NikonWeb.com

Was surprised, to say the least, to see this video suddenly show up on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/video/Fzf7s9ToT-k

Coming soon... Great stuff!

The video is posted on January 20, 2011 by Mark Cruz, a Tech Rep at Nikon Canada.

UPDATE: Unfortunately, the video has been removed from Youtube.

Jarle

Hi,

Coming soon, eh?

Look! A diskette! Does anyone actually remember those? Besides me, that is!

Now we have 8 GB micro-micro memory cards that one can lose in the wink of an eye!

I was just playing with a micro-micro card, which had to be stuck into an adapter to make it a micro-card, which was stuck into an adapter to make it a mini-card, which was stuck into an adapter to make it a CF card, which was stuck into an adapter to make it a PCMCIA card so I could stick it into my notebook computer!

Man, that's almost as bad as the 2" floppy vs. the 3.5" floppy vs. the 5.25" floppy vs. the 8" floppy......

The more things change, the more they stay the same!

So, on the serious side, is there anything current that matches up with the QV for physical size and has the equivalent zoom range the QV offered with those two lenses it came with?

I have to admit not keeping up for the past few years, living in the ancient past with the Kodak DCS line and the various 35mm lens systems. Now that I'm working again, I'd like to have something in the way of a smaller-format SLR, or SLR-like, camera that is pretty much the same size as the cute QV was.

I know I will never get a QV, and probably wouldn't want to shoot with one even if there were 600 of them on eBay for under 100 bucks right this very minute. That ship has sailed.....

BTW, when did we get to thinking that 135 and/or 124 is a large format? I just found myself thinking that way! Is it only me??

Later!

Stan

Later!

Stan

_________________
Amateur Photographer
Professional Electronics Development Engineer

Hi Stan,

No, you'd not want to use one of these, even if you could buy them on Walmart for two dollars (well, ok..).

35mm IS a big format, compared to most digital sensors out there. Compared to medium and large format film (or digital) it's not. I guess it depends what format you're used to.

Anything current that matches the QV for physical size and equivalent zoom range? Good question, but I don't have a good answer. I'll have to think about that one

Jarle

I'm hoping when it says "Coming Soon" at the end that this is just an intro to a more technical or hands on presentation. It's good to see one actually being handled and I assume used as opposed to just sitting in a glass case, but I'd like to know more about it. I've thought a few times of making a Youtube video of some of my old cameras, but doubt very many people would be interested.

"Coming soon" is obviously a joke. And I can assure you that this camera isn't being used by anyone. There's absolutely no reason to. None. Except, perhaps, for fun. Even then, you won't bother for very long. Image quality is horrible (after all, it's a still video camera), it's awkward to use (you'll need to "transfer" photos using a bulky still video recorder/player and a video capture card). And then there's the fear of breaking something. It's a robust camera, but you won't find any spare parts. In fact, I'm sure most Nikon repairmen have never heard of it, let alone seen one! This is a museum piece. I'm sure this particular camera is owned by Nikon Canada (or some other Nikon entity) and is most certainly sitting in a glass case most of the time.

If you want to know more about the camera, feel free to ask. I'm planning to write a more comprehensive QV-1000C article, but I never seem to get the time.

Jarle

Hi,

I took the 'coming soon' to mean that this was a marketing video shot for Nikon at the time they were bringing the QV out. You know, a 'film' to show at conferences for the news shooters that the camera was originally aimed at.

That's why I replied as if I were all excited about the diskette as film! That was really special at the time.

I started out with 120/220 roll film, which as we all know is called 'medium' format. So, to me, 135 is a small format. Even knowing all about the sizes of digital sensors, where 135 and 240 (aka APS) size sensors are on the large side, I still think of them as being 'small' format. :

Later!

Stan

_________________
Amateur Photographer
Professional Electronics Development Engineer

If you look carefully, you'll notice that the Nikon logo on the guy's jacket is wrong. This is the current one. Nikon had a different logo back then

Jarle

Hi,

Shows you how much I know about Nikon logos! They all look the same to me.

So, I'll modify my thought: Someone made up a retro marketing video for the QV, but didn't have anything with the proper period Nikon logo on it!

Later!

Stan

_________________
Amateur Photographer
Professional Electronics Development Engineer

Looks I didn't get it both ways; I know the QV-1000C is a circa 1988 obsolete camera but didn't clue in it was a gag ad video, I was thinking anyone who saw it knew what it was and the video was just showing it off.

(Have a set of video floppies on order and a reader to see if my Sony MVC-5000 works.)

Another one. The S-100 video camera: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uaCKHD-kns

My own S-100 article: http://www.nikonweb.com/s100/

Jarle

"I was just playing with a micro-micro card, which had to be stuck into an adapter to make it a micro-card, which was stuck into an adapter to make it a mini-card, which was stuck into an adapter to make it a CF card, which was stuck into an adapter to make it a PCMCIA card so I could stick it into my notebook computer!"

By coincidence I tried the exact same thing, to see if the resulting Frankenstein creation would work in my DCS 560. I put a micro-SD card into an SD card adapter which I put into an SD-CompactFlash adapter which went into my CompactFlash-PCMCIA adapter.

Guess what! It didn't work. The camera couldn't read or format it. I surmise it would have been painfully slow even if it had worked. I think there are or were PCMCIA-IDE adapters that turn the PCMCIA card into an IDE hard drive, which you could try, and perhaps there are IDE-SATA adapters and so forth.

I think the micro-SD card ended up in my internet dongle. I like to think of it as my super-secret data stash, for whenever I have to cross the border into Libya (or whereever). The guards will take my memory cards but they won't think to take my internet dongle! Although they probably will. So it's a silly idea.

On topic, what was the advantage to having a still video camera over a moving video camera? Couldn't the news agency just grab still frames from video footage? Or was the portability and small size the raison d'etre for these things (in which case, I suppose they would have been made obsolete by smaller video cameras if they had not been made obsolete by digital stills cameras).

I think you nailed it. Still photographers wanted a familiar still camera, not a heavy video camera. Also - as amazing as it may sound - grabbing a still frame from video was not a trivial task back then. Until the late 1980s or early 1990s, it was not uncommon to photograph TV screens (with a 35mm still camera) when covering breaking news close to deadline. This was before the first video capture devices showed up. These days we've come full circle, with still cameras shooting high quality video.

A related article, if you haven't seen it: http://www.nikonweb.com/tankman/

Jarle