My first digital camera was the Nikon Coolpix 880 in 2000. Before then – it was just me and the Canon Rebel G. Truth be told – had I known about it – I probably would have saved my pennies for the Canon PowerShot G1. But – I didn’t.
Fast forward to 2009 – and I haven’t shot a frame of film in something like 5 years. It’s been all DSLR’s, frames per second, and low light capability.
But not in 2000.
No, in 2000, it was shutter lag and 3MP – there was no RAW – only jpg and tiff. And we liked it that way! (OK – maybe not – I just didn’t know any better.)
The ISO range was 100, 200, and 400 – but 400 wasn’t really a good idea. And it took compact flash cards. I had a couple of them – my “big” card was a whopping 256MB.
The Nikon 880 was definitely small and easily fit in a jacket pocket. It shot movie clips – with no sound. Not sure why – it just didn’t.
The image quality – overall – was pretty good for digital P&S’s of the day. But it was always a little “hot” – the reds were typically really red.
The picture up top of Billy Lanham, local blues musician, was shot in downtown Albany (Oregon). If I remember correctly – the session was primarily in film – and this was a sort of “hey, what the heck – try this…”.
The tower is actually a vertical panorama (2 images) of the Clear Lake Butte fire lookout tower – rentable in winter within the Mt Hood National Forest. We had snow shoed in for a quick overnight trip. As for blending the images – if I recall – it was likely some free HP software available at the time.
And this last image of Isaac and Danielle was from my first crack at wedding / engagement photography – back in 2002.
In short – the 880 was my introduction to digital photography – and to Adobe Elements. Neither did I gain much proficiency in at the time. Somewhere along the way, though, I saw the Canon 10D – and was hooked. When the 20D was announced – I pre-ordered it the next day.
So – what happened to that little shooter? Well – it met Mr. Dremel one night in hopes that I could get the IR filter out and turn it into a dedicated IR camera. The lens never quite worked after that.
