Me And Photography (Part 6) - Going Digital: The Early Days

In the late 1980s and early 90s videofilm was a shooting star medium. Our own children's activities and frequent travelling called for motion pictures. Even in one of my professions - language teaching - video started to be used. Interest in stills-photography declined for me at this time, partly dragged down by an awareness that I had filled every available drawer with slides hardly ever looked at.
Then came the year 1996. For some months I had been on a new job at a Senior Secondary School. A colleague and I discussed how to proceed with our shared class in Graphic Communications. We also talked about a huge student-project looming on the horizon, a project that had already been approved, having secured external support, partners and – best of all – funding.
Our school had a number of classrooms with Apple computers and an impressive Canon Color Copier in the A3 format. The machine was connected to our internal network through a RIP unit (= Raster Image Processor, not ”rest in peace”, but sometimes we wondered...).
The primary target medium for Graphic Communications course was paper. A secondary output was the computer screen and digital projectors, mainly to show PowerPoint presentations. The internet was already there, but not really as an output target for us.
Guidelines for our coursework stipulated - amongst other requirements – design exercises with brochures, posters, stickers, folders, leaflets etc. It so happened that the externally funded project involved many of the Graphics students. The need for info-, docu- and PR-material on paper was real for all of us.

However, the swift insertion of photographs into material for in-house color printing was a bit of a weak spot at the time. I had the traditional photo-technique down-pat, but this involved many laborious stages even for black and white. To be sure, the ongoing evolution of cameras able to store image information in other ways than on celluloid film had been much reported on and discussed in magazines. But not too many people had a clear idea on whether a toy of minor interest was in the making or if the race was on towards something really big. Around 1990 I had actually handled a filmless camera of sorts, a Canon Still Video camera. It stored still images on a removable disc, somewhat reminiscent of the disc in the audio disc players that were trying to take over from the Walkman type cassette players. The images were stored in an analogue way, but one got an inkling of this being a step towards something important. The images could be printed out, but the normal video resolution wasn't too impressive. The images worked well though for insertion of stills in a videofilm.

Apple Quicktake camera

But now it was 1996 and my colleague had seen and handled a filmless camera of a different type at a recent fair. This camera was an Apple QuickTake, sporting a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels. Well, that didn't instill much hope of good image quality, but as yet we hadn't seen any results. The camera used two regular AA batteries and took 8 pictures on an internal memory (1Mb!). And it wasn't cheap, 750:-$ was a shocking price. But the school ordered two. One for the office.
Photographically the QuickTake was about at the level of a Box-camera: fixed-focus, a small little optical viewfinder, no zoom, no ISO adjustment. No LCD showed you an image before or after. But all this was overshadowed by the big innovation of the day: Instant access to your image within the rapidly developing digital world, especially what was called DTP, desk-top publishing.
The Apple QuickTake was mainly an introduction camera for us and our students, who naturally had great fun. By the time we got more serious in our ambitions, new cameras entered the school at a fast pace.

Actual Apple Quicktake image, original size

1997 came our first successor to the QuickTake, the Kodak DC40, looking very much like the Apple cam. Featurewise these cameras were similar. That was no surprise: the Apple QuickTake was actually manufactured by Kodak as well. Kodak reportedly did not want to introduce it, fearing it could undercut sales of their traditional line of photo-products. The DC40's only real advantage over the Apple camera was its higher resolution of 756 x 504 pixels. Now, that doesn't sound like a giant leap forward, but the visual impression of the image was a noticable improvement nonetheless. The school's web activity had begun by this time, the demand for pictures to be published swiftly and easily was rising steeply. The resolution was actually sufficient for this purpose, given the fact that the resolution of computer screens at this time was not much higher. We had two of these cameras and they saw a lot of action.

Kodak DC40

However, one extremely irritating property of the DC40 was the fact that it could only be operated on AA alkaline batteries, four were needed. Rechargeables would not work. And even with fresh alkalines it took only a dozen or so pictures before the camera refused to go on, demanding a new set of batteries. We soon figured that digital photography was designed as a consumer rip-off. The batteries that were deemed exhausted by the camera showed well over two thirds of its capacity intact and would still drive a transistor radio for weeks on end. Needless to say that this state of affairs severely limited the usefulness of this camera.

Close to our Graphics classrooms were the darkrooms and other facilties used by the Photography courses. Neither Photography teachers nor their students showed any enthusiasm for digital cameras. Quite understandably so. Digital was still regarded as a curiousity, loosing out to traditional technique on all counts, except for their swiftness in a publishing chain. During the early digital years in the late 90s, I myself pursued a twin approach to photography. I took all pictures needing prime image quality with traditional single lens reflex cameras. We used the various new digital cameras only for quick publishing, especially for the web. And for fun, of course. It was after all a startling novelty.

Actual image taken with Kodak DC40, original size

 

 

 

 

An interesting hybrid-procedure also established itself in the school. Kodak had developed an advanced scanning process for 35 mm slides. The results were delivered on the so called Kodak Photo CD. Scanned slides were burned on a CD in a number of different resolutions. The proprietary  Kodak CD was rewritable, so one could always turn it in for more slide scans to be placed on it. The quality was top-notch, even by today's standards. But it came at a price. Each slide scan set our meagre school budget back by about 12 Dollars. For certain purposes though this expense was well justified since the possibilities for state of the art in-house productions surpassed everything schools hitherto had been able to accomplish.

An example for this was the participation of my Graphics class in an exhibition at the UN headquarters in New York. The exhibition was to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Declaration Of Human Rights and thus called for graphic or image material on the theme of  Human Rights. You can read more about this memorable project by going to another item on this blog.