I was an apple dealer in the early mid 90s and sold the cowboy shit out of newtons and QuickTake cameras. I still have my old newton.

Our family had gotten a Performa 550 in Novermber '93 when I was 7 and dad saw the Quicktake 100 the following year and got it for himself as a Christmas present. Later it became mine when he upgraded to a Panasonic. I remember taking it on our roadtrip to Disneyland and using my used Powerbook Duo 2300c I'd saved up for and bought myself, so I was able to download the pictures over that Din-8 Serial and use our Dial-up AOL from the hotels and we sent pictures to family and friends. That was so cutting edge for the time that some of them didn't understand and had to be convinced that we were still gone on vacation lol.

It’s actually amazing how far we have come with digital photography

Useless, fun fact, I work in a TV broadcasting center for the US federal government. No idea why, but we have one of the Apple QuickTake cameras in our storage. Our tax dollars at one point paid for that 😂

This is the most inside-out looking shirt ever made.

I’m starting to think that maybe your favourite robot vacuum is just whichever one’s cheque cleared last.

My parents had a 2000ish version of a camera exactly like this, non-Apple but 32 pics, USB connected, and ran on AA. Honestly one of the best cameras made, the quality was incredible considering, and it was so much fun to just run around with as a kid and take pictures. I’m impressed with the changes made between this camera and that one, really makes our current accessibility to photography something to value.

I remember my Dad's work having one and me being allowed to, "get creative," one summer day with it, and basically the same period correct Mac. My teen self went wild. The edgy shooting angles. The overblown editing. The 90's asthetic was XTREME! When it was all said and done, I got to print out a handful of my creations (in black and white) on a LaserWriter. Thirty years later I realize my Dad was just trying to keep me out of his hair while he worked, and I enjoyed a summer day off from school. Still, it was fun, and a memory I keep with me. Edit: Basically, beside their graphic design person, I was the only other person who figured out all the hardware and software. I just learned it by fiddling around. I remember my Dad kind of being blown away by my, "tech savvy." Edit #2: I don't remember it being this slow... I'm sure it was, but this was so hi-tec!

The QuickTake software works a LOT better on a PowerPC mac. In middle school we has one of these in our Digital Imaging class ( it was brand new and i can't believe the teacher actually let us run around the school with it). The computers we were using were PowerMac 6100s and they did things a lot faster that the one you are using.

Great video… but… whenever a young person does a nostalgic ‘olden days’ review, it’s always in contrast to today’s technology. Because you might not have been around, and definitely would not have been working and using this technology it’s understandable. I’m not criticizing or complaining… it would have been like me in the 1980s comparing an electric train to a steam train with my grandparents, so I get it. It’s normal. To understand what I mean, think what’s happening with AI at the moment. That’s what it was like seeing this for the first time in the 1990s... Magic. I was designing magazines, newspapers and books at the time and would have to drum or flatbed scan a print or 35mm slide to use it in my artwork files. This was after waiting 24 to 48 hours to get the film processed, collected and scanned. So being able to shorten that process was nothing short of amazing. The Apple Mac was the only computer that could be used for desktop publishing. It too was also magic… before using it I was using ink pens, grid board, wax machines, bromide machines, French curves and external type setters… laying out artwork for printers, all taking days and days to achieve. So the ‘wait time’ you endured for comedic relief (of course it’s funny now, I agree with you) was like using a Time Machine at the time… it was blazingly fast compared to what we had at the time. Of course today I’m using all the latest gear… seeing this through your eyes was great and reminded me of how far we have all come! Awesome.

To be fair I had a QuickTake 100, and it came with rechargeable batteries and an Apple branded AA Battery charger, so the fact it drank batteries wasn't that big a deal. Incidentally, I love how the Mac I'm on right now actually auto-corrected QuickTake to capitalise the T :D

11:53 Apple *Desktop* Bus, not *Display* Bus.

2:56 that vintage macworld footage is amazing.

I remember stumbling upon an old photo album in an SD card from an old digital camera. So excited and opened up only to find... something? Is it a bridge? I think that’s a face... everything is so pink?

