“It’s as easy as a floppy.”

The Sony Digital Mavica FD-7 seemed so exciting back when it was new, and I wanted one. Its attractiveness stemmed from the cheap and familiar media it used for image storage: standard 3.5″ floppy disks. Most digital cameras of the day required expensive, obscure flash cards for storage and proprietary software to extract photos from the camera (through a painfully slow serial cable). With the FD-7, one needed only to insert the image disk into one’s computer floppy drive and copy the pictures off. But the technological price of this convenience was high: the camera’s maximum image resolution was 640×480 — anything bigger, and you’d only be able to fit a couple photos on a single 1.4 megabyte disk.

Funny enough, I recall ghost enthusiasts on the Internet circa 1998 picking the FD-7 as their camera of choice for its uncanny ability to capture vast flurries of out-of-focus dust (aka “ghost orbs”). That endorsement alone speaks volumes about the camera’s lackluster optical qualities. Also, this new breed of digital ghost hunters didn’t have to feel guilty about taking endless rolls of 35mm dust photos, which can get quite expensive to develop.

Discussion topic of the week: Tell us about the first digital camera you ever used. What brand was it, and what image resolution could it capture?

Computers? What is the world coming to?

Here’s another item from my grandmother’s cedar chest — I love these old newspaper line-art illustrations. ECS was Oak Ridge, Tennessee’s first retail computer store, if I recall correctly from an old article I read. They advertised quite a lot in the local newspaper, including the ad for the Apple II you see above.

The Apple II’s configuration with two Disk II drives and a small monitor on top is interesting. I believe I’ve seen Apple promotional photos from the early Apple II days with the same setup. The relatively tiny display seems somewhat silly from a modern perspective, but computer monitors were very expensive back then. A large one that would have covered the entire top of the Apple II would have cost $400 or more in 1980-ish dollars.

In fact, just perusing some ads in the back of a 1981 BYTE magazine, I don’t see any monitors offered larger than a 13″ color Zenith for $399.95 ($933 in 2009 dollars). 9-inch to 12-inch monochrome monitors cost anywhere from $150 to $260, which is equivalent to $350 to $606 in 2009 dollars. You get the point — even entry-level displays back then cost an arm and a leg. Even if you paid two arms and two legs, the monitors were still relatively small.

Discussion topic of the week: Tell us about your first Apple II experience. Where and when was it, and why were you using it?

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The iPhone has nothing on this. (Click for full advertisement.)

Here we see the state-of-the-art in 1983 pocket computer technology, the TRS-80 PC-4. I have the PC-1 in this series, and it still seems advanced. How many other pocket calculators allow you to program in full BASIC?

I remember taking my PC-1 to high school in the mid-1990s and programming on the sly in my ELP class. It felt so high tech — and my model was made in 1980! Ah, those were the days.

Discussion topic of the week: What was the first PDA or pocket computer you ever used?

If you use this image on your site, please support “Retro Scan of the Week” by giving us obvious credit for the original scan and entry. Thanks.

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Press photographers wait for Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1951
Photo: Gordon Parks / LIFE

Crowd members photograph Barack Obama, 2009
Photo: Pete Souza / White House

Digital technology has transmogrified today’s consumer cameras into tiny, futuristic-looking gadgets. Notice how nobody holds them to their face anymore — they just stare at LCD screens.

Not only have the cameras changed, but the photographers have changed as well: it seems that everyone has an imaging device in their pocket these days. With the help of a blog, flickr account, or YouTube, ordinary people on the street often beat professional photojournalists to the punch when it comes to breaking news.

Of course, press photographers still exist in 2009, and their cameras are much bigger and more professional-looking than those seen here. I was just struck by the contrast between the flashbulb-slingers of old and the average citizen photographer of today.