Hi, welcome to Tear down! Tuesday Now we all take for granted our digital SLR camera these days or we have done for quite a long time. But if you think back just a lousy 15 years ago, what was technology like back then? who was the major players? Could you get what we consider a modern digital? SLR Well check it out. 15 years ago, this was state-ofthe-art digital SLR technology. and no, it didn't come from Nikon or Canon.

although it says Nikon on the top there it actually is Kodak Kodak ruled the roof Back then they ruled the entire digital. SLR Market this is 1998 vintage. It is a DCS 315 model and this is pretty much the first digital SLR which you know wouldn't be out of place. Um in terms of features and functionality in uh, you know today's market, we're talking um, $5,000 for this little puppy back in 1998 mere 15 years ago? Um, nickon.

uh, top on it it uses used the Nickon uh Pronia 6i SLR camera body but it used a codak sensor and Kodak back and Kodak processing and essentially was, um, pretty much a Kodak camera. So this predates both Canon and Nickon digital Slrs. nickon didn't come out with their Um digital SLR the D1 until 1999 a year later which was all nickon and Canon didn't come out with their first one the D30 until 2000. So this one predates those.

Kodak ruled the market. But even one year from this to the nickon and then another year to the Canada and digital Slrs. Absolutely incredible. But this one was the first digital SLR on the market basically that had an LCD preview on the back.

Wow, you know you take that for granted these days. But back then that was a huge deal and it had Jpeg processing built in the first camera. LCD Jpeg processing. This sucker took uh three images per 11 seconds.

It took uh 2 seconds to process and store a single image and it took a whopping 25 seconds to background process the jpeg image and slow as a wet week. But back then this was state-ofthe-art $5,000 and it's not that long ago 1998. It just goes to show the rapid progression in digital SLR technology cuz even in the early 2000s. As I said, this thing was just old hat and clunky.

It's just, you know, useless. almost. It was out of date before it was even released pretty much, but um, that is the march of Technology in the digital camera market. So I thought it'd be interesting to take a look at.

Oh, and it had popup flash as well. Oh, big innovation. Use the standard nickon uh F Mount um lenses as well because it was a standard nickon body. APS um C APS size sensor in it.

so thought we'd check out what technology was like inside this thing. I Don't think it's going to be state-ofthe-art look at the size of it. Absolute Beast It used uh uh, standard ablea uh, rechargeable batteries in there and a PC card slot. There's actually two PC card slots in there.

This one actually has Um came with a PC uh card to compact flash adapter card which uh, people would have used uh uh later to use compact FL flash cards in it. It's got. Check this out. You won't get this in a modern camera.

a FireWire connector. Woohoo! It's all happening because they had to get the massive like 600 kilobyte size Jpeg images out of this thing as super fast as possible. So an Absolute Relic in terms of digital cameras, but I Thought it'd be interesting to take a look at the technology inside this thing and compare it hopefully in a future video to a modern digital. SLR Oh yeah, Retro Electronics Let's go see what's inside this puppy.

And here it is. Up close, you can clearly see the Uh delineation between the Nikon uh Pronia 6i camera body itself and the codak bottom with the Uh batteries and the uh compact flash and all the processing down in there. and of course, the Um Kodak back on this thing as well. So it was basically sort of like the Nickon Optics and mount and uh, all that uh, sort of stuff in the external body appearance.

but everything else was basically uh Kodak in this thing and um, yeah, there's not much uh to it. So on the top, we've got our shutter button. here. we've got a multi-function selector.

In fact, there's two of them. There's one on the front here as well. We've got a QR out button dedic ated main onoff button. We've got a self-timer button here and basic and advanced mode and that's pretty much um, it for the top controlers of course.

standard, uh, hot shoe. And then we've got our viewfinder as well. And on the back here we have our dedicated Auto exposure button and the menu select and record tag buttons for the tiny LCD. And let me switch this sucker on.

