This will be a very long blog entry, and for most people it will certainly be of no interest. But I still want to tell it because it is about my great passion, photography and my life. In 1988 I was just 21 years old and traveled the world on my own for the first time. I flew to Mayaafushi in the Maldives and started taking photos. The camera at the time was a Minolta 7000 because it had autofocus, an innovation of the time. There were no dive computers back then and a Rolex Submariner was actually used for diving in 1988, all things that newly rich kids cannot imagine.
When I look at the still video cameras from 1988 today, I have to admit that I feel overwhelmed by the feeling of living on another planet. There must have been something like a parallel universe back then, because when I bought my Nikon F4E a year later, electronic photography was not far away for me, it simply didn't exist. It wasn't until 10 years later that I first read about digital photography. This is still so surreal to me today that I would like to write about it. And the Nikon QV-1000C is the epitome of these incredibly rare and exotic cameras from that time.
It wasn't because I wasn't interested in new releases on the market or future generations of cameras. On the contrary, because when I bought the Nikon F4E it was brand new and practically no one had this new model in 1989. But you may have to understand that the Nikon QV-1000C was not only extremely rare and not for sale, no , it also had a price that was astronomical for the time.
While a Nikon F4E including an MB-21 back cost the equivalent of around 1,985 USD in Germany in 1989, the Nikon QV-1000C cost 20,000 USD. So ten times what the current professional camera from Nikon cost. And what exactly did you get for that? A camera that took tiny, fuzzy black and white pictures that could only be used for a small newspaper picture ?! So it's no wonder that only selected press photographers were able to "enjoy" this strangest of all Nikons, because none of you will have paid for this camera yourself. It was only their agencies who paid for this astronomical amount. Although I also doubt that the camera was really sold. Rather, I think well-known news agencies that had always worked with Nikon were asked if they were interested and were given a "test camera".
At the end of the day it doesn't matter who paid how much for it and why. The fact remains that there is still a dispute today about whether this is a digital camera or just a video recorder that records magnetic still images. Here are the tech freaks among themselves. And whether the 2 "floppy disks recorded magnetically or digitally is irrelevant in my opinion, it is definitely a "digital" camera compared to my F4E.
Tiny QV-1000C Sensor (12 x 12mm) behind the Mirror
compared to the mirror housing from a Nikon D1
I can't say exactly what ultimately led me to collect old digital cameras, but as you can see, I have a few from that period. I already owned the Canon RC-701, the Konica KC-300, the Canon RC-470 and others from that year, but in order to be able to finance more and more rare cameras, many of my gems had to give way to other cameras. Sometimes this hurts, on the other hand, today it allows you to hold the unique Nikon QV-1000C personally in your hands for the first time. What an unbelievable moment when I unpacked it this morning and was able to examine it for the first time. This has not yet happened to many photographers in this world.
And it doesn't matter to me whether there are 180, 350 or 500 copies of this camera, because when you see how rarely it is offered internationally, you know immediately that you will probably never hold this camera in your hands. In contrast, all the other still video cameras released in 1988 are easy to obtain. Even the Konica and the Fujix can be bought cheaply at least twice a year in Japan on Yahoo Auctions.
At least as interesting as the technical details of this fascinating digital camera is the design process if you look at the QV next to the E2 and the D1. While the Nikon D1 has a classic Nikon DSLR body, the Nikon E2 still has clear similarities in design with the QV-1000C.
Some sources say this is not a digital camera as it uses floppy disks to store the picture. I disagree here. This first generation of digital cameras uses a CCD sensor, which converts the light signals into electrical information. In the end it doesn't matter whether the recording is digital or on a magnetic disc, because the incident light does not expose the film. For me, analog photography is defined by the fact that the light falling into the camera exposes a chemical film accordingly, which can then be viewed by the human eye without an intermediate step without an electronic device being required for reading. Only chemistry and light are needed for analog photography, but no electricity. Therefore this is definitely the first digital Nikon SLR camera and a milestone in camera history.
The big difference to all other cameras from this time is that this Nikon has no display, which is extremely unusual. Okay, there is a very tiny 0,43 inch x 0,19 inch LCD display that shows how many photos have already been taken, but that's not worth mentioning. If you look at the Fujix ES-20 from this year, for example, it has an LCD monitor on which all relevant parameters are displayed. The 2 years older Fujix ES-1 already had such an LCD monitor. And even the Canon RC-701, which Nikon certainly took as an opportunity to produce this Nikon QV-1000C at all, had an LCD monitor as early as 1986 that displayed the most important data. Nikon pursued a completely different, almost analogous concept here. There was the camera on which you could choose the shutter speed using the dial, just as you could on the Nikon F4, and a lens on which the aperture could be set. But almost nothing else could be adjusted. This fascinates me extremely.
They built the first digital camera and concentrated 100% on photography and left all possible and impossible technical gadgets to others. If you take a closer look at the QV-1000C body, there are only 5 setting options on this unusual camera.
1.) Shutter speed: only from 1/8 sec to 1/2000 sec
2.) Program selection: P, S, A and M for manual
3.) Exposure correction: +1.5 to - 1.5 EV
4.) Shutter speed: L, S, C and Ch (without a self-timer should be noted!)
5.) Image quality: STD, H1 and H2
The QV-1000C Body does not offer any more setting options. Even the aperture can only be adjusted on the lens itself.
But all of these insights don't really matter, because what counts in the end is the fascination of collecting. You can enjoy the collected objects, regardless of whether they are postage stamps, beer mats or cameras. You are proud of your collection
