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Kodak Disc 4000
Back in the '80s, Kodak attempted to forge ahead into the future of film by creating a new circular disc-based format. Hailed as "virtually idiot proof" upon its release, Kodak's 'disc' format featured 15 tiny negatives arranged in a circle. Of course, the disc was a proprietary format, which means that it could only be used in Kodak's disc-compatible cameras. Unfortunately, the small size of the negatives (less than 1/3 of the size of 35mm film) resulted in consistently soft and blurry images, and the oddly-shaped plastic lens only made things worse. Incredibly, the disc film format was discontinued in 1998, almost 9 years after Kodak ceased production of the camera.
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Comments
10
Subscribe to commentsMitchAug 13th 2008 10:07AM
"Of course, the disc was a proprietary format, which means that it could only be used in Kodak's disc players."
There was no Kodak disc film player. It was just another format, like 110 film, 35 mm film, etc. The film was made into regular prints, like any other film, but there was nothing to play.
ThomasAug 13th 2008 10:22AM
That should have been disc-compatible "cameras," not "players."
Jeannie GAug 13th 2008 12:12PM
I had a disc camera as a kid and I loved it! Compact, simple, never any problems. And what's wrong with those negatives? One circular disc of negatives was far easier to organize than all of the 'strips' I got with my 35 mm. I went back to it for a while after I couldn't afford to fix my expensive 35mm. Now my Sony CyberShot has a stuck lens. Give me back my Disc. So the pictures weren't fantastic, at least it worked and I took a ton of them.
Linda BordenAug 13th 2008 2:11PM
i had this camera and i really liked it but you couldnt enlarge the pics as 3x5 it was fine
ChristineAug 13th 2008 2:22PM
I had a disc camera and I loved it! I was disappointed when you could no longer get film for it. :(
MichaelAug 14th 2008 4:50PM
Kodak has made several attempts to pull consumers into a proprietary product with the same results. Abject failure. When will they ever learn.
JimAug 19th 2008 7:09PM
I had a disc camera and loved it. It could fit in a shirt pocket or hiking jacket. It was great.
JeremyAGeorgiaSep 2nd 2008 11:16AM
The disc camera was a fine camera. It was great for amateur photography. It was one of the first completely automatic cameras that was widely available and inexpensive. Back, then many film cameras still required you to wind and load them, and fixed focus cameras were still pretty common. The disc camera was extremely simple to load. The film quality wasn't as good, but it was fine for most casual uses. It looked better than most of the cheap cameras that didn't have autofocus. It took better pictures than most cameras that used 110 sized film.
The disc camera failed, not because of a poor design or having no market for it. It failed because it naturally became obsolete. It enjoyed quite a few years as a popular format. Electronic cameras got more advanced, though (and cheaper). Kodak also came out with a full-size film format (Advantix) that was almost as easy to use and load. Finally, the digital camera made all film formats less popular -- not just disc.
SarahSep 2nd 2008 11:18AM
OMG I had forgot I owned one of these when I was about 11. I loved that camera, for a kid it was a godsend cause it was so easy to use & never broke ( would probably still work today if I had the disc lmao ) but I always had a problem finding the disc's for them.
JASep 2nd 2008 2:21PM
The design was approved based on film/print samples using "select" (i.e. the best) sections of the production web (film). Actual production film had, on average, much larger grain, thus the crappy prints.