Sharp VL-DX10 (1997)

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A large 'camera history' site claims that the Sony RUVI is something special because it stored analog still images on a proprietary cartridge (not clever). The Sony RUVI was announced in 1998 and apparently doubled as a analog still video camera. Already outdated by the time of release it seems because the Sharp VL-DX10, introduced in 1997, did the same thing, only better. The VL-DX10 was demonstrated at the IFA 1997 in Berlin and recorded moving images on DV tapes and digital still images on internal flash memory.

The camera's design was not an accident because it also doubled as a fully fledged digital camera. The digital camera part could not only store 12-48 still images on it's internal 2MB flash memory but also had several interfaces to conveniently download the images. It featured an IrDA port and a common serial interface for personal computers. This was a unique thing back then and no other camcorder at that time had this. It also featured three compression levels for still images, 25x digital zoom, automatic white balance and digital image stabilization. There is no indication that this model was marketed in Japan, so apparently it only hit the US market.