Shooting with Kodak DCS 520

Once the the camera was revived I took it for a real life test.

By modern standards it is bulky and heavy but well balanced. It works well with all  my Canon lenses, supports AF/IS functions, controls are very simple to navigate. Sensor is CCD type, 2 million pixels (1728 x 1152) 2:3 aspect ratio and 1.6x focal length multiplier. Considering that NASA is using 2 MP camera for mission to Mars specs are not bad at all.
The pictures are captured in a RAW (proprietary TIF) format which is fully supported by LR/PS. Converted to TIFF the file size is 6 MB.

I was shooting mostly with EF 70-200 1:4 L and 24-105 1:4 L lenses in aperture priority @ ISO 200 with -2/3 EV expo correction. All images were post-processed in LR to my liking.
Enjoy!

Reviving Kodak DCS 520C

Wikipedia: Kodak DCS
=================

Kodak DSC 520 (Canon D2000) was introduced in 1998 at MSRP around $16,500 (according to DigiCam History Dot Com). Today you can find it on eBay for about $250 or less. The camera is based on professional Canon EOS-1N body and Kodak 2 million pixel CCD. As per Phil Askeys' excellent review  (1999) it was "Most, Hugely, Very, Highly recommended. The best image quality, high resolution, colour and gray balance. A "reference camera". There were several versions produced including colour, monochrome and infrared (to be confirmed).  *Update: Kodak DCS 520 was produced as colour only (520C), no other variants.
When couple weeks ago I saw Kodak DCS 520C on eBay for $199 I just grabbed it:)
The package included camera body (in almost mint condition with less than 1500 actuation), battery and camera AC adapter.

I was extremely excited to find out how this, one of the first professional DSLR, performs and took it for a test. But...

Picture of the day (2012-08-26)

Man in the hat.

I am still working on my "non scientific" review of some old Kodak digital cameras. But I couldn't resist to publish this one ahead of time.

Kodak DCS 520C, Canon 70-200 1:4 L

This shot was taken just before dawn, at ISO 200.

Thanks,
vkphoto

Digital history (Kodak DCS 420 & 520)

I was always wondering how first digital images were looked like. Recently I had a chance to acquire  Kodak DCS 420 (circa 1994) and Kodak DCS 520 (circa 1998). Both are one of the first professional digital cameras. DCS 420 is using Nikon N90S camera body and DCS 520 is based on Canon EOS 1N. It took some time, efforts and additional parts to revive them and get some meaningful output results. Here it goes.