I actually used one of these at work in 1996 to take pictures for our very early internal website.

omg the bit waiting on PhotoFlash was gold

That's where the QuickTake name comes from on iOS's camera now!! Never knew this was a thing...

Ah…deep thoughts with Quinn at 21:00 lol. Great look at the QuickTake.

ADB was Apple Desktop Bus. But I think this used serial not ADB. Nice video.

Cool video, but the scanline on the CRT kills me, please set the shutter speed to match the refresh rate

The responsiveness of old Mac OS UI seems like responsiveness of modern web sites to me. So much time passed, but we still have to wait.

I think part of your issue with the software being slow is that, while adorable, the Color Classic was awful even compared to its contemporaries.

My dad brought one of these home from work and I got to play with it for a few days. My overriding memory is that, even then, it seemed to take a very long time to do anything and shooting a picture in your room at night was a study in noise. But while sluggish and quite horrible in image quality, it was still pretty magical to take a picture and then be able to look at it on the ol' Powerbook a minute later.

EPS = Encapsulated PostScript.

19:15 -> Actually, you get your full 1000 Gigabytes of storage that you paid for, Windows just happens to display it in "Gibibytes", which leads to less capacity shown in absolute numbers. If Windows wanted to be precise they wouldn't display it as "GB" but instead as "GiB", but they just don't care.

wow you make me feel old, I remember using these at the time. Feel even older when people don't know or are confused about ADB, Localtalk, teleport (an EXCELLENT NAME) , EPS and maybe PDF (Printer Description Files!!) Anyway, make me happy and say "excellent" in every video, something makes me smile when you say that word (as an Englishman!) :-)

I used one of these to do photo illustrations for FamilyPC magazine. Good times.

Such a great video that shows how amazing the progress in digital photography is. Can't believe how slow the whole process on the computer took 😂 Thanks for the effort you put into making this video man! 👍

My family had a Sony Mavica MVC-FD73 with the floppy drive storage. It took really nice photos for back then.

I bought a QuickTake 100 back in ‘94. It was a pretty cool device for the time, in that very brief window where camera makers got a little creative with the form factor instead of making them look just like film cameras. One convenient thing about it was it could be powered with the same AC adapter the PowerBook 1xx series used. The software also let you control the camera from a connected computer, with a duplicate of the camera’s UI on the monitor. I assume that would be useful in a setup where you were taking ID photos in an office or something.

You made a rather significant mistake in the beginning of the video when you said the QuickTake use the Apple Display Bus (ADB) to transfer pictures to the Mac. First, there was no such thing as the “Apple Display Bus”, though there was the “Apple Dekstop Bus (ADB)” which was used only for low-speed devices like Keyboards, Mice/tracballs, and other input devices. On the Mac, recognizable as 4-pin DIN connector. The port the QuickTake actually used on Macs was the Mac serial port which also used a DIN connector but it’s a Mini-DIN 8 pin connector carrying RS-422 signals. The Quadra AV and Powermacs had an updated serial port type knowns as GeoPort (and marked as such) that’s compatible with standard Mac RS-422 Serial port devices, but also supported special GeoPort modems that drew their power solely from the Mac via an additional 9th pin providing 5v DC. The Mac Serial port looks exactly the same as the Printer/AppleTalk port as they both where RS-422 serial ports and in fact they could be used interchangeably for Printers and Modems/serial devices despite being labeled Serial and Printer, with the exception of GeoPort modems which could only be used on GeoPort labeled Serial Port. It’s possible to use RS-232 (25-Pin serial D-Port) Serial devices on a classic Mac with RS-422, with the appropriate adaptor. This is why your QuickTake 150 could also be used with a PC with RS-232 adaptor kit for the QuickTake. Note: I see you sort of corrected yourself at the end but still QuickTake uses serial not AppleTalk though it’s the Printer Port doubles as an AppleTalk port.

excellent video quinn. really enjoyed this one

Hey buddy, after the latest iOS update, some iPhone shortcut automation you shared in your previous video seem to have stopped working for me. The new update must have changed something that broke compatibility. I found your previous shortcut video incredibly helpful, so I was wondering if you could make an updated video going over shortcuts and automations that are working properly with the latest update? Your guides are always so clear and easy to follow.

