NikonWeb.com

One of the monochrome DCS-200s has popped up on eBay, minus a few bits:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/KODAK-DCS-200-MI- ... 0737548126

There's a sticker with BEHC on the front, which makes me wonder what the British Eagle Hawking Club needed with a monochrome camera. It's a 200MI, which means that it's monochrome and uses an internal hard drive (at first I thought it might be an infrared camera) and I surmise that it would be tricky to get hold of (a) the batteries (although I think it used standard AAs) (b) a working, compatible hard drive and (c) to then interface this with a computer and download the images which would in any case (a) be 1.5mp and (b) shot with a 2.6x focal length multiplier. There was a colour filter wheel, wasn't there? I think it's mentioned in another post. You took three images one at a time, with the camera on a tripod, using different filters, and by god it must have been tedious work.

Launch price of $9,495, according to an article in MacWeek in November 1992 - $500 cheaper than the colour version - although I suspect the camera wasn't really launched so much as it appeared. Perhaps, given the price, it was intended as a budget alternative for newspapers that hadn't gone full-colour rather than a rare special edition.

Hi,

Yes, there was a color wheel. Not for the 200, as I recall, but for the 460 Monochrome. Yeah, that had to be a joy to use! Not good for shooting the Indy 500, for sure! A glacier, maybe, but then glaciers are white and so monochrome is fine as-is!

I can't recall exactly which cell those packs used. Not AA, one of the other A-series cells, 2/3-AF comes to mind and is pretty common. I do clearly recall that they used a common one though, so any of the battery places will have the correct cells. You simply measure length and diameter and consult the A-series cell chart for the correct one.

At one time, I was looking hard for a 660M, but then I found this nifty mono conversion plug-in for Photoshop that takes the color image from my 760C and does a good enough job that I no longer look too hard for a 660M. A true mono would be a bit better, but the plug-in lets me play with filtering on the PC, and I like that.

Still, if one is collecting the early stuff, then one really does need a mono model of some sort. Even at 1.5 MP, a mono unit will take a pretty nice image.

Later!

Stan

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Amateur Photographer
Professional Electronics Development Engineer

I have four DCS200 backs, all of which worked when I bought them but none of which I could get to work the last time I tried, don't know why, maybe ageing components/joints, and I didn't try very hard. They're all color models, and three of the four had remaining images on the hard drives that looked very suspiciously like they'd been purchased, allocated to various photography units at military bases, the guys in the photo sections at the bases had had a fiddle with them (that's pretty clearly what the images on the hard drives were), and then they'd been put away until they were sold for surplus.

They definitely take normal AA batteries, in a holder that slides into the hand grip. As I recall it, you have to put even more AA batteries in a holder that goes into the hand grip of the camera body, too. NiMh rechargeable batteries worked fine in mine, when they were working. The only way to get at the images is to download over a SCSI connection, and as I recall you have to use the SCSI connection to get the camera working, too, I think they refuse to work until their date/time has been set properly, or something like that. Sorry for the memory haze but it's been several years.

Ross

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Ross Alford
http://www.pbase.com/northqueenslandphotos

Well, it didn't sell at $199, didn't sell at $179, so I assume it's gone in the bin.