Although this camera is not actually working, the um LC CD down the bottom doesn't work, but this main one up here does actually work. Check it out there it is. Kodak Professional. There's no images in memory, but I can't uh select anything.

nothing uh seems to work if I press the shutter button. it sort of uh, disables the LCD but yeah, I can't really, uh, do anything else with that uh thing at all. Unfortunately, it's not working. but of course, that uh preview window.

it wouldn't of course have live output that didn't come until a long, long time later. and uh, so it was only uh used for the image preview of course. don't know what the resolution of that is, but it's absolutely, uh, tiny as you saw so you couldn't really get any decent detail on that. But of course, your main camera uh, functions were on this.

um lower. much lower power LCD uh which is still common today. You get the lower power LCD on the top so you don't have to waste battery driving the main screen at the back. it's got um, a backlight button and various up modes and settings for all that sort of stuff.

and a busy LED because if you switch it on hey, I'm busy for a second I Got to take time to power up so there you go. and on the bottom we have a standard Dart tripod mount and check this out. you don't see this anymore made in the USA by Eastman Kodak company. Can you believe it? Then on the front of this thing standard nickon? uh Mount Of course.

Then we've got uh, the autofocus and manual focus button and the release for the lens and that's uh, pretty much it. I Mean you know nothing else fancy whatsoever and of course it is based on the Uh Pronia 6i body. An earlier model was based on the Pronia 600i model and of course you can recharge it on the side there and extract your photos super quick using that fire wire connector. Unbelievable and sorry.

It's not exactly easy to get a good perfect view for through this viewfinder, but hopefully you can see there the Uh field of view through the viewfinder. The actual Optical view is much larger than the image sensor capture size, denoted by the thick black outer rectangle. There you can see the inner Uh markers and circles in there as well, but that's due to the mismatch between the Uh Kodak sensor used and sort of, you know, bodged onto um, one of the you know, an existing nickon. uh Optical um APS sensor SLR camera.

They weren't a complete perfect match and that's uh, something you take for granted these days. Of course that they're you know, they're fully designed. Um, the sensors all match the uh Optical uh parts of the body and you get that full frame through the viewfinder and stuff like that. But yeah, look at the uh.

huge amount of wasted space through the viewfinder there. And if you have a look at the battery, uh, comp department on this used six either standard Doublea's although it does recommend alkaline batteries May degrade camera performance nickel metal Hydro batteries are recommended, but uh, yeah, that's a rather, uh, neat little pack to just, uh, slide inside there. It's not terribly easy to get out and you can see the Um two uh PCM IIA uh card slots in there down in there I Mean, you know. Oh jeez, those things are a Blas On the past, they've gone the way of the dodo.

None of this SD card rubbish you get these days. You can see uh, some of the Optics down in there, the mirror and uh, reflecting up to the uh top eyepiece of course I can't make the Uh mirror flip. Unfortunately, it doesn't uh work in that respect yet. Maybe when we, uh, well, at least electronically I can probably manually flip it over once we take the thing apart.

but all those Optics and um uh stuff would have been uh standard in the Uh Pronia 6i SLR film uh camera of course and they're just and of course, instead of the image actually reflecting onto film, it reflects onto the Uh codec sensor which is uh, retrofitted or bodged into this thing. But what I can do is get in there and just manually flip up that mirror by hand there and you can see that we've got ourselves a we can't see the sensor. We've got ourselves a uh shutter in front of the sensor in there. If you're curious about the size, you know there it is uh compared to my hand I don't have a necessarily big hand so it was.

It was relatively uh, compact for its day and it doesn't weigh a huge amount even with the Uh battery pack. I mean it's got no lens on there? Of course that would have added, uh, significant weight to it. but uh, it. It certainly would have been a very usable camera in its day.

All right, let's take this thing apart and uh, see what we can see I'd expect expect uh, lots of uh Flex Well, I'd expect uh Flex PCB Technology Surface mount I believe it's got a power PC processor of uh, some description we'll no doubt find out what the exact one is in a minute and uh, so yeah. As as with all these cameras, yeah, I expect some Flex PCB maybe some uh, you know, standard, a big, uh standard, uh, rigid PCB on the back. you know, lots of, um, sort of not much system integration which you'd find these days. You know you wouldn't get like a, you know, a a digic.

you know, like a Canon digic. uh uh processor and you know, incredible processing performance. It'll be very, uh, very Bare Bones and uh, there we go. The bottom is popping off.

that is the bottom. We can start. Awesome! We can already start to see two two board construction there. one.

