Polaroid’s PDC-700 – Just a little previous digicam with a giant secret (Shot for Jankuary)

You’ll assume I’m nuts to advocate an admittedly “janky” digital digicam that dates all the way in which again to 1999. Throughout the unique Polaroid firm’s last years earlier than closing its doorways in 2001, I wrote the person manuals for its PDC line of mass-market digitals.

I had simply heard about digital-infrared images, and someday, requested the corporate’s glorious improvement engineer if any of his cameras is likely to be good at it. He informed me to strive the PDC-700. For 2 causes:

• It was one of many first– and most fastidiously engineered– digitals the corporate had begun to promote in drug shops and retailers like Walmart. (A number of years earlier than the PDC-700, Polaroid created its uncommon– and now fairly collectible– PDC-2000 and -3000 “Digital Detrimental” cameras. However they by no means caught on.)
• And to attenuate prices, that they had not put in a “scorching mirror” in entrance of the sensor to dam incoming infrared rays.

As is likely to be stated at the moment, “So started my IR journey.”

Combined-Bag Specs

Again then, Polaroid was enjoying catch-up in a comparatively new digital market. And the digicam’s most vital specs weren’t fully earth-shattering:

• A 0.8-megapixel 1/3” CCD sensor. (Sure… beneath 1 megapixel!)
• Six picture decision/fineness decisions: three VGA 640 x 480 and three XGA 1024 x 1068 ( VGA “Superfine” shops about 5 photos per megabyte of reminiscence and XGA “Superfine,” about 3).
• And a f/3.5-5.6 two-zone lens (macro from 8 to 18 inches and all the things else from 18 inches to infinity).

There have been pluses, although:

• 4 megabytes of inner storage to complement its Compact Flash slot.
• The dearth of an IR-hostile “scorching mirror.”
• First rate exterior digicam controls (together with an EV button for adjusting publicity values from -2 to +2 in increments of 0.5).
• White-balance settings.
• An LCD-brightness adjustment (which doesn’t assist a lot on sunny days).
• And use of extensively obtainable AA batteries.

I purchased one within the firm retailer (discounted beneath its $350 MSRP after all), and took it to the beautiful New England Botanic Backyard at Tower Hill, in Boylston, Massachusetts. I’d already snagged an IR bandpass filter for not a lot coin and connected it to the digicam utilizing thick, double-sided, mounting tape from the native ironmongery shop:

However Pretty IRs!

The digicam turned out to be so infrared-sensitive that I might shoot hand-held IRs even from shifting automobiles and odd positions. For instance, I sat on the bottom to make these Tower Hill steps look a lot taller than they are surely. (Once I confirmed the images to the parents at Tower Hill, they supplied an exhibit, and I took them up on it.):

Listed below are just a few extra scenes from Tower-Hill (after which, just a few different locations):

Sure, they’re undoubtedly impressionistic. However on the similar time, beautiful! My exhibit was known as “The Invisible Backyard.” The Boston Globe newspaper reviewed it favorably, and I bought just a few prints at sizes starting from 8×10 to 16×20! (For information about how I did that with sub-megapixel information, see the PDC-700 portion of this text.)

And several other extra IR displays rapidly adopted in and across the Winchester space.

Janky is as Janky Does

Relationship from digital’s earliest days, the digicam is janky, with:

• A lot lower-res photos than we’re used to seeing at the moment.
• A menu system of charming Atari-like icons (with an admittedly helpful one for copying information from the digicam’s built-in storage to an put in CF card).
• Considerably non-intuitive button features and labeling (for example, relying on whether or not you’re reviewing or taking pictures photos, the “SFN” button both erases particular person information from reminiscence or selects from six decision/fineness settings).
• Some issue dealing with excessive dynamic vary.
• A single shutter pace of most likely round 1/60 sec (a number of “camera-museum” web sites declare the shutter goes from 1/10,000 to 30 sec, however… um… NOPE!).
• And so little EXIF information in its information that trendy readers received’t even show the digicam identify (the solely factor they do present is picture decision).

So why do I nonetheless advocate the PDC-700 for some customers and purposes?:

• Although small, it’s photos punch effectively above the digicam’s dirt-cheap on-line value. With endurance, one can snag it for $10 or much less on the ‘Bay. This makes it a wonderful, cheap entrée into the great world of IR! (Observe: In an upcoming article, I’ll use the digicam to check low cost alternate options to costly IR bandpass filters.)
• The digicam’s small information (each IR and common) stay well-suited to purposes like selfmade greeting playing cards and the more and more in style “miniature” picture prints. And as described in my above-linked article, they’ll even be made into giant prints.
• And the PDC-700 is a good first digicam for very younger, budding photographers. (I ought to know… I’ve given two of them as presents!)

–Dave Powell is a Westford, Mass., author and avid newbie photographer.

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