The Nikon CoolPix 990 - The Future of Photography 20 Years Ago

My first good digital camera was HP Photosmart 912 I think, which really got me into photography. It just happened to be on bargain sale at Microcenter and bought 4 as gifts for family but later discover after using for a while that it runs a thing called Digita OS which included a scripting language for custom functions like precise time lapses and taking sequences with different exposure for HDR. It also could run native apps like MAME. But it also just took really amazing photos.

BunnyBrewster

Yea, it really was that early high density CCD that made it vulnerable. Mine still is 100% mechanically, optically, and electronicallyey.

Fran Blanche

Good memories of the Nikon CoolPix 990, but, not used for years, is somewhere in a cupboard, because throwing away would be a real sin. Made many beautiful pictures with it. But unfortunately also dead pixels at a given moment.

Oh, I _loved_ my 990 and I still have it. There was a brilliant period of early digital camera design where everyone was thinking "It doesn't HAVE to support two spools for exposed and unexposed film...let's experiment with new shapes and concepts."

Andy Ihnatko

Wonderfully nostalgic. I bought my first digital camera in, I think, 1998. It was an Olympus Camedia C2000, only 2M pixels but I found I could take better pictures of the Moon by hand holding the camera to a telescope eyepiece than with a film SLR rigidly fixed at the telescope's focal point.

David Peaker

Delightful. Time passes and I now need as much vibration reduction as I can get in a camera, and thinking that my next phone will be much more an easy to use phone.

Kendra Akin

My first digital camera was one that attached to the Palm Pilot that I got from Kodak. I think it was like .5 megapixels, 640x480 resolution. What I loved about the PalmPix, as it was called, is that you could beam photos to other Palm devices, and sync them to your computer. I sure do miss my Palm IIIc. The main thing that I miss was the graffiti handwriting that you would use to input text in to the device. It was awesome! I think that we all had those star tac phones. I would flip mine open, from time to time, and say, "Beam me up, there's no intelligent life here!" Yeah. I wonder where it all went too.

Rocco Rizzo

At one time we had cell phones with a tiny monochrome LCD display function. Then the screens started getting larger... Now we carry large screens which have a phone function among many others. They suck as phones, actually. The flip phones still have a role, IMHO. I still carry my ruggedized flip phone for making and receiving calls and text messages, while I've never even used the phone/text function on my huge Nexus. Until I die I will think of a phone as a device rather than an "app".

Thanks for the tour. What was the resolution of your first digital. Or was this it? You've inspired me to do a video of my first digital camera - an HP 640 x 480 with proprietary 2K memory cards. Probably still have it someplace... Eliminating the need for a film path allowed for very unique designs.