The Epson PhotoPC: A Pioneer in Digital Cameras

The Epson PhotoPC was the first digital camera from Epson, and its introduction marked a significant milestone in the company's history. Initially released at the end of 1995, it was marketed throughout 1996 with a suggested retail price of $499 US dollars. This made it not only Epson's first digital camera but also the first color digital camera under $500 on the consumer market.

The development of the Epson PhotoPC is an interesting story. It was actually created by Sanyo, which later licensed the technology to different companies, including Epson and Sierra Imaging, which released it under the SD640 label. However, this article will focus on the Epson version of the camera, which has become a rare collector's item.

The narrator's personal experience with the Epson PhotoPC began when they stumbled upon one at a Goodwill store. The camera's condition was unknown, and its origins were intriguing. The narrator recalls that they had not given much thought to digital cameras before, but the novelty of the technology sparked their interest. It was likely this curiosity that led to the widespread adoption of digital cameras, as the fact that you could take pictures and have them go directly into your computer was a revolutionary concept at the time.

The release of digital cameras coincided with the growing popularity of inkjet printers from Epson. The company saw an opportunity to sell digital cameras alongside their color inkjet printer, which was priced at $449. This strategic move helped Epson tap into the emerging market for digital photography. At that time, digital cameras were indeed new and exciting, offering a convenient alternative to traditional film-based cameras.

The narrator's first encounter with digital cameras took place when they were just 10 years old. Displayed prominently at Best Buy stores, these early digital cameras left a lasting impression. The ability to take pictures and have them processed directly into the computer was a game-changer for many people. For the narrator, this technology was both fascinating and intimidating.

