300
The first ever digital camera, built in 1975 by Eastman Kodak engineer Steve Sasson. It weighed 8 pounds (~3.6kg) and recorded 100x100 pixel photos to a cassette tape.
(static01.nyt.com)
More info:
- An image from the original digital camera on the prototype digital playback system, accodirg to NYTimes.
- Stephen Sasson of Eastman Kodak Invents the Digital Camera : History of Information
- Wikipedia: Steven Sasson - First self-contained digital camera
- Kodak’s First Digital Moment (Lens blog - NYTimes - WebArchive)
Tapes can save A LOT of information digitally. I have some tapes from 1990s in digital8 and each one was 8-10gb of raw data when I digitalized them. The quality was insane. Ay the same time, 00s digital cameras came with mini dvds on SDs with max of 1-2gb, so they had to compress them in lossy formats
Plus, the TV used to display the photo may also be helping it look better since old TVs had thin black lines alternating between the display lines (scan lines).
This has the effect of smoothing out a lot of the more jarring edges of pixelation in old video games, for example.