In December 2000 I bought my first proper digital camera. It was an Olympus C3030Z. 3.1mp, 3x zoom. 4 AA batteries. At the time it was at the top end of the consumer camera market. You could get better – Kodak were making the first DSLRs – but they cost thousands of pounds.
I remember going to the local branch of Jessops and slipping on ice on the way. In putting my hand out to (unsuccessfully) stop myself falling, I cut it quite badly on the rough concrete of a wall. I was in the shop with a bloody tissue wrapped around my hand. I don’t remember how much I paid for the camera but for the next two years it slowly took over from film as I used it more and more. It was smaller than my film camera, it showed me what I had done with it straight away and once I’d paid for it, it cost nothing but batteries. I was no longer thinking in terms of 24 or 36 exposures (or with medium format, 12, 10 and 8). I didn’t need to bracket anymore as I could instantly check the results.
The downside, of course, was that the final image quality at the print stage wasn’t as good as film. But for what I was using it at the time, which was to illustrate a website, it was excellent. And when I did start printing images, I was able to get an A3 print from the best files, as long as I stuck to ISO 100 and used the Tiff file format.
The turning point was a trip to Scotland with a mate. With were both keen photographers and both had 35mm film cameras. But during the extended tour of the North West and the Western Isles in perfect photography weather, the C3030Z grew on me and I started to really appreciate the benefits of digital photography. Eventually, it replaced the 35mm SLR in my kitbag and nestled alongside my Mamiya 645 and lenses. I found that it was useful to test exposures before committing a medium format frame.
Inevitably, I decided to completely move to digital and I sold all my Pentax film gear, and the C3030Z, to buy a Fuji digital SLR. But that’s another story.
Last week, I spotted an Olympus C3030Z in the window of a local camera shop. It looked in excellent condition and yesterday, on a whim, I went and asked about it. It was old stock, so technically not even second hand. It came with the memory card (Smart Media – no longer manufactured) but the rest of the accessories were missing. I made an offer of £25, which was accepted and the camera was mine. They even threw in a set of batteries.
Like a kid with a new toy (I am a kid and it was a new toy, so no problem there) I was off taking snaps as soon as I left the camera shop. In some ways it was so familiar – the operation and settings menu came as second nature. In other ways, it was odd. I had forgotten how big it was, though this made it comfortable to use. I’d forgotten how big the Smart Media card was. Huge compared with today’s memory cards. It takes a long time to warm up after it’s been switched on, and the LCD screen is tiny. But it has an optical viewfinder with eyesight adjustment (which many modern cameras don’t have). I’d forgotten it has auto bracketing, which means I’ll be able to indulge in some HDR photography.
I’ve put some photos I took with my original C3030Z plus some taken with the ‘new’ one below. Now to find some long lost Smart Media cards…
franticsmurf 