Kodak DCS 560 - Retro Review
Adjusted for inflation, this six megapixel monster cost over fifty-five thousand US dollars back in 1998. Built around film SLRs and using nasty Ni-CAD batteries, these early electronic hybrid Franken-cameras are nearly thirty years old. This is the second time that I've been lucky enough to find one of these rare pieces of history in not only good condition, but also working.
Kodak DCS 560 & EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens
(Taken with: Sony A1 + Samyang 135mm f/1.8)
Key Specifiations
Date:
$ (inflation):
Sensor:
Resolution:
Burst:
DR Stops:
Sync:
SS:
AF points:
Video:
Live-View:
ISO:
OVF:
LCD:
Memory:
Weight:
Battery:
1998 (July)
$29,999 / $55,500
APS-H (1.3x) CCD
6mp
1fps / 4 RAW
7.7 (12bit)
1/250th
30s - 1/8,000th
5 (5%)
No
No
80 - 200
0.83x / 97%
2.0" / 1xxk / Fixed
PCMCIA (x2)
1771g
?? (Kodak NiCAD)
History
Steve Sasson invented the first digital camera in 1975, working for Kodak. A 100x100 pixel B&W sensor that stored images on to a cassette tape. In 1991 (after a few prototypes) Kodak entered the consumer market with the DCS 100; A Nikon F3, unofficially bolted onto a 1.3 megapixel sensor and connected to a large (briefcase sized) processing unit. Priced at $30,000, they had little competition early on, but after a decade or so their R&D budget was dwarfed by Nikon, Canon, Fuji and Sony. Although Kodak's management were smart enough to dip their toes into digital photography for the diversification, but by the time they fully embraced it, it was too late.
The Kodak DCS 560 was built on top of the Canon EOS-1N. A top-of-the-line Canon film camera that came out in 1994. Although the 1N had moderately weather sealed, Kodak's electronics were not. I have never been a fan of Canon's button logic, and the on/off switch here is especially nonsensical. The elements added by Kodak are actually surprisingly clean, however. Much better than the DCS 760, from three years later. Apart from the relatively high-end camera body and a large, high resolution sensor, this was the first digital camera to have a screen, which went some way to justifying the massive $30,000 price tag. In only one year from the release of the DCS 560, Nikon would bring out their D1. A smaller and lighter, purpose built DSLR, priced at only $5,500! Although that was only a 2.7mp APS-C sensor, the D1x wasn't far behind. Perhaps Kodak's biggest problem was that sharing lens mounts with the two biggest camera manufacturers meant any investment in lenses would make it easy for users to switch to the competition once they evolved... and evolve they most certainly did.
Condition
These cameras are pretty rare today, especially in good condition like this one, and even more so if they are still working. When I bought this camera on an auction, it was described as maybe working, but with no guarantees. I assumed the worst, but had a glimmer of hope that it might be possible to get it working. The previous owner of the camera told me that the camera display just flickered when a battery (that seemed to be charged) was inserted into the camera, but it would not stay on. Sure enough, the same thing happened to me. I heard somewhere that the camera's internal battery would likely be depleted, but it might be possible to remedy this by plugging the camera into the DC charger for a while. Although the previous owner did not have the DC charger with his collection, I did have one with my DCS 760, so I connected the cable and left it there overnight. Sure enough, I put a charged battery back in the morning and it started up...
Canon EF 85L | 1/400th | iso320
Image Quality
This early six megapixel APS-H (1.3x) CCD sensor really needs direct sunlight to perform. Even compared to the sensor in the DCS 760 (same size and resolution) this one suffers from poor noise / colour reproduction and worse (read on). Although I cannot confirm, it's said to be a nice improvement over the Kodak DCS 460. The contrast and colour from the DCS 560 appears quite weak straight out of the camera. Before I did any more complicated adjustments to the colours, the green hues look quite toxic and unrealistic.