In conclusion, the Epson PhotoPC was an innovative product that marked Epson's entry into the digital camera market. Its release in 1995 coincided with the growing popularity of inkjet printers and the emergence of digital photography as a consumer-friendly option. As a collector's item, the Epson PhotoPC is a testament to the company's willingness to experiment with new technologies and push the boundaries of what was possible.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enGreetings and welcome to an LGR thing!And this is the Epson PhotoPC, firstintroduced a the tail end of 1995 andmarketed into and throughout 1996 at asuggested retail price of $499 US dollars.Making it not only the first digitalcamera from Epson but the first colordigital camera under $500 on theconsumer market.Intriguingly this was actually developedby Sanyo and then just licensed outto different companies, Epson being oneof them. And another being Sierra Imagingreleasing it under the SD640. But yeah thisEpson is the one that we'll be taking alook at throughout this video because Ifound it at a Goodwill a while back andfound it instantly intriguing. I probablyjust haven't paid much attention but youknow, whatever: I think Epson, I thinkprinters. And you know, that was maybe why they wanted to get into this in thefirst place. I mean why not sell you adigital camera to go along with yourEpson printer! And yeah they wereadvertising them side by side with theircolor inkjet printer selling for $449.And yeah, digital cameras, they were justsuper new and exciting and crazy at thetime. The fact that you could takepictures and have them go directly intoyour computer -- you don't have to like, getthem developed and scanned and whateverelse, it was just amazing to me. I waslike 10 years old when these things wewere coming onto the market, and firsttime I saw them displayed at like a BestBuy I was just like \"whoa how does thateven work?\" As a result these earlierdigital cameras and intrigue the crap outof me so let's take a look at this one.After all it's \"the quick easy way tobring pictures into your computer!\" Yes*into* your computer.*Zoolander clip plays*And the system requirements were pretty modest: just needed a 486 with Windows 3.1 or higherand the most standard of standards theRS-232C serial interface. And man thismid-90s digital camera marketing: \"justimagine what you can do!\" Seriously, you'vegot to imagine it because this is newterritory for most people. \"It's as easyas 1, 2, 3, 4, 5\" but like, whatdo you do with a digital camera?Well they provide a handy list of ideason the side of the box: letters,presentations, reports, proposals, flyers,invitations,desktop and internet publishing, holy nuts.For half a grand I mean, that's a bargain!And check out these specs: 24-bit colorimages, 640x480 or 320x240resolution, and it could hold up to 16 or32 of those images, respectively. And yesthis has its own internal memory, onemegabyte of storage. As you can see onthe other side of the box here, this isthe one megabyte memory version. Thiscould actually be expanded with memorymodules up to 4 megabytes, and we'll getto that in a little bit, but yea. Let'sgo ahead and unbox the box itself andsee what we get inside here, which startsout with a nice little plastic bag fullof paper goodies. And of course thecamera and the cable, and in my case somebatteries. Back to the plastic baggiethough and inside of that you get alittle strap that has seemingly neverbeen installed on this camera. And Idon't really care for straps anyway soit's gonna stay unattached. You also geta rather substantial instruction manualhere covering everything from how to setit up, to how to take friggin pictures, to best practices for this particulartype of camera. Because it mean, it's anearly digital camera, it's mightyrestrictive in terms of what you can andcan't do in lighting and shootingconditions and all that kind of stuff.Next up is a packet of the Photo PCsoftware called Easy Photo. And thiscomes on two floppy disks to get theactual camera connected andcommunicating with your computer, as wellas some software to quote-unquote\"develop\" your pictures. And we'll see thatmore in a little bit. There's also thislittle card in here reminding you toremove the plastic cling film, yeah don'tforget to give yourself that pleasure!And there's an important reminder hereabout serial baud rate among otherthings. And yeah that speed inparticular, you do want it to be as fastas possible because serial ain't quick!There's also this fold-out thingy hereshowing all of the accessories that theyhad provided by Tiffin. And I mean yeah look they'vegot filters and cleaning kits and UVprotectors and conversion lenses andtripods and cases and holy crap! Allsorts of stuff available for its 37millimeter lens. And then there's thispiece of paper which I just love. This isthe original receipt from the personthat bought it before me back in the day.Apparently on December 13th, 1997 for $250, mm half price. And theygot it from America Online *laughs* Why? I don'tremember them selling digital camerasbut maybe they had some sort ofpromotion going on. I mean apparentlythey did. And enough of the paperwork let'sget on to some of this hardware stuff. Soyou've got the serial cable rightthere, it's just a standard nine pinserial connector and in this case itcame with these old batteries. Yeah theyare long dead but it just amused me tosee these again. I remember those littletesters on there that you had to pressridiculously hard to show the batterycapacity. And finally here is the PhotoPC camera itself. It's a little bitbigger than like a standard 35millimeter point-and-shoot of the time,just a little bit wider. And the on/offswitch is down here in the bottom rightwhich will slide the cover on and off ofthe lens. And it is indeed a fixed lensyou can't do any zooming or anything likethat.Autofocus from two feet to infinity withan ISO equivalent to 130 