Umax PhotoRun (1997)

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In 1997 this was by far the smallest camera available. The size of a pack of cigarettes but only half the thickness, shown at Comdex Fall '97. Extremely simple to operate and sported compact flash compatibility which meant that almost half the camera was occupied by the memory card drive. This was even before there were sensor-on-a-chip solutions! It was plain and simple the perfect point-and-shoot camera to have with you. Small enough to fit any pocket. Okay, the picture quality was not very good but this was 1997! People were satisfied with the results. Apparently Microdia built this camera. It was also a suprise that Mitsubishi marketed this camera totally out of the blue. I know they have marketed digital imaging products before and after but not a digital camera. Umax, Microdia and Mitsubishi were the only ones to market this one. There were two releases of this camera, one for notebooks with a PCMCIA adapter and one for PC's with a PC card reader.

Inside this camera was a Sanyo supplied CCD, model number LC9997M.

Above you can see an early prototype model of the Umax Photorun from the Computex Taipei '97, bearing almost the same labels as the Mitsubishi DJ-1000.