Greetings and welcome to an LGR camera thing!
And this is the Mitsubishi DJ-1000 digital
still camera, costing $249 US dollars when
it launched in the latter half of 1997.
And yep, that is the same Mitsubishi that
you may know for their cars and trucks, although
it’s not from the same division.
Mitsubishi Electric was and is a massive company,
with dozens of branches, subdivisions, and
business units.
And of course one of those divisions made
digital cameras in the ‘90s, but it seems
it was short-lived.
The DJ-1000, or DJ-1 as it was sometimes called,
was Mitsubishi’s one and only consumer digital
camera, one of the most unique of its kind
in 1997.
It was by far the smallest and lightest-weight
digital camera in the world when it was announced
at PC Expo ‘97 in New York, weighing in
at just 2.8 ounces or 80 grams.
But it also didn’t receive widespread distribution,
initially sold exclusively through T-Zone
stores in the US, of which there were only
two when the DJ-1000 hit the market.
It also saw distribution in Mitsubishi’s
home country of Japan as you’d expect, and
in Europe under the Umax brand where it was
known as the Umax PhotoRun.
But yeah, these days you’d be hard-pressed
to find anyone that remembers the DJ-1000
at all, much less owned one, so I was more
than happy to find this one new, complete in box.
Inside is a neatly-packed plastic bag full
of goodies, a cardboard tray with memory card
stuff, and finally the camera encased in bubble
wrap.
And man, I knew this thing was gonna be small,
but wow.
It’s really small!
It’s about the size of a deck of cards,
able to fit happily inside a shirt pocket.
Compare this to the most popular digital camera
of 1997, the Sony FD Mavica, and the difference
in size and weight is ridiculous.
Granted the Mavica used 3.5” floppy disks,
so maybe comparing it to the something like
the Fuji DS-7 is more appropriate, but still.
Even against that the DJ-1000 remains miniscule,
which is extra impressive considering the
Fuji uses SmartMedia cards and the Mitsubishi
uses CompactFlash.
Yeah that’s right, the thinnest camera on
the market used the thickest memory card format
on the market, go figure.
It came with this two megabyte memory card
in the box, easily the lowest capacity CF
card I’ve ever seen.
This version of the package also came with
this PCMCIA card adapter, ideal for laptop
users, though from what I’ve read Mitsubishi
also offered a desktop package with another adapter.
As for the bag of goodies you get the photo
retrieval software for both Windows 3.1 and
95 in English and Japanese, a very blue soft-cover
carrying case that holds that camera quite
snugly, a wrist strap that attaches to the
right-hand side of the camera, and several
bits of documentation in both English and
Japanese.
I especially dig this instruction booklet,
with its automobile service manual aesthetic
and a message saying that it is important
to you.
Although of all the cameras I’ve covered,
this is the ultimate in terms of simplicity,
so almost all of this information pertains
to using the DJ-1000 software for Windows.
And well, looking at the camera you can see
why.
There’s almost nothing going on here, you
just turn it on, point, and shoot.
That’s it!
No settings to set, no adjustments to adjust,
nothing but a power switch and a shutter button.
There’s not even a flash on the front, only
a passthrough window for the viewfinder and
its tiny camera lens, a 5.8mm fixed focus
lens with an aperture of 2.8 and an auto shutter
speed ranging from 1/60 to 1/15,000 of a second.
On top is the shutter button and the power
switch and along the bottom is where you insert
the memory card.
There is no tripod mount.
And then there’s the back of the camera
which is covered in a surprising amount of text.
Guess they didn’t have anywhere else to
put this stuff so why not, because there’s
not much going on back here.
Just the viewfinder, a spot to install two
triple-A batteries, and this pair of LEDs.
Since there’s no LCD screen and no sound
from the shutter, these are your only indications
that anything is going right or wrong with
the DJ-1000.
The top red LED lets you know if there’s
card activity or the battery is low, and the
bottom LED flashes green, red, or some combination
of the two to indicate memory card status.
When you power it on the lights all light
up and then the bottom LED turns green if
it’s ready to take a picture.
Press the shutter and you’ll see the top
LED turn red.
When you’re running low on memory the bottom
LED lights up green and red, then solid red
for the final shot, and eventually it’ll
flash red when it’s full.
The two megabyte card holds fifteen photos,
but it supports CompactFlash cards up to fifteen
megabytes, which provides an image capacity
of 113.
Interesting to note that one of these high-capacity
cards would’ve cost more than the camera
itself back in ‘97, at around $260 apiece.