We've got a main board down the go bottom so we got our main rigid boards are standard: 1. uh, 6 mm. We got a secondary board up there of course for the uh PC uh card slots with the battery above that it's got It's had a mod done to it. mod 2 whatever that is I don't know, but uh, looks like we've got um, a programming or test interface down here because of course that doesn't uh made up with anything externally.

So that would have been a production, uh, firmware download or uh, production test system or something like that. So let's delve deeper. And of course, with such a large case with large flat surface area like this, I mean as a designer, that's a, uh, a dream because you can make use of just you know, a single large flat PCB like that? I mean but uh, today's um, more modern cameras of course are much more ergonomic and uh, Compact and stuff like that and they have to make extensive use of, you know, rigid Flex uh PCB technology and stuff like that. but yeah, they can obviously get away.

They' probably even got some slide rails on there or something for the Border Sted mountaining post. you know, not a huge Um big system integration issue from a PCB uh design point of view. And then we've got a third board up the top of course. uh for mounting the LCD on dual Um flat Flex cables there.

I'm not sure. not exactly sure why they need two of them. They obviously didn't have enough connections coming over. So is the Uh main driver on the main board down here and all the segment data for the LCD has to come via the Uh two ribbon cables.

perhaps? there a large, really large uh Phillips here holding in that main board. I mean hey, look at that. We got some Loctite on the screw there. so they've gone to a a bit of trouble to ensure that that's uh, not going to come out.

So hopefully I can pop this back plastic off and get access to the main board in there. Oh I Thought that was one large flat Flex across there. Ah, it's not so I think once we get those flat flexes off, we're pretty much uh, going to be able to lever off this top body here. and now we're getting down into the guts of it I can cease.

Lots of SMD goodness Of course it's going to be all SMD Jeez, it's not that old. it's uh, 1998 so let me work on this. I got it? I got it? Just required a bit of percussive Maintenance and uh got ourselves another float flex. No I was, uh, not.

There's no, uh, rigid Pcbs in here. We'll take a look at these boards. uh, more up close. that's actually uh, there's a lot of LCD driving goodness on there of course.

so it wasn't n uh uh, driving the Uh signals directly over all this flat Flex here. but Tada we are in like Flynn look at that and as I suspected so far there is no appearance of any custom uh, As6 or system integration. It's all off-the-shelf technology. We've got our cells our Motorola processor down here which you check out.

We've got some flash memory over here. We've got some uh, main system memory over here. We got some IDT uh devices. they were big back in the day.

We'll check those out. but really, you know? um, no big system integration all built using off the shelf components so far. But we do have this is a double-sided load of course, so we need to flip the board over. but um, it uh, wouldn't surprise me if we don't see anything uh of real note on the other side either.

And there's our main processor and yes, it is a Motorola Power PC It's actually the Uh, the first embedded version of the Power PC It's the Xpc 821 series and this is known as the Power Quii as in Uh Double C Qu IC Power Quick Architecture and had had uh Pcmcia building worked up to 50 MHz had various other peripheral uh functions builing as well. We can see a realtime Clock Crystal next to that 32 uh K Crystal there and it did a hell of a lot and that is responsible for I'm sure all of the process Grunt in this thing, so it'll be interesting to see what's tacked on the other side, but that would have, uh, pretty much handled everything. Of course it's virtually obsolete these days, but uh, back then this was, uh, pretty hot stuff. This was uh, the first integrated Um Embedded Power PC processor and the Power Quiick line of Uh processors is, uh, still going though.

but I Believe 82 The Uh 8823 is the Uh latest version I Don't think the 821 is a current part anymore, but uh yeah, they're still based on the same Uh Power PC 603 core so you can still get them and they are highly integrated and coupled to that, we have a uh Intel flash memory 28 F16 that's a a 1meg by 16bit uh flash that uh, most likely contains all the system firmware for the Motorola processor and coupled into the processor there the main working: uh D Ram 1 2 1 Meg by 16 part um could be and a couple of extra on the bottom side as well. We'll see. Check this out. We have ourselves a faired income bodge board.