and an f-stop of5.6, not terribly great stuff.But you know it works. Along the top hereis where you have the so-called \"easytouch LCD,\" and no it's not a touchscreen,just silly marketing. And on the sidehere you have this little door. Thisslides down to show the serialconnection as well as somewhere to plugin the optional power adapter. Along thebottom yeah, it's pretty much what you'dexpect. Just a place to screw in a tripodand some model and product informationcodes and numbers and things. And alongthe back you get a viewfinder and aplace for your thumb and that's it!There's no screen to look at what you'reshooting on this thing. And then there'sthis little rubbery deal on the sidewhich completely comes off in a coupleof different ways. The first way is toget to the battery compartment andthat's why it has such a wide area hereon the front: to fit four AAbatteries. And then another compartmentopens up and here is where it gets alittle interesting. This is the spot forthe expandable memory. And this is flashmemory, in this case one megabyte ispermanently installed in there, andthere's a slot for another stick offlash memory, from two megabytes to fourmegabytes. Epson was really pushing thisat one point. They called itthe PhotoSpan memory module. The thingis this was ridiculously expensive! Fromwhat I can gather the two megabytemodule was like $300 and then the fourmegabyte one was around $600. Well I don'tknow about you but I'm more ready to trythis thing out. So you power it on rightthere and the little LCD at the topturns on. And this basic little displayit's like an inch across and it justtells you a few different things, withthese buttons that can be used to switchbetween \"high res\" quote-unquote and lowres, and then a button for the self timer.This right here just lights up a littlered light in the front of the camera tolet you know that it's about to take apicture. There's another button here toswitch between the flash modes. Thatwould be the flash in the front of thecamera, not the memory. And then there's abutton to delete the last taken picture.That's right, only the most recentpicture. If you want to do anything morethan that you've got to plug it into acomputer. And of course you have theshutter right there so you just pressthat down to take a picture, and ittakes a picture. And notice that nicelittle gold reflective bit on the frontof the viewfinder there, you can actuallysee your reflection quite well and takeselfies that way. And yeah once you takea picture it will show the number ofpictures currently stored on there. Andas you can see, pressing it to take apicture and then the time it takes toactually store it to the flash memory isa little substantial, especially on the\"high-res\" 640x480 mode. And yeah it really is just that simple.Point and shoot. The viewfinder itselfeven doesn't give you much of anyinformation at all. There's norange-finding. It just gives you thoselittle brackets to kind of give you anidea of what is going to be in frame foryour picture and that's all you get. Thenwhen you're ready to get your picturesonto the PC, turn it off, flip thatlittle thingy down, and plug in theserial cable and then you're ready to goand plug it into your COM port on yourPC. Yeah gotta love that traditional serialbus. This is the days before theuniversal serial bus, so no USB when thisthing launched. Most cameras were usingplain old serial. Once you get the PhotoPC software installed you can go intothis camera controls settings programhere and well. Here's where you do allthe other stuff that you can't actuallydo on the camera itself, like use it asthe world's slowest and crappiest webcam!Change the auto shutoff time, the shutterspeed, and the date and time of theactual pictures you're taking, as well asthe connection speed for your serialport. And yeah the Photo PC softwareitself is also very simple, you justclick the button and as long aseverything is configured correctly itwill grab the photos from the flashmemory of the camera and then very, veryslowly copy each one of them over toyour hard disk. And there you go! You'refree to do whatever you want to do withyour brand-new digital photos, ooh.What are you gonna do with all those nonmegapixels?! Anything you want, includingsome basic brightness and colorcorrection and even spot removal toolsin this program. And yeah I've had a lotof fun just taking this around andshooting photos. I especially enjoy usingolder digital cameras like this to takephotos of things and environments whereyou can't really tell when the photo wastaken. Finding things from the midnineties, the eighties or whatever, reallygives a convincing effect when you takephotos with this thing. There's somethingabout its particular noisy low reswashed-out style that I quite enjoy. Andthe fact that this one in particularactually does have some pretty decentcolor reproduction for a digital cameraof this time period? Ah you know it's neat.Not bad Epson and Sanyo from the mid 90s,not bad at all. And that's pretty much it for the EpsonPhotoPC. I hope you enjoyed this lookback at one of these earlier digitalcameras. It's certainly not the oldestthing around, heck it's not even theoldest digital camera that I have. Butit's one that I find really easy to useand kind of fascinating with itsbuilt-in flash memory. There were manymore PhotoPCs later on, I haven't usedany of those so I don't know. I'massuming they only got better orwhatever, but this one in particularbeing the first of its kind stands outto me because of that. And I hope thatyou enjoyed watching and if you did thenperhaps you'd like to stick around andsee what else is coming along here onLGR. There are new videos every Mondayand Friday on all kinds of topics: retrotech and software and gaming related. Andwho knows what else because I'm alwaystrying to evolve what the heck I'm evendoing here because I don't know. Withthat being said as always thank you verymuch for watching!\n"