Kodak DC25 (1996)

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The Kodak DC25 was the legendary digital camera to first adapt the then new Compact Flash card. It was announced on 1996-09-17, right in time for the Photokina 1996 (coincedence?). Compared to the DC20 it was a whole different camera and not made by Chinon this time (the DC20 was). The DC25 breadboards were really made by Kodak now. The camera not only had an optical viewinder, built-in flash but also an LCD screen, everything the DC20 was lacking. The rest of the specs was pretty straight forward. On the downside there was the brick-like design that was not too appealing, the use of the more expensive and not-so-easy to get 3V CR123 batteries, no video output and of course the proprietary Kodak file format.

 

I always like it when cameras with memory cards have additional internal memory so you can test the camera on the spot without having to look for a memory card. The DC25 came with 2MB memory onboard which was pretty common at that time and nice to have too. The playback feature of taken images was also very convenient, it allowed you to check images on the spot, delete them or let you watch four images in one window. Since there was no Compact Flash card reader at that time, one could acquire an PCMCIA adapter, insert the flash card into it and insert it into the PCMCIA slot of your notebook, personal computer or MAC. This way images could be easily transferred. The software that came with the camera gave you plenty of possibilities for your pictures (e.g. Kai's PowerGoo). The camera also featured a 90-second power-off mode for saving batteries. The strobe also featured a fill-in mode so one could take pictures in dark environments.