It looks for all the world, like that is been retrofitted. So that's maybe what the mod sticker was or something like that. I Mean it's right near the uh power socket. so maybe, um, they had some issue with the uh uh Power on this thing.

um, you know, uh, charging it, doing, uh, doing whatever. So they've had to add on this extra bodge board. Unbelievable. Check it out.

Somebody's blowing the ass out of this device. It's a regulator or a transistor or something like that on this mod board and that's just had the Magic Smoke released from it so it's not going to work anymore. Um I Don't believe this is. uh, why the thing's not working I Mean clearly the Uh main process is working well enough to you know boot up and run and drive the menu and the LCD and everything else.

So obviously it's just part of the input. um DC input uh Jack So the battery uh, system seems to be working fine, but yeah, oopsie. And of course we have ourselves a date code here 49th week 98. So this was manufactured uh, probably in early 99 or thereabouts.

If we have a look down in the bottom side of the board here, we've got ourselves a IDT 70 V6 that's actually a 16k By8 dual Port SRAM So they're obviously doing some fast uh buffering inside this thing I Mean, it's not fast, like it's not large enough at 16k By8 to store like a full image or something like that, but they could be um, storing stuff from the image sensor and coupled into that is a Uh Lattice Semiconductor markv uh CPL d uh, obsolete now. but it's the LV 64-32 so they got some custom logic in there. looks like maybe uh, coupled into the um uh Jewel Port SRAM there. So, and they are coincidentally right near these connectors and we'll see where they go to in a minute, likely down to the sensor somewhere.

And then we have another IDT um dual Port SRAM here. but this one's only a tiny 512 uh by n uh bits. So absolutely H tiny. But that seems to be sort of bridging between the larger dual Port Ram over here and the Uh flash um interface.

oh sorry, the D Ram interface to the Uh microcontroller and down on this side looking what we have here, stuck under the Firewire connector by a bit of tape. If we can get that out, it looks like we have all of our Um flash uh circuitry for the Uh popup Flash not flash memory for our popup. Flash down this side of the unit and we've got ourselves a bigger ass 1 ohm power resistor under some uh, heat shrink there that was tucked under that fire wire connector and that all seems rather sort of all uh, bodged together compared to the Uh design of the rest of it. which is really is, uh, quite neat.

So it almost, uh, seems like it was tacked in there as an afterthought. Whether or not this is a Kodak thing or part of the original uh could be a part of the original nickon uh camera body and all that. And here's what it looks like when we flip out this board. it's got a big ass uh board to board in connector connecting down to the Uh PC card uh, slot down there as you can see, yeah, we do have some extra Dam on the bottom as I suspected.

looks like we've got a big regulator, but apart from that, just a whole bunch of uh uh, sort of. you know, passive bypass stuff and other miscellaneous. um, you know, basic. You know, some S4s and uh stuff on the back of this uh main board.

Here we got ourselves a a battery backup by the looks of it or is, yeah, that's a battery back up backup, not a uh, super cap so that's solded Directly onto the board. there's our LCD um interface our color LCD uh interface for the main preview um LCD which then pops up through those uh Flex uh cables there and uh, we can see of course the secondary board down in here which will uh, take out. that's got the fire wire connector on the side here plus the uh Pcmc uh dual slots on the top here. hence why they need a a big ass board to board interconnect here and then Tada there is our sensor board.

You can see straight away that uh, it looks like our sensor is soldered is on the other side. Well there it is. You can see the body. I Think you can see the see the back body of the well.

There's a metal frame in there uh, heat sink probably acting as a heat sink and a rigid mount for the Um image sensor which is going to be behind here. like this an Analog Devices part which we'll take a closer look at. but yeah, that's I was right. That was the data coming directly out from the sensor there.

