Nikon CoolPix 100 (1996)

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Nikon's first digital camera. Demonstrated at the World PC EXPO and Windows World 1996. Announced by Nikon on 1996-09-02. Almost together with the multi-purpose digital camera CoolPix 300. The CoolPix 100 was a very slim and very easy to use digital camera. The lower part of the camera consisted of a PCMCIA card so it could be directly plugged into a IBM PC or notebook (PCMCIA typ II / III). Macintosh computers were not supported at first.

The camera had a built-in flash, auto exposure, self-timer and auto white balance. It did not support removable memory cards but had a built-in flash memory that could store up to 42 photos in normal mode. Another feature was the ability to take photos vertically with the camera and a 14cm macro function. Nikon usually puts an E before the model name internally, so the camera is called CoolPix E100. Not many know this but because the CoolPix 100 and 300 had no tripod mounts, Nikon quickly marketed a special tripod adapter for the CoolPix 300 called ET-1. It could be used for the CoolPix 100 as well.

All images © Nico van Dijk