While most analysts would agree that Kodak missed the boat on digital photography, that doesn't mean that Kodak wasn't a digital camera player right from the early days.

[IMG]http://dpnow.com/files/blog/DC290.JPG[/IMG]


[I]Kodak's 2.3 megapixel DC290 Zoom was large and a bit bulky, but it was very advanced for its time and took very good pictures.[/I]

I owe a an unexpected windfall thanks to a DC290 loaned to me by Kodak back at the beginning of 2000. I was on a press trip to Iceland as a guest of Ericsson who were promoting a tie-up with a local Internet company and we also had chess Grand Master Garry Kasparov with us to help stoke up interest. On the way to a chess tournament that was held in trenches dug in the snow on a glacier one of the all terrain vehicles carrying fellow journalists rolled into a ditch. Luckily, nobody was badly hurt, but I grabbed some shots with the DC290 and Ericsson's in-house magazine liked my pictures even though they had sent a pro along to cover the events. I earned $1000 for my troubles.

On the same trip one evening I slipped on some ice and dropped the DC290 - it bounced on the concrete, but apart from a scratch on the case the camera was fine. I suppose it should have been considering it sold for around �800 at the time.

I was also an editor on the english language show daily at the big CeBIT IT trade fair in Germany and we standardised on the Kodak DC260 for taking magazine shots, which it did brilliantly.

[IMG]http://dpnow.com/files/blog/dc4800.jpg[/IMG]
[I]Kodak's 4 megapixel DC4800 was one of the first digital compact cameras to feature an extra wide angle lens (28mm equivalence).[/I]

Later in the summer of 2000 Kodak introduced the DC4800. This was one of a very small number of cameras at the time that had a zoom lens that would go as wide as a 28mm wide angle. It also marked a departure from the wacky curved style of previous DC Kodaks, like the DC290. One my mates used one that I had on loan from Kodak and took a great slow shutter speed photo of my daughter on a swing - I will have to see if I can dig it out and post it here.

While Kodak was a serious player in the digital camera market, it tended to stick with higher-specification and higher-value cameras. Many of us will remember the Kodak DCS Pro 14n announced at Photokina in 2002. This was a 13.9 megapixel full frame DSLR based on the Nikon F80 film SLR. Unfortunately, the camera never really lived up to its specifications. It was power hungry, unreliable and the sensor was noisy. The use of Nikon lenses designed for film use didn't help matters concerning image quality and despite producing improved successor models, Kodak abandoned its professional DSLR ambitions after less than three years.

It was relatively late that Kodak addressed the volume market for consumer digital cameras and while you could depend on decent image quality from most Kodak digital cameras, they tended to be a bit too expensive and lacking style. Even with that great Kodak brand, the company was unable to compete with the likes of Canon and Nikon, and the emerging electronics brands like Panasonic and Sony.

While things have gone pear-shaped for Kodak, at least I have a lot of Kodak moments to savour over the years - thanks to Kodak digital cameras.