The Contax i4r was a "designer" or "boutique" digital camera, announced, and released 15 years ago in 2004 , a unique looking digital camera, perhaps the most beautiful digital camera ever released? From Kyocera, it looks more like a perfume bottle than a digital camera, yet slide out the flash unit, and you'll find a small Carl Zeiss Tessar T* lens, with an f/2.8 aperture. Inside, there's a 4mp sensor, and on the back is a small 1.5inch screen. Tiny by today's standards, and it doesn't work very well outdoors either.
Some older compact digital cameras offer reasonable performance, even today, such as the Fujifilm F10 range and onwards, or there are those that let you shoot raw , so that you can benefit from the latest in raw processing software, and greatly improved noise reduction. However, the Contax i4r is from quite early on, in the history of digital cameras, and even images taken at ISO50 show noise in darker areas, soft corners, and colour reproduction is a little off. The images are quite sharp in the centre of the image, and there's reasonably good close-up focus performance, with the camera letting you focus on subject 5cm away.
Even if the image quality was brilliant, there are other issues with older digital cameras, including the age of the battery used. If it's a rechargeable battery, which the Contax i4r uses, then how well does it hold a charge? Luckily the one I have seems to hold charge for a reasonable amount of time, and thankfully the camera uses SD memory cards, which are still available today.
Here's a photo taken with the Contax i4r - to see what a modern compact camera can do, have a look at the Panasonic Lumix TZ95 review.
You can find more photos taken with the Contax i4r here , where you can add your own sample photos, if you have the camera, or add reviews of your own camera.
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