bikinkawboy wrote:
My first digital camera was one of the Kodak point and shoots in 2003-2004. Something like $260 I believe. I used it to photograph breeding livestock then email the image to the potential customer. About the same time we got a Sony Mavica at work with its floppy disk that would hold an astounding 6 images! I think it was like $700! 2006 i upgraded to a Fuji S5100. Cool camera but slow focusing made it useless for anything moving. For Christmas 2007 my kids gave me a Nikon D40. $450-475 I think. That’s when I found that digital cameras could actually be competent devices.
My first digital camera was one of the Kodak point... (
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I started using an Olympus digital camera around 1997 or 1998, primarily to shoot real estate properties. It cost close to $1000 and, if I recall correctly, made a 1.5MP image. I eventually gave it to my brother-in-law, who used it for eBay images until four or five years ago. It was still working, but he had to update his computer and couldn't find a memory card reader that worked with the camera's unique memory on the newer computer operating system.
My first DSLR was a Canon 10D that I bought in 2003. It was 6MP, APS-C and a really nice camera. With the battery grip (best one Canon ever made for a DSLR) and a second battery, it cost about $2400 at that time. The 10D body alone was the first DSLR to cost less than $2000 ($1999). That was a significant drop in price compared to the D60 and D30, and especially the 1D and 1Ds that preceded it. It used essentially the same 7 point AF system that Canon put in their Elan 7/EOS 30 film cameras.
From shooting Canon SLR film cameras for some years I already had a bunch of Canon EF mount lenses and accessories such as dedicated Canon flashes... So the 10D made sense. The 10D was the last Canon APS-C camera to NOT be able to use EF-S lenses especially made for their APS-C format cameras. The first of the EF-S lenses (18-55mm) was introduced with the Digital Rebel (300D) less than a year after I bought the 10D. But, as a result, there were no Canon lenses that were particularly wide on the 10D. The only lens I sold and replaced to accommodate the smaller sensor format was a Canon EF 17-35mm f/2.8L USM. Nice lens, just not very wide on the 10D. After testing a series of the 3rd party lenses available at the time, I ended up buying a Tokina AT-X 12-24mm f/4. That was a decent lens that looked and felt a lot like the L-series Canon it replaced. After I graduated to later Canon APS-C DSLRs I eventually got a Canon EF-S 10-20mm f/3.5-4.5 USM.... one of the best ultrawides, crop sensor lenses anyone has made.
EDIT:
I just tracked it down... my first digital was an Olympus D500L that was 1.4MP:
https://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/D600/D650A.HTM The lens on this camera was superb... 50-150mm (full frame equivalent) and f/2.8 throughout. The autofocus system drove me nuts! It was pretty slow and the shutter wouldn't release until focus was achieved. I recall swearing at the camera at times!
This also was one of the camera models that started the whole craze about shutter actuations or "clicks". Early digital used the same shutters as film cameras. Manufacturers didn't anticipate that users would go nuts shooting "free" digital images. No longer encumbered by the cost of film and processing, people who switched to digital started taking a whole lot more shots! It turned out these Oly cameras at best only had about 20,000 clicks in their shutters. As a result, some of the heaviest users of the camera were getting shutters replaced under warranty... sometimes more than once. Oly was going broke replacing shutters for free! (For comparison, in recent years on one or two occasions I've shot 8000 or 9000 images in a day. But I commonly shoot 1500 to 3000 at an event.)
All the manufacturers took note of this and put a lot of effort into developing more durable shutters. They also started citing predicted shutter actuations for marketing purposes, and to some extent still do that today. Even the most entry level cameras today have shutters rated for around 75,000 clicks and many have 100,000, 200,000, even 400,000 and more click-rated shutters. These aren't guarantees... but at least get the manufacturer through the typical warranty period before the shutter wears out and needs replacement!