This is a story of how fast technology changes things.
On a recent visit to The Newark Star Ledger, photo chief Pim Van Hemmen showed me their doorstop.
It’s a Kodak/Nikon NC2000e that they bought in the mid to late 1990s. They paid
something like $20,000 for it at the time. It was the first ‘digital’ camera.
“It’s broken and so obsolete, that it wasn’t worth repairing or selling to
anyone.” says Van Hemmen. “We kept it out of nostalgia and one of our digital specialists,
Jeff Rhode, screwed a plate into the tripod hole so it could function as a
doorstop, which it has for quite some time.”
It’s a curiosity now, and a bit of an inside joke. More than anything, it’s
a reminder of how far digital photography has come in just a decade.
And no doubt, a decade from now, we’ll all be using those Z-1s as doorstops or paperweights as well.