In fact, that is just going to oh, lift out, there's our shutter Tada There it is and if we turn it over, we're going to get our first look at sensor porn. Oh look at that beautiful and check it out. This is hilarious. It literally is a nickon um film SLR look body Look You can see the original moldings in here where the film would have uh the roll of film would have gone into there.

Look at that, that's you know it's it serves no other purpose. It's clearly the original uh camera body so if you took apart that um nickon uh that model nickon camera the 6i then um yeah film in here goes across the back, it have a different backing uh plate on and of course it it have the electronic to uh drive all that stuff of course. but yeah there you go so it you can see how it is bodge technology, hybrid technology between when they you know they sort of couldn't go into the full resources of uh designing a complete digital camera from scratch it take them too long to get uh to Market so they just teamed up with Nick nickon and also they had Canon variants that used uh hybrid Canon cameras as well. There's various Uh models.

this is the Uh 300 uh series but there were 200 and 400 model series and all that sort of thing which used all variations of various nickon Andor Canon cameras. but you can see how it's just bodged in there. well you know it got the job done. And of course here is what everyone wants to see.

the sensor board and there it is. It's a you know classic uh ceramic uh dip uh package there and of course just solded directly into the back. There as a dip package right along there. They've got some alternate pads on there whea They're weather there for an alternate sensor because, um, it it might be the case actually because this model um is the 315.

There also is the Uh 330 which was a 3 mapel uh version of this camera and uh, so you know clearly it would use a different sensor so maybe that's what's going on there. They might have a different uh bracket for that. This is, uh, clearly obviously used for uh, heat sinking of this puppy would have probably got a uh, a little bit warm I suspect and it also I don't know if it helps with the rigid uh mounting of it. Anyway, it does allow sealing so they've uh, clearly sealed around here as well.

and if you take a look at the Uh camera body itself, you can see all the gunk sealed around the uh uh sh system in there so it looks like they have, uh, possibly shared that board between the two models there. uh, but that remains to be seen. We'd have to do a tear down of the 330 to actually see it. If anyone's got any uh photos of that, then uh, please let us know.

we'll take a look at some of the devices, but there's not much um on here at all. that's probably the ADC that will take a look at on the top side here. We've just got some Uh LT parts and some passives. So these linear technology Parts down here1 75 and the Uh1 129.

they're just low Dropout linear regulators and really nothing else. And on the top side here. Yes, this is the ADC but it's more than that. It is a complete CCD signal processor.

It's The Analog Devices Ad 9801 obsolete part. Now the data sheet for this thing will be linked down below, as will most of the Uh data sheets. Um, for uh, you know, items used in this tear down. So if you want to check out the data, check it out.

But this is a specific 10bit 18 Meg sample Um ADC Specifically designed to interface to CCD sensors. Wow, what do we got here? A CCD sensor? And there is our CCD sensor. Check it out in that ceramic dip package and uh, that is quite a work of art. Once again, a whopping 1.5 megapixels.

A state-ofthe-art at the time. Yes, the upgraded model had 3 megapixels and I think possibly if you watch this in HD you might be able to see the individual pixels in there cuz there's not a huge amount of them. Um, and this is it. Using my X 10 macro lens, there's another view down there I could get out my uh uh main microscope which does you know a couple of hundred Uh times, but I might leave that for a second video and near that, we have a Maxum Max 53 8bit quad Dack So basically Dack and an ADC on this board.

Plus we got one other chip directly under the sensor and that looks like a Texas Instruments Part It's uh, it's got 7 AA SX 2J and then PSN 1045 64 on it and I can't find any data on that at all and it's most likely just some sort of uh driver SL level uh translator for the uh CCD sensor. So yeah, there's nothing else really of uh note on the back of this board, you know, 74 HC 259 and some couple couple of linear stuff around here. regulator, some more memory uh, as we noted, bypass caps on the Uh BGA main uh Power PC uh processor up there, a couple of um more HC 74 HC series logic and not much else. and check it out.

there's actually a jumper there isolating the positive side of the battery there there. um, looks like we got a bit of uh uh, oxidization happening on that uh positive pin. but yeah, look and look at the red Gunk behind that. It looks like it's been glued down after it's been installed.

