Olympus C-1400XL (1998)

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The Olympus C-1400XL was announced 1998-09-10 and demonstrated it at the Photokina '98. The camera was of course based on the C-1400L but still offered a lot of improvements like easier handling and more creative control. This means that it included new shooting functions, manual white balance control, flash exposure compensation, quick focus function and a flash synchronization socket for an external flash unit. In the sequence mode the camera could record up to five frames in 3.3 sec. The camera had a huge internal memory buffer that would allow the user to take up to 5 images in full resolution before the camera would process them. A new shooting function minimized the interval between shots while the battery saving mode minimized power consumption. Also the body color was slightly brighter than the C-1400L. The only negative thing was the missing video out port and the poor quality of the LCD screen.

 

Together with this model Olympus introduced the Camedia P-330 digital color printer. This came in handy because the user could select up to 30 frames for direct printing in the camera. The C-1400XL was offered for the same price as the C-1400L one year earlier. Although both cameras did not have interchangeable lenses, they still were DSLRs. In the US the camera was called D-620L.

 

Little fun fact here, the guy who was responsible for developing the C-1400XL was Hiroyuki Watanabe, Group Chief Senior Engineer at Olympus. Above you can see a pic of a partially dismantled C-1400XL as well as an official sample pic from Olympus.