Philips ESP60 (1998)

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The Philips ESP60 was marketed in 1998 along with the ESP50 and ESP80. Philips never made digital cameras of their own but it is unclear as to who built the ESP60 for them. The ESP80 was made by Ricoh. Both the ESP50 and ESP60 were VGA cameras and their only difference was the content of the package. The ESP50 came with a 2MB card and the ESP60 with a 4MB card and a credit-card sized IR remote control unit. The camera had an optical viewfinder, built-in flash, built-in slide show feature, power save mode and LCD screen. Unknown to most, the camera had an outstanding macro range of only 1cm! This could not even achieved by the more expensive cameras of that time. It was also one of the few digital cameras to both sport NTSC and PAL video output.  The ESP50 and ESP60 both were outfitted with a so-called OBS mode, this would allow the user to use the camera as surveillance camera because it would deliver a constant live image from wherever it was placed on a TV screen.

Pictures kindly provided by the The Public Group, LLC.