So my first glance I thought was right. the main power PC Motorola processor is controlling everything that's controlling the large uh, well, large for the time. uh, graphic, um color LCD here because look, there's no drivers on the back of that. Of course you know it's coming.

uh, directly in, and uh, it's You know there's no other image, uh, processing, custom as6 or anything on this at all. So that's why this clunker is so so slow. It's got to do the uh background jpeg uh processing. It's going to be running a real-time operating uh system of course, some sort of ARS So that it, uh, you know it can be doing all that background background processing and handle the Uh front panel interface and two the two LCDs and uh, you know, and and um, capturing all the image data and processing it, Handling all the uh, uh memory PC MCA Memory Card interface I Believe that's uh built in and it handles everything now.

the Pcmcia adapter board uh, looks like it's got uh, nothing on it. Uh, essentially, it looks like it goes directly from the socket. um, essentially, through to the uh, the main socket, through this board to board connector to the processor. but I can see some Stu stuff down underneath the socket there.

So I'm not sure how I can get that out with uh without desoldering everything. Anyway, it's not going to be that terribly interesting anyway. I Don't think. And of course, for the Firewire Um interface has its own dedicated chip as well.

The uh, uh, main Um processor isn't going to be able to handle that uh direct. so that's a Texas Instruments Tb1 Lv1 We got ourselves some copper shielding tape down here under the main board so they've obviously done that for uh Emi reasons. And there's our inverter board for the Uh Flash and there's our main storage cap down right down in there. Huge thing I can't work out the value.

it's got something Zero Microfarads and that down in there is the jack for the remote shutter release which is on the top side of the camera there. And as for the rear panel LCD board here. We've got a Hatachi H8 300 series family here now. uh, reneses of course they um, took over from Hitachi in that respect and just some interface chips here which drives all the Uh segments on the other side for the LCD and this is rather interesting.

They're using sort of uh, these three screws here with these, uh, retaining Clips to somehow sort of, uh, you know, join these flat Flex cables together so it looks like you know these come in like this and then join up to this flat Flex which then like a you know, some sort of press contact thing under there. You can see the circular contacts around there that then goes up to the top there which you know, presumably goes up to all the uh, top uh switches and stuff like that so there's nothing fancy um going on up in the top here. so I Don't actually expect to find any more uh, significant circuitry inside the uh top of the camera up here. Anyway, it's all pretty much done and dusted and here we go.

Taking the screws off there and you can see the contacts on those flat flexors there. Look at that and they're just all a press fit down together. that is an incredibly complicated arrangement. I don't I think I've seen a flat Flex Arrangement that complicated before.

check out the levels on that. There's no less than three flat flexors going over to there with all these contacts top and bottom like that and then that sandwiches in like that with these two flat flexes with contacts top and bottom and that all goes into there like that and sort of it. screws in place and and holds it down. Unbelievable! Here's the original Nickon Pronia 6i body going around there.

Of course it would have a different uh back on it if it was actually sold and manufactured as the Pronia 6 I film SLR uh Camera: You can see how Kodak have just taken the actual you know, the actual production body itself taken off the back panel. They've you know designed all these custom moldings and attachments to actually go into this thing. So they've you know, just gone to Nickon. Look, give us all your CAD files and uh, we'll figure out the rest And they went.

Yeah, no worries, just pay us whatever uh royalty and uh, then you know Kodak have just designed all of this um, add-on stuff to literally go around the existing body. So it really is a true hybrid sort of approach. And they've designed this uh, top part of the uh grip here as well which then integrates. So you know that's why you get the two different uh types of uh, plastic here because theyve um, you know, come from different uh design firms.

And by the way, um, you would have maybe noticed the uh Canon uh viewfinder eyepiece up here on a Nickon body on a Kodak essentially a Kodak digital camera. So me unbelievable. I'm not sure if that's like an aftermarket uh one or whether or not it actually came originally fitted with that Canon eyepiece. but jeez, you know I mean can you imagine anything with you know, co-branded uh, Nickon and Canon with anyone else these days? it just doesn't happen.

