Sony DSC-D700 (1998)

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The Sony DSC-D700 is a lesser known professional digital camera by Sony Corp. This camera was a high-end model intended for personal use. Announced 1998-09-07 and demonstrated at the World PC Expo '98. Marketed in Japan as the Cyber-Shot Pro. The camera was a true DSLR camera although the lens could not be removed. Thanks to the internal 3MB buffer memory, two frames per second in VGA mode could be recorded. The camera supported Sony's new Memory Stick, a wireless remote was included, it featured 5x optical zoom and manual aperture, focus and shutter speed settings. This was truly a sophisticated piece of machinery here but could alas not match the popularity of the Olympus C-2500L for instance. For instance the viewfinders did not exactly match the scene you were shooting, in some cases it was adviced to use a third party electronic viewfinder, like the Fuji LV-D3 for instance. So basically a good prosumer product but not at all perfect.

 

Initial production was set at 1,000 units per month. A few months later it's successor, the D770, was marketed, so I guess that only a few thousand of this model are floating around. Above you can see a very rare skeleton prototype version from the Expo show as well as the D700 and D770 next to each other.