leica D-Lux 8, which some reviewers complain is just a 2019 Panasonic LX100 with a bit of liptstick on it. But I’m just fine with that. Finer than fine, as apparently, according to some reviewers, the menus have been simplified considerably. This simplification is lamented by gadget nerds but welcomed with enthusiasm by photographers (at least according to the sample size of one that I surveyed).

[Richard Tugwell]

Re posting images - how should they be formatted these days? I thought it used to be 800px wide although I could be mis-remembering?

[Images posted in the comments should be 470 pixels wide. Wide. Here's the code:

Image in comments:

Hope that helps. --Mike]

[Bob Johnston]

There are two things that stand out in my memory of the early compact digital days. Firstly the horrendous shutter lag. By the time you pressed the button the subject had moved on.

The second is that if you wanted a high capacity (for the time. I can't remember the capacities) you could buy a card with a hard drive - a spinning hard drive.

[Robert Roaldi]

For all of the talk about phones replacing compact cameras, it's odd to look at the healthy prices for used 1-inch sensor compact cameras from Sony and Canon. I took a quick look on the popular used camera sites and there are virtually no bargains. In many cases it's cheaper to buy a used late model Rebel with kit lens. But then this is a terrific time to buy D-SLR gear in general.

[Moose]

Oh my! Do I admit to my profligacy?

First digital - Canon S110, the 2001 model, 1.8 MP. Actually quite a good camera. Sold me on digital, leading to a Canon 300D.

Fujifilm F10 - 8/2005
Fujifilm F30 - 1/2006
Canon A710 - 6/2007
Canon A650 - 4/2008
Canon G11 - 11/2009
Samsung WB850 - 11/2010
Canon S100 1/2012
Panny Z40 - 10/2014
Panny Z50 - 6/2016
Panny Z80 - 8/2019
Panny Z200 - 8/2019

The Z89 and Z200 differ a lot in sensor size and zoom range.

Only the Z200 is still in service.

The search for the ultimate P&S was mostly fun. And I can say that I have great pix from each of them - at least great to me.

Then, there are the Oly TG series, a different kettle of fish. The TG850 was about the only P&S that disappointed for image quality. The TG-4, and now 6, (for RAW), are excellent.

[Richard Tugwell]

@mike - thanks for clarifying the image tag requirements

(just testing )

[I've been having a lot of trouble with images on TypePad myself recently, and obviously I've been doing this for many years. They recently solved one problem and another has reared its ugly head. So this isn't your fault. However, I believe the image has to be 470 pixels wide to work--if you just set the size in the code it comes out truncated like your test image is here.

Sorry this isn't easier. --Mike]