Episode 91: Smells Like Cameras of the 90s

Like the saying goes, "better late than never", the Camerosity Podcast is back with Episode 91, which is dedicated to cameras of the 90s.  Which 90s you prefer, 1890s or 1990s, all 90s cameras are welcome!

Joining Anthony, Paul, Theo, Stephen, and Mike are returning callers, AJ Gentile, Ira Cohen, Miles Libak, Nick Marshall, Robert Rotoloni, and Will Pinkham and we cover a wide range of 1990s cameras and technologies.  Paul starts off with some stories about mini labs and how single use cameras became a big thing.  We dive into bridge cameras, including the Olympus IS-2 which Mike gave rave remarks to.

We discuss a large number of point and shoot cameras including premium models by Nikon and Konica, and ponder why the Olympus Stylus Epic is so popular today.  We talk about some dead end technologies from the 90s such as Minolta's ill fated Creative Expansion and Canon's obscure barcode scanner for the EOS 10S.

Not all technologies from the 1990s were failures though as the 1990s was the first decade of digital cameras.  Models like the floppy disc Sony Mavica and Nikon D1 were great cameras with a historical significance which helped prove that digital photography had arrived.

We round out the discussion with why Theo loves the Mamiya 7 so much and how it compares to the Mamiya 6, Robert shares some info on the development of the Nikon S3 2000 edition, and we have a thorough discussion on Kyocera's Contax SLRs.

As always, the topics we discuss on the Camerosity Podcast are influenced by you!  Please don’t feel like you have to be an expert on a specific type of camera, or have the level of knowledge on par with other people on the show.  We LOVE people who are into shooting or collecting cameras, no matter how long you’ve been doing it, so please don’t consider your knowledge level to be a prerequisite for joining!

The guys and I rarely know where each episode is going to go until it happens, so if you’d like to join us on a future episode, be sure to look out for our show announcements on our Camerosity Podcast Facebook page, the Camerosity Discord server, and right here on mikeeckman.com. We usually record every other Monday and announcements, along with the Zoom link are typically shared 2-3 days in advance.

For our next episode, we decided to explore the Italian camera industry as its not often discussed in camera collector circles.  While Germany, Japan, the Soviet Union, and the United States were well known as makers of fine cameras, a great number of really cool cameras were made in Italy such as the Rectaflex, Ducati Sogno, Gamma II, and other models by Bencini, Durst, and Ferrania.  Join us if you're a fan of cameras from this "boot shaped" country, and see if we can manage to fill an entire episode without getting distracted!  We will record Episode 92 on Monday, May 19th at 7pm Central Daylight Time and 8pm Eastern Daylight Time.

In This Episode

• Jeff and Gabe Can't Pronounce French Names / Alan Peres Sends Us Emails Now
• Sometimes Its Hard to Remember That We Like Cameras from the 1990s
• The 1990s Was the Decade of the MiniLab and Single Use Disposable Cameras
• Olympus Invested Heavily in Point and Shoots in the late 1980s
• In the 1990s, Olympus Gave Up on Traditional SLRs and Created the IS-Series
• Olympus IS-2 / In the 90s Zoom Reach was Over Valued By Novices
• Why Are the Olympus Stylus Epics so Expensive? / µ[mju:]-II
• Nikon F5 Improvements Over the F4 / Pau