They uh, uh, you know, fiercely uh design and produce their own cameras. but this what was done back in the day Kodak were the world leaders for about 10 years before this in digital camera uh, digital camera technology. Uh, although this was the first one that actually had an LCD on the uh back Jpeg process in and uh, you know, so it was Innovative from that respect and Canon and Nickon just hadn't caught up. They didn't have the technology then, but as I said, then the first whole uh, wholly designed and manufactured Nickon uh, digital SLR camera only came out a year after this one, so they were clearly uh, you know, working on it.

They knew the market was going to be there. but uh, back in the day Kodak owned and drove everything cuz they had the digital processing technology. See, there's a lot of, uh, wasted space in this camera. You may not be able to see it, but there's you know there's absolutely nothing down in there I mean the battery pack.

you know, slides in and it only comes down to let me actually slide that in and show you where it comes from. So it Clips in there and there's a whole bunch of dead space. So they've actually just designed that grip there and they haven't integrated any Electronics You know in there at all. They've just gone for you.

Really? uh, simplistic, uh, bareboards? They you know ergonomics. Um, you know, not a huge well. ergonomics were a big deal cuz they designed the grip so that you could hold on to it like that. but uh, you know they certainly, um, didn't try and stuff any extra electronics in there.

It was just too hard. from a PCB and system design point of view when you got all that gorgeous, uh space from a you know, a PCB designer if they came to me and said, oh, look at all this, you know you've got a huge big flat space up there to build your board. oh luxury And of course we' got the other part of our uh film holder over here. There's a big empty uh cylinder down in there, all just doing nothing in this camera.

but of course it would have served a purpose along with uh here for the Pronia 6i which of course the film would have uh, you know, you plug your film in there and you for those who remember film cameras, you wind the film over there and put it in there and it winds on the other part of it as you progress it. and well, you know I mean they've obviously stripped out a lot of other stuff as well. There's lots of moldings in here, for example, which would have had uh, you know, Motors and various other uh things there would have been Electronics uh packed into the front of this thing in the Pronier 6i. It might actually be interesting if it could somehow get a Pronia 6i film camera and take it apart and actually compare it and see uh, what they've actually done compared to this um Kodak but Kodak have obviously ripped everything out.

We don't need anything, all we need is your shutter system and your uh, prism in there, your you know viewfinder and that's and your body and that's you know and your camera mount and that's uh, lens mount. sorry and that's pretty much it. We'll do the rest, thank you very much. So that's all she wrote on a barely 15-year-old Kodak professional DCS 315 camera I Hope you enjoyed that uh, retro tear down and is a, um, fascinating? uh, you know, under the hood? look at digital SLR technology just before it hit the mainstream I Mean this was essentially the first uh, affordable at $5,000 and uh, usable consumer digital SLR camera and uh, it was.

You know, a hybrid based on some old, you know, cobbled together BAS based on Uh Kodak's digital imaging technology which they've been developing for quite some time before this, and uh, traditional nickon film camera for the mounts and and the Optics and everything else. and well, there you go, It Done. It did the job uh, back in the day, but within a year it was surpassed by Uh Nikon with their first digital SLR camera completely inous. It's a more modern, uh, more compact one without all the large um, you know, battery and storage down the bottom.

It's a it's you know, a bit more Compact and then Canon after that with their first digital SLR Just a year after that and bang, then the market was just gone and Kodak were you know, practically, uh, out of business after that? In terms of the digital SLR Market which they totally pioneered and um I will link in down below: a very interesting history of there's a PDF document. Interesting history of the development of the Kodak Uh digit Digal camera system or DCS uh camera system goes through all the models and all the developments right back to the 70s and I Highly recommend you have a look at that link down below. it's some interesting history and uh by the way, if you got any more um info on all this stuff as always uh please post in the comments or jump on over to the Eev log. Forum If you want to discuss it all and if you like tear down Tuesday you know what to do.

Catch you next time. Um.