Kodak DCS420 - genesis

Many folks in our industry talk of a digital revolution that began in about 1996. The first production digital cameras for the professional were introduced by Kodak in 1994. These cameras were horrendous in quality but groundbreaking for the industry. The Kodak DCS420 digital camera was the one that started it all.

To this day, I still own serial number 8 of this history making digital camera. Its Nikon N90 body was incorporated into the Kodak digital design and it was a beast. It also required a special lens filter to be used called a “hot mirror” filter. This filter had a slight green reflection to it that filtered harmful light away from the CCD chip. Wow, those days seem so long ago and such a distant memory. I recall one day, I was talking to a camera engineer with Kodak named Roger Strong and we were working to get my DCS420 camera to take a good picture. He had me attach 5 (yes 5) hot mirror filters on my 28-70 mm lens to try to reduce the magenta cast on the image. It helped, but didn’t fix the camera. Kodak at the time was trying to manufacturer their cameras with an acceptable tolerance level for color. Each time I purchased a DCS420 camera the better the color got.

It wasn’t until 1996, that the DCS420 really came into its own and began introducing event and sports photographers to the world of digital. This camera kicked off the industry revolution that today produces digital cameras that exceed the quality of film and produce products that we could only dream of just 15 years ago. Those were the days and I wouldn’t trade them for anything.