TIM KAUGER

View Original

First Digital Photos

Holy shit, I actually found them.

I had to run a virtual machine with Windows XP, and use recovery software to copy them off of long-formatted Zip Disks, but I found them: the first digital photos I ever took. Spoiler alert: they're about the size of postage stamps.

I received a Handspring Visor as a gift from my parents after graduating Middle School, and it came with - gasp - a camera attachment. I couldn't contain myself. I shot everything around me in glorious 320x240 color/black and white (160x120 if I was filling up the 5mb Visor memory). Unsurprisingly, I mostly took photos of cars! 

Sarasota, FL

Bringing home Vice City. That was glorious.

...my first landscape?

Subaru. Big surprise.

The tiny little image sensor came packed with foresight. No need to apply any retro-filters to these shots -- they already have the faded colors and posterization that hipsters want, nay, DEMAND. Very clever, Handspring. Very clever indeed.

Since these photos were on formatted (and, in a few instances, corrupt) Zip Disks, any timestamps of the original files are lost. However, it looks like they were taken between June 2002 to whenever I began to neglect the device, since digital cameras rapidly became more available with quite higher resolution.

I did mirror selfies before they weren't cool.

I guess this was a thing I did at one point?

While doing a massive attic cleanout last year, I stumbled across the actual device that took these, and I couldn't bring myself to throw it out. Immediately before posting this, I popped in some new batteries. Lo and behold, the thing still works like a charm. Even better, I still have the original data transfer cable.

I think the stage is set for an upcoming 52 Week entry. Who else wants to see what kind of images I can eke out of this thing nowadays? Keep an eye on the blog.