Hi,
I began with Kodak Digital when I was at IBM in 1983. Or was it 1984? No matter.
We wanted a vision system on circuit board production lines. Take a shot of a perfect board and store it. Then, shoot every board that came down the line and compare it. Not so perfect boards could be shunted to a repair line. This would be better than technicians using the Mark-I Eyeball.
Kodak had the sensors. They came into our conference room at IBM toting a Canon F1 camera and a tin box hooked to it via a cable. Guess what that did? Yep. It was a CCD demonstrator. They sold that to the DoD as well.
Sold us, for sure. We bought our first six sensors - that being the number needed to form a mosaic shot of the size board we first wanted to use this newfangled vision system for. I had the job of making the cameras using those CCDs.
It worked. And, it worked well. Far better than we had planned on. Used some code written on a mainframe to put it all together.
Later, Kodak wanted to make this idea a commercial unit, rather than for the DoD only. By then, they were using a Nikon F3 and they could use some help from IBM with a better storage unit. That led us to make a smaller hard drive. Then Kodak downsized the camera such that the storage unit was integrated. And IBM developed the microdrive. I always saw the irony there since IBMs storage division was in Rochester MN and Kodak was in Rochester NY. :)
By the time 2000 rolled around, I was with Ericsson and Kodak had made about a zillion different models of DCS. Just look at the collection Marc has. All sorts of bodies, resolutions, visible light, UV, IR, color, monochrome and probably more than that. Even a digital Nikonos.
And, I ran into Phil Askey at a racetrack and wound up joining his DPreview and ran smack dab into all these Kodak guys I hadn't heard from in over a decade. All gone somewhere else these days. Haven't heard from any of them in many years now.
I still have a DCS 520c hanging on a Leica microscope and a DCS 760c on a copy stand with several macro lenses. These are used to document failed electronics, mostly circuit boards. And there I am., Right back to taking digital images of circuit boards. With Kodak sensors.
My normal use cameras these days are a Nikon Df and a Pentax 645D medium format. 16 MP and 40 MP. And the 645D? A Kodak CCD. ;)
There was a time, until I got the DF, where I also had a DCS 660m and a DCS 720x and a Pro Back Plus (16 MP) on a Contax 645 - along side the 520c and 760c. But, the 16MP Df replaced all of them for normal use. Then, I needed more resolution for this Lighthouse series I have been doing and so the 645D was a low cost way to do that. With a Kodak CCD once again.
Stan
