RICOH RDC 300Z

by Gerry
(Canberra, Australia)

In 1998, I was working for a Government Department, coordinating a newsletter to be circulated to 'stakeholders'.

I was able to convince my Supervisor about the advantages of a digital camera for the task and went about researching cameras that were available at the time.

The RICOH RDC 300Z camera was new at the time, and highly featured for it's price (of around AUS$500 from memory).

Taking 640x480 images (350,000 pixels), the camera was quite suited to the purpose (small photos to accompany articles in a newsletter-type publication).

Once you got over standard print size (10" x 15"), images became noticeably pixelated. Amazing to consider all modern mobile phones with cameras are higher resolution!

The improvement to workflow (ie being able to instantly download, email or include images in documents) was fantastic.

It got well used around the office; though everyone came to me to find out how to use it and download images ;) .

Earlier this year, almost exactly 10 years later, I bought my first digital SLR (Canon 400D)!

Thanks for the post Gerry, and impressive that you saw the potential of digital photography so early on - well done!

Darrell.