Early this century, a friend was using an Agfa digital camera soon after their introduction. It was probably the 1280 or 1680 model, I can’t remember which now. Only 1 megapixel! What I liked about the design was it’s swivel lens. Up until then you had Hasselblad and Rollei and the like which you looked down into the viewfinder to see your subject. So your average member of the public was not used to seeing cameras that weren’t held up to the face to take the photo. It was a stealth camera. You could look down as if you were making adjustments but taking a photo at the same time. I bought into the Nikon version of this camera which was around 2 megapixel. Cost was around AUD2100 (Coolpix 950). The Flash card was 32MB and cost $230. Quite a hefty outlay to buy into the digital arena.

The photo below (Jaipur, India) was taken with that model. I found the colours to be very pleasing. But I took the same shot with a 35mm film camera - likely the Canon EOS5. I found the Nikon colours to be much more true to life and not needing much editing at all. The downside was just the file size - a little small. It served well though for street photography. Once these cameras came more into mainstream useage and people became familiar with them, they lost their stealth status.