The Minolta RD-175 was an early

digital SLR A digital single-lens reflex camera (digital SLR or DSLR) is a digital camera that combines the optics and mechanisms of a single-lens reflex camera with a solid-state image sensor and digitally records the images from the sensor. The reflex des ...

, introduced in 1995. Minolta combined an existing SLR with a three way splitter and three separate

CCD CCD may refer to: Science and technology * Charge-coupled device, an electronic light sensor used in various devices including digital cameras * .ccd, the filename extension for CloneCD's CD image file * Carbonate compensation depth, a property ...

image sensors, giving 0.41

megapixels In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest addressable element in a dot matrix display device. In most digital display devices, pixels are the sma ...

(MP) of resolution. The base of the DSLR was the Minolta Maxxum 500si Super, marketed as the Dynax 500si Super in Europe and as Alpha 303si Super in Asia. Agfa produced a version of the RD-175, which retailed as the

Agfa Agfa-Gevaert N.V. (Agfa) is a Belgian-German multinational corporation that develops, manufactures, and distributes Analog photography, analogue and digital imaging products, software, and systems. The company began as a dye manufacturer in 1867 ...

ActionCam. The RD-175 was also notable as the first consumer digital camera to be used in a professional stop motion production, being used to create the full-motion

claymation Claymation, sometimes called clay animation or plasticine animation, is one of many forms of stop-motion animation. Each animated piece, either character or background, is "deformable"—made of a malleable substance, usually plasticine cl ...

adventure video game ''

The Neverhood ''The Neverhood'' (released in Japan as ''Klaymen Klaymen: The Mystery of Neverhood'') is a 1996 point-and-click adventure video game developed by The Neverhood, Inc. and published by DreamWorks Interactive for Microsoft Windows. The game follow ...

''.

Technology

The camera uses Minolta A-mount lenses with a

crop factor In digital photography, the crop factor, format factor, or focal length multiplier of an image sensor format is the ratio of the dimensions of a camera's imaging area compared to a reference format; most often, this term is applied to digital ...

of 2. The light entering the central 12 mm × 16 mm area of the RD-175's focal plane was compressed by 0.56x relay optics behind the focal plane, similar to the optical reduction system used in the

Nikon E series The Nikon E series, co-developed with Fujifilm, are autofocus 1.3 megapixel professional grade quasi- full frame ( 35mm) Nikon F-mount digital single lens reflex cameras ( DSLR) manufactured by Nikon since 1995. The E series included the ''Nik ...

. The light bundled on the smaller sensor area increased the effective sensitivity (

ISO The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ; ; ) is an independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Me ...

) by stops. Since state of the art single-CCD resolution at the time was insufficient for Minolta, the light was split and sent to three separate 4.8 × 6.4 mm sized 768 × 494 pixel (3 × 0.3 MP)

image sensor An image sensor or imager is a sensor that detects and conveys information used to form an image. It does so by converting the variable attenuation of light waves (as they refraction, pass through or reflection (physics), reflect off objects) into s ...

s, two used for green and one for the red and blue color, reducing the sensitivity increase to about 2 stops. The only usable

ISO speed Film speed is the measure of a photographic film's photosensitivity, sensitivity to light, determined by sensitometry and measured on #Film, various numerical scales, the most recent being the #ISO, ISO system introduced in 1974. A closely rela ...

was 800. Images were stored on an internal 128 MB

PCMCIA The Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA) was an industry consortium of computer hardware manufacturers from 1989 to 2009. Starting with the PCMCIA card in 1990 (the name later simplified to ''PC Card''), it created v ...

hard drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk drive platter, pla ...

. The output of the three sensors were combined digitally when imported to a computer and

interpolated In the mathematical field of numerical analysis, interpolation is a type of estimation, a method of constructing (finding) new data points based on the range of a discrete set of known data points. In engineering and science, one often has a n ...

to the final size of 1.8 MP (1528 × 1146 pixels). On its original release, the bundled software was compatible only with Macintosh OS. Depending on the computer, importing and processing a single image could take from 50 to 108 seconds.

Technology

See also

References

External links