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Old Camera

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This purpose of this page is to show the image quality from ancient DSLRs, specifically for shooting squirrels. As much as I love modern mirrorless cameras for their silent shooting and crazy animal eye-autofocus on tilty-flippy screens, older cameras can still pull off some great shots. If you're on a budget, or just looking for a challenge, this section is for you.

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For me, what makes a great portrait (human or animal) is real subject isolation. Portrait mode on your smartphone is not going to cut it with fluffy creatures like this, so I would recommend spending most of your budget on a fast, portrait lens, once you have friendly wildlife sorted, of course. The best camera bargains are likely the ones lower down in this list. The oldest ones are mostly for collectors.

 

One bonus that you get on many older (not so much the oldest) cameras is rich, vibrant colours (yes, better than today's models). After going back and using many of these old digital cameras, I came to the realisation that we lost something with modern colour-science. I dedicated a page to talking about this here, but for this page I will focus on a bunch of DSLRs from 1995 to 2010. Using these DSLRs to capture squirrels at low angles can be a pain to shoot with optical viewfinders unless you're willing to get down in the dirt. Only the very last camera has live-view, a tilting screen and decent AF in that mode (like a mirrorless camera) and thus can be more easily held at ground level.​​​

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Click on each thumbnail below to take you to a larger photo with more information. Clicking on the larger photos will then take you to a full review of the camera.

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1995 - Minolta RD-175​​​

1998 - Kodak DCS 560

1999 - Nikon D1

2000 - Canon D30

2001 - Kodak DCS 760

2002 - Nikon D100

2002 - Canon 1Ds

2003 - Nikon D2H

2004 - Minolta Dynax 7D

2005 - Canon 5D

2005 - Nikon D200

2007 - Nikon D3

2008 - Sony A900

2010 - Sony A390​

175

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Minolta RD 175 - 1.5mp [2.0x] 3xCCD

The reduction optics were clever for its time, but optically they hold it back too much. With even less than 4:2:0 chroma subsampling at 1.5 megapixels, its image quality is super-weak. With a 2x crop and a minimum aperture of f/6.7 its shallow depth of field was utterly non-existent. Oh, and you can only take one image every two seconds and iso 800 was the only option. The fact that any decent images come out of this thing is a total miracle!​​​​

560

 

  • ​Collectability: 7/10

  • Capability & Value: 0/10

  • Experience/Enjoyment: 0/10

  • Colour Science: 0/10

  • DxO PureRAW?: No

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Kodak DCS 560 - 6mp [1.3x] CCD

This is one of the oldest DSLRs that I've used. These Kodak cameras are quite collectable now (in good condition), even if they are not working. They are not a camera I would recommend for beginners, but just a demo of how old tech can still produce some interesting quality images. It was an early 6mp CCD sensor that only shot raw TIF files, which used to be awkward to work with, but are now supported natively in Adobe software, as of 2025!​​

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  • Collectability: 8/10

  • Capability & Value: 2/10

  • Experience/Enjoyment: 3/10

  • Colour Science: 2/10

  • DxO PureRAW?: No

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D1

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Nikon D1 - 2.7mp [1.5x] CCD

The first purpose built DSLR is quite difficult to find in good condition now, since they were generally used by professional Journalists for many years. The lens that I shot the above picture was rather soft. The fact this shows up on the one of the lowest resolution sensors that I've shot with tells me how unimportant that is to getting a nice image. I love this image for its colour rendition because red squirrels in summer foliage tend to look like a browny yellow mess and never pop like this. This is early colour science and not related to sensor tech as far as I know.

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  • ​Collectability: 6/10

  • Capability & Value: 4/10

  • Experience/Enjoyment: 4/10

  • Colour Science: 9/10

  • DxO PureRAW?: No

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D30

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Canon D30 - 3mp [1.6x] CMOS

From a time when Canon put the digital 'D' in the camera name first, just like Nikon does. This was not only Canon's first purpose built DSLR, predating the 1D (they flipped back and forth on the naming rule), but thus also their first and only CCD camera... weird. The colours on this camera are also stunning, showing that CCD has nothing to do with rich, vibrant (slide film like) colours.

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  • Collectability: 3/10

  • Capability & Value: 3/10

  • Experience/Enjoyment: 3/10

  • Colour Science: 8/10

  • DxO PureRAW?: No

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760

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Kodak DCS 760 - 6mp [1.3x] CCD

This was another fun Kodak camera to play with. Using a Nikon F5 film camera body, this huge and heavy beast has an equally beefy mirror slap when shooting and a super cool removable / swappable prism. It's another nail in the coffin for great colours coming from early digital cameras being related to CCD technology, though. These old Kodak sensors could put out some decent sharpness, but their colours royally suck, at least in heavy green foliage like this.

