Christopher J Osborne

Classic digital

Small sensor cameras

Large sensor cameras

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You might well ask: is there really such a thing as a classic digital camera?

Digital cameras have been around for a long time now… the first digital camera aimed at consumers came out in 1990 (the Dycam Model 1, relaunched as the rather better known Logitech Fotoman in 1991), which is 35 years ago. Given the incredible speed of development, particularly in the early digital camera market, I'd say that's about 100 in normal camera years!

So yes, I think digital photography has been around long enough for "classic digital camera" to be a valid concept.

The first 10-15 years of the digital photography in particular represents a fascinating period in the development of camera technology. Camera manufacturers had a gay old time taking advantage of the fact that they where no longer subject to the near universal requirement to house the standard 35mm film canister. The result was an incredible proliferation of designs that threw all the old rules of camera design right out of the window. What dedicated camera collector wouldn't want to dip their toe in such colourful waters?! In the mid to late 2000s things settled down again and most camera manufacturers when back to making cameras that looked very much like film cameras of the 1990s, but weird and wonderful designs still pop up every now and again.

Unfortunately the days of being able to buy formerly expensive digicams (which I define as cameras with small sensors and fixed lenses) from the late 1990s and early 2000s for little more than pennies are now long gone. I bought a Nikon Coolpix 950 back in 2013 for a mere £10, when digicam prices were at their nadir. But it seems TikTokers and YouTubers (many of whom some weren't even born when the world was transitioning from film to digital photography) have discovered the joys of photography retro-tech. When a particular camera goes viral on these platforms, it sometimes seems like values can sky-rocket almost over night. These days you often see the Nikon Coolpix 950 going for anywhere from £50-100. So in that particular case I suppose I should be thanking TikTok and YouTube for turn my £10 impulse buy into an investment! But it does mean that collecting these early digicams is no longer a cheap business.

Interestingly digital SLRs from the early to mid naughties seem to be going through a similar low point, value wise, that compact digicams saw 10-15 years ago. It's not hard to find sophisticated cameras such as the Sony Alpha DSLR-A100 going for as little as £40, so if you want to experience such cameras I suggest doing so as soon as possible before they start gaining momentum on TikTok too!

You'll often see the term "film-like" being thrown around with wild abandon in discussions about these early digital cameras, particularly those with CCD sensors. I suspect this is mostly done by those with little experience of what shooting film was (and is) actually like, both in terms of the shooting experience and the results. But that doesn't mean these camera aren't genuinely different from their modern digital descendants, and I think that difference is worth celebrating! My collecting criteria is always very broad… anything I find historic, technically interesting or beautiful is fair game.