And you really wanted a second card back then
because there is no way to delete photos from
the camera, so it’s either swap cards or
transfer your images to a computer.
Once you’ve taken some pictures it’s time
to develop them through a Windows PC.
And yes I do mean develop, since this stores
images in a proprietary file format exclusive
to this camera.
So even though it uses a standard CF card
that’s readable on a modern PC, you still
need the DJ-1000 Viewer software that it came
with.
Otherwise all you’ll see is a folder with
a bunch of DAT files, so open up the Viewer
application and run the Index command.
It’ll then read the photos, generate thumbnails,
and from here you can convert them into standard
bitmap images one by one.
So let’s take a look at them!
As usual with older cameras I enjoy taking
photos of things that would’ve been around
when it was new, in this case the late 1990s.
And yeah, for that purpose this camera fits
the bill wonderfully.
There’s something about that early consumer
digital camera aesthetic that charms the pants
off me no matter what.
And the DJ-1000 in particular has a look to
it that made it really fun to play with over
the past month or so.
The image quality isn’t too bad, though
the saturation is always low and the color
temperature skews to the cooler side.
It also has this particular type of spotty
pixelation and dithering that becomes more
apparent on vivid, solid colors, kinda looks
like an early FMV game.
Take a look at this comparison to my phone’s
camera and you get an idea of how it’s affecting things.
Makes it pretty exciting to take pictures
and get ‘em onto a PC so you can see what
unpredictable weirdness you ended up with.
Then there’s the way it handles specular
highlights and lighting of a certain range
in brightness, check it out.
You get these green streaks protruding downward
from anything bright enough, like reflecting
sunlight and white or shiny surfaces.
This alleyway shot in particular looks crazy,
it made it look like the building in the background
was casting a shadow but it was actually just
freaking out at the bright blue sky up against
the dark brick walls that turned purple.
And this one is probably my favorite, it was
taken sideway and then rotated, and with the
green trails from the reflecting light?
It looks like this car was speeding by, even
though it was standing still at the time.
I’ve seen similar things on other older
digital cameras without an infrared filter,
but this particular style of strange on the
DJ-1000 is just fascinating to me.
And yes I also tried it with a UV filter;
it made no difference!
There are also an assortment of image adjustments
you can perform through the Viewer application,
like color balance, contrast, and brightness.
My favorite though is “sherpness.”
Ermahgerd sherpness, it’s so sherp!
Then there’s resolution, which is a distinctly
separate function from resizing.
The DJ-1000 shoots using a 1/5-inch Sanyo
CCD that by default produces photos with a
resolution of 320x240 pixels.
But that’s just the “normal” resolution.
If you choose “high” resolution from the
Viewer program, it’ll re-open the photo
and output it at 504x378.
That’s an increase of 57%!
And yeah there’s a legit difference, it’s
not just upscaling the image.
This is a picture at normal resolution, and
here’s the exact same picture reprocessed
in high resolution.
It’s still low-res by today’s standards,
but it’s notably cleaner and reveals more
detail, and you even end up with an ever-so-slightly
higher field of view.
There’s also a bit more of that green light
on the left-hand side, adding one more quirk
to the unique visual quality of the DJ-1000.
And finally, the last thing I want to mention
is the fact that deleting photos is a bit weird.
Like, you’d think you’d be able to just
go into
Windows Explorer and delete them that way, right?
Nope!
I learned this the hard way, but
if you do
that then the camera will think the card is still full.
Apparently this is due to some kind of conflict
with how Windows 9x and above handles deleted
files and the indexing done through the camera
software.
I thought I’d just be able to reformat the
card and it’d be fine but that didn’t
work either, it just thought the card was
still full.
I had to put the images back onto the card,
go into the camera software and delete them
there, reindex the folder, and then it was
fine. What a pain.
And that is the Mitsubishi DJ-1000 digital
camera from 1997.
A somewhat annoying little thing but an absolutely
charming one nonetheless.
This is one of those situations where I adore
a piece of retro tech so much precisely because
it’s so confined in capabilities and finicky
in functionality.
I really enjoy the weird, grainy, off-color
images it produces, and I absolutely love
how it feels in the hands.
Its thin, lightweight metal construction is
just a pleasure to hold, and the fact that
it’s an obscure digital camera from 1997
makes it all the more fun.
Shame that Mitsubishi never made a successor,
but oh well.
At least we got the DJ-1000!
And if you enjoyed this digicam retrospective
then might I recommend a couple more?
You can also subscribe for more videos every
week here on LGR.
And as always I thank you very much for watching!
