NikonWeb.com

No less! It's item number 120458495355:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Kodak-DCS-760M-Mo ... 58495355QQ

Features a rare shot of the front of the camera (the logo is in monochrome). Starting bid of £3,030, which is $5,000. I surmise that it will do a round around the blogs - perhaps someone could ask the seller if he has a .TIF raw file he would share, just to see what the resolution is like. Will it sell? My modest bet is that it probably will.

I wonder if it's the same 760M mentioned elsewhere on this site. It only has 4166 actuations.

Do want! But not at that price.

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D1X, DCS PRO SLR/n, DCS 760, DCS 420c & Canon Pro70

Almost incredibly it did sell, for $5,600, and there were two bids! The winning bidder is either a wealthy chap, or he's sitting in front of his computer wondering what the hell kind of madness got into him. I sincerely hope he uses the camera and actually posts full-sized samples on the internet.

I will add at that this point that, according to the seller, the camera was indeed Pete Myers' old unit. Perhaps he bought it back for old times' sake.

I wonder if the success of this auction will prompt other people to start selling their DCS 760Ms and other Kodak monochrome models? There is at least one person in the world - the losing bidder for the auction in question - who is prepared to pay $5,000 for such a camera.

I was a little surprised to see it sell (at that price), and even more surprised that there were two bidders.

Congratulations to whoever bought it - now, let's see some photos!

UPDATE: For the record: Total Actuations = 4166.

Jarle

Hi,

I would have bid early on, if our business were normal. As it is, things are slow and so I could not think about buying yet another DSLR.

At one time, I really wanted one of these. I love B&W shooting, and the 760m shots are a lot like shooting Kodak Tech Pan film.

That said, I don't know how much I'd actually use it. I discovered Photoshop B&W conversion plug-ins that work pretty darned well with the shots from my 760c. I like the way I can use color filters after the fact, changing the colors and strengths at will. Plus, I can introduce film grain the does a good job mimicing everal choices of fast B&W film.

So, in the end, I'd probably reserve the usage of a 760m to those times when I wanted maximum resolution with minimum grain - like when I'd choose to use Tech Pan. That'd be quite a cash outlay for low usage.

Still, I could see having one of these or even one of the older 660m or even 460m units. Since Kodak made a lot more of those than they did the 760m, I'll probably still wind up with one someday.

Later!

Stan

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Amateur Photographer
Professional Electronics Development Engineer

By coincidence there is also a DCS 720X for sale, although the price is more reasonable (at £620), although at the same time it's not very reasonable. Based on the samples at Steve's Digicams the image quality is lovely at ISO 400 and still pretty good at ISO 1600, even by modern standards. It actually looks better than ISO 1600 from the Canon 1D, and NeatImage cleans up the ISO 6400 image of the cheerleaders fairly well although the end result looks a bit greeny-yellow. There was a chap in Israel selling a pair of 620Xs for just over £1,000. I have no idea if anybody bought them.

And there are 760Cs every so often, so for a brief period back there it was possible to amass a complete set of the DCS 700 family, for not much shy of £7000. Although if I had £7000 to spend on a camera I would put it towards a Leica M9 (which also has a Kodak sensor - hey!).

I bought a relatively cheap 720x in April. Probably saved quite a bit of money since it was sold "untested, as-is, don't know if it works" - but it works flawlessly (and looks very pretty, too). I hope to post some test photos and a short article soon.

I'm so thrilled about the M9! I'll spend a couple of days testing one later this week

Jarle

Tangentally, there's also a DCS 420M as an auction, starting at about £130, #110442610060. It's based on an N90s so presumably is relatively late production. The battery is flat, and so it is sold "as-is", although presumably it works. Either Kodak over-engineered the digital side of things, or there's simply not much to go wrong.

I'm not overly fussed about a monochrome DCS 420 - it's probably more useful in this day and age than the colour version, but still not very useful - but it'll be interesting to see how the bidding goes.

For the record: Seems like the sale of the 760m was successfully completed. The buyer (from the US) has now left his/her positive feedback.

Jarle

$5000??

Wow.

Kiu

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Lets talk Nikon

Has anyone here actually used this camera? I would like to know how the DA-30 AE Action Finder works with it? And I also want to know about the Type-M screen in conjunction with that finder.

EDIT: Oops! Actually, I meant the color version of this camera, not the monochrome. But that shouldn't matter about the viewfinder chosen though.

Xavian-Anderson Macpherson
Shingoshi

Hi,

Yes.

The F5 Kodak used is still an F5. The viewfinders and focusing screens work as they do on the film F5. The Kodak DSLR variants sport metal screen aperture masks *under* the glass screen, to set the field of view thru the finder to match that of the sensor in the particular model.

This means that the 6 MP units see more thru the finder than the 2 MP models. It matters not if the camera is a 6xx or a 7xx series, or color, or monochrome, of course.

I have all four viewfinders and about half of the focusing screens made for the F5 and have not found anything that doesn't work. I like to use the action finder at motorsports events, use the chimney finder to repro work, and use the waist-level sometimes at events.

The waist level is cute to use when I don't want folks to know I'm shooting them. Everyone knows you's shooting if you have the camera up to your face, even if you're not. No one thinks a camera hanging on the strap is being used, though!

Note, that the F5 screens that don't show the focus points on a film camera still don't on the digital variant. I figure this ought to be obvious, but I have had a couple folks in the past think that because the Kodak is digital, it magically will sport those focus point on any screen..... ??

This is yet another reason why I stick with the ancient hardware. There's nothing out there that I see that sports more versatility and capability than the venerable F5 - including the F6....

Oh, I'd love more modern electronics in the digital section, but I manage to get by with the old stuff.

Later!

Stan

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Amateur Photographer
Professional Electronics Development Engineer