The Kodak Professional Digital Camera System or DCS, later unofficially named DCS 100, was the first commercially available
digital single-lens reflex
A digital single-lens reflex camera (digital SLR or DSLR) is a digital camera that combines the optics and the mechanisms of a single-lens reflex camera with a digital imaging sensor.
The reflex design scheme is the primary difference between ...
(DSLR) camera. It was a customized camera back bearing the digital image sensor, mounted on a
Nikon F3
The Nikon F3 was Nikon's third professional single-lens reflex camera
A single-lens reflex camera (SLR) is a camera that typically uses a mirror and prism system (hence "reflex" from the mirror's reflection) that permits the photographer to ...
body and released by
Kodak
The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...
in May 1991; the company had previously shown the camera at
Photokina
Photokina (rendered in the promoters' branding as "photokina") is a trade fair held in Europe for the photographic and imaging industries. It is the world's largest such trade fair. The first Photokina was held in Cologne, Germany, in 1950, a ...
in 1990. Aimed at the
photo journalism
Photojournalism is journalism that uses images to tell a news story. It usually only refers to still images, but can also refer to video used in broadcast journalism. Photojournalism is distinguished from other close branches of photography (such ...
market in order to improve the speed with which photographs could be transmitted back to the studio or newsroom, the DCS had a
resolution
Resolution(s) may refer to:
Common meanings
* Resolution (debate), the statement which is debated in policy debate
* Resolution (law), a written motion adopted by a deliberative body
* New Year's resolution, a commitment that an individual mak ...
of 1.3
megapixels
In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest point in an all points addressable display device.
In most digital display devices, pixels are the sm ...
. The DCS 100 was publicly presented for the first time in Arles (France), at the Journées de l'Image Pro by Mr Ray H. DeMoulin, the worldwide President of the Eastman Kodak Company. 453 international journalists attended this presentation, which took place in the Palais des Congres of Arles.
The predecessor to the commercial Digital Still Camera (DCS) was prototyped in the spring of 1987 at Kodak Research Labs. A 1.3 megapixel imager had been produced by Kodak’s Microelectronics Technology Division and the logical next step was to build a high resolution digital imaging system around it. The DCS prototype was developed for trials by the Associated Press. Kodak researchers chose the Nikon F3HP SLR because it was the most widely used professional camera at the time.
The F3HP had motor drive contacts that provided signals sufficient for electronic synchronization. A set of potential lenses underwent
MTF testing and best matched lenses were selected. The battery power and a hard drive were integrated into a tethered remote system to be worn on the shoulder while the photographer worked. The A/D converter output was processed to generate an exposure histogram for the photographer. Finally, since the 1.3MP imager was smaller than the
full 35mm film frame, colored templates were added to the viewfinder to indicate the area the imager would capture.
The prototype system was tested extensively in 1987 and 1988 by AP photographers and in studies comparing its performance to film systems. There was enough enthusiasm for the system to undertake a commercial version. An early version was shown at
photokina
Photokina (rendered in the promoters' branding as "photokina") is a trade fair held in Europe for the photographic and imaging industries. It is the world's largest such trade fair. The first Photokina was held in Cologne, Germany, in 1950, a ...
in 1990 and the product was launched in May 1991.
The DCS 100 retained many of the characteristics of the prototype, including a separate shoulder carried Digital Storage Unit (DSU) to store and to visualize the images, and to house the batteries. The DSU contained a 200 megabyte
hard disk drive
A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magne ...
that could store up to 156 images without
compression
Compression may refer to:
Physical science
*Compression (physics), size reduction due to forces
*Compression member, a structural element such as a column
*Compressibility, susceptibility to compression
* Gas compression
*Compression ratio, of a ...
, or up to 600 images using a
JPEG compatible compression board that was offered later as an optional extra. An external
keyboard
Keyboard may refer to:
Text input
* Keyboard, part of a typewriter
* Computer keyboard
** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping
** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware
Music
* Musi ...
allowed entry of
captions and other
image information.
The Kodak Professional Digital Camera System was available with two different digital format backs. The DC3 color back used a custom color filter array layout. The DM3 monochrome back had no color filter array. A few DM3 backs were manufactured without IR filters.
Internally, It has a 3.5"
SCSI hard drive. It connects to a computer via an external SCSI interface. It appears as a non-disk SCSI device, and can be accessed by a
TWAIN
Twain may refer to:
People
* Mark Twain, pen name of American writer Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835–1910)
* Norman Twain (1930–2016), American film producer
* Shania Twain (born 1965), Canadian singer-songwriter
Places
* Twain, California, a ...
-based plugin for Photoshop 3.
There were many models of the DCS 100 with different buffers, monochrome, color, transmission versions with keyboard and modem.
The system was marketed at a retail price of $20000. A total of 987 units were sold.
See also
*
Kodak DCS
The Kodak Digital Camera System is a series of digital single-lens reflex cameras and digital camera backs that were released by Kodak in the 1990s and 2000s, and discontinued in 2005. They are all based on existing 35mm film SLRs from Nikon, Cano ...
References
External links
The DCS StoryNikonweb'sarticle on the DCS 100
from Photography in Malaysia
{{Eastman Kodak
Products introduced in 1991
Kodak DCS cameras