There are major issues with structure in the out-of-focus areas. Rather than looking smooth, like this lens normally does, it's like looking through a wire mesh. This is probably caused by the hot mirror frame (the filter that sits in front of the sensor) and the short flange distance. The shape of the blur is clipped, making the image feel rather busy and distracting. This filter can be removed, which I will try soon. Apparently the colours will look more purple if I do, but since they're not exactly amazing anyway, I'll do it. Being an IR photographer I should try this anyway and since I own a million filters I might actually have an external hot mirror lying around here somewhere.
The Kodak 5xx series DSLRs can only shoot RAW format (TIF). Although the DCS 520 could batch process them to JPG internally, the higher resolution DCS 560 does not come with that capability. Despite the TIF files, Kodak made it a proprietary format, which have only recently been supported natively in some viewers and image editing software, like Photoshop ACR.
Noisy images (like the one above) will show some vertical banding, which makes me wish for better de-noising. Unfortunately, the raw files are not supported in DxO pureRAW, which is a real shame because it does a fantastic job with the six megapixel files from the Nikon D100. I have requested for DxO to add support for the DCS 560 & 760, but they are such niche cameras that I'm not going to hold my breath. Unlike the DCS 760, the 560 does not store any EXIF data, so it would be difficult for DxO to work here anyway.
Red Squirrel + Canon EF 85mm f/1.2 L II
Autofocus
The focusing here is rather slow and extremely unreliable. It was difficult enough to get a hundred images from these batteries, but out of those, 95% of them were out of focus. Some of that was because optical viewfinders suck beyond belief for low angle shots like this, but the majority was the speed and ability of the focus system. On several occasions, I felt like the image was focused when looking in the viewfinder, but it was out of focus when reviewing the image. Often I would ask for the camera to refocus by half pressing the shutter button again, but it would refuse to try, like it was saying it seemed good enough when I could tell it had drifted off and needed sanity checking.
Screens & Menus
I wasn't expecting very much from 1998 camera menus and boy, was it a good idea to keep my expectations low, with one exception, which I'll come back to in a minute. Accessing the menu options involved holding down either the menu or select button, waiting for the options to pop up, scrolling the thumb wheel and then letting go activate that option, which will present a sub-menu, and you can then change the settings in that sub-menu by click-hold-scroll-letting go again. I don't know who came up with this monstrously bad way of interacting with the menus, but it's difficult to get used to.
Red Squirrel + Canon EF 85mm f/1.2 L II
If you read my review of the Kodak DCS 760, you'll see that the date on these cameras can only be set between 1990 and 2020. Being further in the future than Kodak ever thought possible feels rather obscure. Now, there is a slight workaround for this. If the camera's internal battery is depleted (you can't easily get to this battery to replace it, btw), then the date resets to an obscure 2101. If you manage to scroll the correct way, you can go backwards from here to set the date correctly. Now if you remove the battery it will reset this again, but if you have the 3-pin DIN DC power brick for running the camera from the mains, you can leave it plugged in overnight to somewhat recharge the internal battery.
By far the most interesting thing in the menus is that you can play pong using the thumb-wheel. I will try to make a video of this working, to prove what it's like, as I imagine there aren't many that still work.
Memory
The DCS 560 has two PCMCIA card slots. Originally, memory cards were made in this format, although I have never seen one. These days, the easiest way to use these cameras is to get a PCMCIA to Compact Flash adapter and then use CF cards. The camera only supports memory up to 2GB in size. Larger cards may be accepted, but once formatted will only have 2GB of space. 2GB cards will allow you to store about 500 raw images. No other file types are supported.
I managed to find a Kodak PCMCIA to CF adapter. Just for giggles I wanted to get a CF to SD adapter, then a SD to micro SD adapter and a micro SD card. I wanted to find everything made by Kodak, but it seems like they never made a CF to SD card adapter... Oh well. As fun as it was to make this little Russian Doll set of memory modules, you might be asking yourself - "Does this even work when most of this technology was made many years after the camera disappeared into obscurity?" - watch this space....