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  • ​Collectability: 7/10

  • Capability & Value: 3/10

  • Experience/Enjoyment: 3/10

  • Colour Science: 1/10

  • DxO PureRAW?: No

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D100

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Nikon D100 - 6mp [1.5x] CCD

This early small DSLR was a bit of a disappointment on the body side. Although it was a purpose built DSLR, it was based heavily on the Nikon F80 and largely made of plastic. This kept the weight down, but it didn't live up to the expectations of it being a digital version of the famous F100 model. On the sensor front, this was a solid camera for 2002. Expensive sounding now, it was cheap for digital back when it was launched.

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  • Collectability: 1/10

  • Capability & Value: 7/10

  • Experience/Enjoyment: 4/10

  • Colour Science: 8/10

  • DxO PureRAW?: Yes

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1Ds

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Canon 1Ds - 11mp [1.0x] CMOS

This early pro camera from Canon is a gorgeous machine. It is also one of the first full frame cameras and one of the earliest to be supported by DxO, producing some absolutely stunning images! It weighs a ton, so too does the lens (totalling 2.6KG together), but it's almost worth it!​​

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  • Collectability: 4/10

  • Capability & Value: 8/10

  • Experience/Enjoyment: 9/10

  • Colour Science: 9/10

  • DxO PureRAW?: Yes

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D2H

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Nikon D2H - 4.1mp [1.5x] JFET

This was my first Nikon camera. Another shockingly low megapixel camera that produces surprisingly decent images. It's also a relatively light professional camera with a beautiful vertical grip and a fast burst speed for sports.

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  • ​Collectability: 3/10

  • Capability & Value: 5/10

  • Experience/Enjoyment: 7/10

  • Colour Science: 7/10

  • DxO PureRAW?: No (Bug?)

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7D

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Minolta Dynax 7D - 6mp [1.5x] CCD

The first professional Minolta DSLR was a nice machine with access to some interesting lenses. Here's a quick sample, but I haven't had a chance to review this one yet. 

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  • Collectability: 2/10

  • Capability & Value: 3/10

  • Experience/Enjoyment: 5/10

  • Colour Science: 7/10

  • DxO PureRAW?: Yes

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5D

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Canon 5D - 12mp [1.0x] CMOS

Like the 1Ds, this camera also produces some amazing quality images and colours. Combined with a fast lens like this it's a super fun camera to use today and this is perhaps where I would start recommending some of these cameras for beginners. The resolution is good enough and the controls are decently realized. The hardest thing to live with is the noise performance, but that too I think actually makes it quite a good platform to learn on.​​

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  • ​Collectability: 1/10

  • Capability & Value: 7/10

  • Experience/Enjoyment: 6/10

  • Colour Science: 9/10

  • DxO PureRAW?: Yes

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D200

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Nikon D200 - 10mp [1.5x] CCD

This is one of those cameras that fetches a surprisingly high price due to its name recognition. It does have amazing build quality and grip ergonomics, but it's probably due to it being one of the later CCD sensors that puts it on most people's radar. Now 20 years old, this DSLR is shockingly good to use today, if you find a fully functional one. Despite its fame for perhaps the wrong reasons, I would say this is still worth looking out for as a beginners' camera.

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  • Collectability: 3/10

  • Capability & Value: 7/10

  • Experience/Enjoyment: 9/10

  • Colour Science: 8/10

  • DxO PureRAW?: Yes

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D700

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Nikon D3 - 12mp [1.0x] CMOS

Nikon's first full frame camera was an absolute low-light monster for the time. It stuck with a lower resolution to achieve this, which made it seem not too much better than Canon's first attempt from a rather shocking five years earlier. This camera has beautiful colour science that can make images look way prettier than new models. Its sensor was put into the smaller D700 a year later, so that is probably a better choice to pick up today.

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  • Collectability: 2/10

  • Capability & Value: 9/10

  • Experience/Enjoyment: 8/10

  • Colour Science: 8/10

  • DxO PureRAW?: Yes

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A900

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Sony A900 - 24mp [1.0x] CMOS

This old full frame Sony is a surprisingly high resolution sensor for its age and is another one that was built in a time that manufacturers were still pursuing colour slide film colour science, so they can look super punchy results.

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  • ​Collectability: 3/10

  • Capability & Value: 6/10

  • Experience/Enjoyment: 4/10

  • Colour Science: 6/10

  • DxO PureRAW?: Yes

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A390

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Sony A390 - 14mp [1.5x] CCD

I bought this old crop Sony DSLR originally because it was one of the last CCD sensors ever made, but although that was the wrong reason for choosing it, I still got what I wanted with the colours. It has great colour science and more impressively it also has full speed autofocus while using live-view on the tilting rear screen. This model can be picked up for little money today, but unlike most of these models, it doesn't have awkwardly old memory cards. You could argue that the Sony A mount lenses give you fewer options, but if you want something that's fast with pretty bokeh, then I don't think you can do better than the 85mm and 135mm Zeiss lenses.​​

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  • ​Collectability: 0/10

  • Capability & Value: 9/10

  • Experience/Enjoyment: 8/10

  • Colour Science: 9/10

  • DxO PureRAW?: Yes

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