I managed to pick up a 1GB IBM Microdrive with one of my cameras lately. These little compact flash cards housed an actual spinning hard disk. Amazingly, back in the days of this DCS 560, Microdrives were cheaper than equivalently sized solid state CF cards. Now that solid state memory has far surpassed the sizes and value that microdrives were ever made in, they are an obscure piece of tech to see today and another fun look back into early digital photography equipment. I was curious to see if this thing still worked, so I tried it in the DCS 560...
Red Squirrel + Canon EF 85mm f/1.2 L II
Lenses
Canon EF lenses are probably the most common ones around and as people transition to mirrorless cameras the prices will continue to come down. I do not own any of the Canon EF-S crop lenses, so I don't know if they are supported here. I would be a bit worried that their rear elements might foul the filter since this camera is using a full frame mirror assembly and the external filter sits out in front of that. EF-S lenses may only cover the 1.6x crop area, which is smaller than this sensor captures anyway, so I would recommend avoiding the risk of damaging this rare system.
Being a relatively short flange distance (from sensor to mount) the Canon EF mount is able to adapt to several other DSLR lenses, including Nikon, Pentax and M42. Although you will lose autofocus, this is a great way to try lenses from other systems, or just have access to some fascinating and budget retro lenses. It's unfortunate, but old Canon FD lenses cannot be adapted.
Batteries
This camera came with a ton of batteries. Mostly they were original Kodak ones, which is nice, but they could no longer be charged. There were two third party batteries that could hold a little bit of a charge, but did not last long. The batteries the DCS 760 use are the same type, but unfortunately, the third party one I had for that (three years ago) could also no longer hold a charge. I decided to buy two more new batteries, but unfortunately these got damaged in the post. Arghh!!
If you're looking to buy one of these old cameras, make sure it comes with the battery charger. 3rd party batteries can be bought today, but not the chargers. There is an official Kodak charger (that came with the camera) and there was an unofficial one (a very long time ago), but both are rare as rocking horse shit today. Luckily, I got one with my DCS 560. I think it is an unofficial one, which has orange text around the top. The one that came with my DCS 760 just had white text on the top and is a little bigger, but both can charge two batteries at once. Charging these batteries today is a huge nightmare! If you're in a similar situation, read this.
Red Squirrel + Canon EF 85mm f/1.2 L II
Speed
With a startup and burst speed that make you wish you were using a film camera, It's amazing that we ever got out of the digital Stone Age. One frame per second, for only four seconds, becomes annoying for most types of photography. If you see something you need to shoot right now and your camera is off, just forget it.
Competition
Since these older Kodak's predate any purpose built digital SLRs from Nikon, Canon, or any other manufacturer), the only digital competition this camera had was medium format cameras with digital scan-backs, and those would have been even more expensive
Red Squirrel + Canon EF 85mm f/1.2 L II
Conclusion
The Kodak DCS 560 is not a bargain camera that is something I would recommend to new photographers to learn on today. This thing is strictly for collectors, and not just because its image quality is sub-par. This is a beautiful piece of digital camera history and if you find one in nice condition and working like this it'll a minor miracle.
You'll be lucky if the hot mirror filter is included, and that the camera turns on at all. Hopefully the autofocus, memory card reader, mirror assembly and electronics work as they used to. Very lucky if the battery charger comes with the camera, Currently, you can thank your lucky stars that someone still makes the batteries and that the image format is supported in some software. If you find an older DSLR than this, it will be exponentially more difficult to get the camera working and images read. Knowing all this, having a digital camera still work after 28 years is exciting!
Although the image quality is let down by the filter, colour science and short flange distance, anything that comes out feels pretty special.
Unlike the DCS 760, there is no removable prism and despite being built around a smaller camera with more plastic, the weight is only a fraction lighter and the shutter noise is nowhere near as pleasant and sure feeling like that of the Nikon F5's shutter on the DCS 760.