12:40 Ok, big factual error in this one, the sensor in the Apple QuickTake was nowhere near the size of an APS sensor. It had an 8mm lens giving the equivalent FOV of 50mm, which is a crop factor of 6.25x. That makes it a tiny 1/2.6" type sensor, only a little bigger than the smartphone sensor shown in the diagram. Edit: apparently it had a little area masked off around the edges, so it was probably a common 1/2.5” sensor using a 1/2.6" capture area.

You should add that you have an ad for a robot vacuum in the title. I think that's your main genre now lol

How much ram is in that Color Classic? Also was 32-bit addressing enabled in settings? If not that may explain why it was so slow because it was having to swap everything to disk.

I just love watching the struggles working with old software and hardware. awesome job!

I bought one of these when they went on sale, I’d previously had a Logitech B&W camera that was even more of a toy. I only remember taking 2 photos, one of which I emailed to a friend and I was quite amazed at the ability to email a photo.

Brings back so many memories! Not that I could afford that camera, but I certainly lusted after them. And really just that whole era of computing. Slow as can be, but really amazing for its day!

That PhotoFlash launch reminds me of how Stronghold used to launch on the family PC back in the day. It took literally 5 minutes to load into the game and the opening cinematic performed in seconds per frame - but the game itself ran pretty smoothly.

Dude this is a museum of a video 😂

Love seeing this coverage of old Apple tech. For all their mistakes in the 90s in fairness the QuickTake was way ahead of its time.

At my first corporate job around 97-98, they had one of these. I remember seeing it and thinking how amazing it was.

Never would have guessed this was the first color digital camera. Really cool!

I remember on one of the "OG" Photoshop programs that on a Mac G3, in like 1997' that there was an option to run additional virtual memory. Not sure what specific advantage there was in turning up the VRam... but, it I'm almost wondering if that is necessary to rotate an image?

I got my hands on a Handycam back in 1998-99, and included with the packaging was a brochure for a Mavica. It was a chunky, square unit with a floppy disk as storage drive. I guess they never stopped using magnetic disks, even when they switched to truly digital sensors.

Not a person who writes comments, but this video especially is just great in every possible way. Thanks for everything :) Greetings from Germany

Love the side-by-sides. Soon us vintage camera hunters will be praising QuickTake color. But in al seriousness it looked pretty good for 1996.

Question: Do you like the "look" of the QuickTake 150, as a throwback vintage type filter?

the fact that you messed up RS488 for AppleTalk and then called it ADB and then explained it with the words for the wrong ADB is the perfect representation of how crazy all the ports and things were on computers back then

As an Apple developer in the 90s, Apple gave us one of these to see what we could do with it. I took it to a family wedding, and it sort of blew people's minds - it was the first digital camera anyone had ever seen. However, there was no quick way to show people what you had taken, no way to share the images with them, no website you could publish them to, nothing you could really DO with it. So once the wow factor wore off, people were a bit nonplussed as to what it was for. (On the other hand, people were used to waiting for photographs, but in the end the generally unsharable images meant waiting indefinitely, and then forgetting all about it). That's the trouble with the future arriving piecemeal - you need a lot more of it in place to make it useful. It's no surprise it was a non-starter, it was just a bit too soon.

Connecting it to a Color Classic Mac instead of a modern work-around was icing on the cake. So cool.

Great review, and funny. Never really appreciated how slow computers were back then, and how easy it is to capture and use a photo today!

Around 1999ish, at my primary school (Australian equivalent of elementary) when I was in year 3, every Thursday we would go over to the high school for computer class. In there was a room that had lots of strange looking computers that looked very different to the one that was at home, and indeed in class. They all had a coloured little apple on them, and said "Macintosh". I remember looking in there one day, and there was a shelf with about 6 boxes on them that were all sealed, except for one. They were all Quick take cameras, brand new and unopened! I looked at it thinking it looked so cool, but never got to try it. The sad thing was, the high school closed and I subsequently learned that they all sat in that room for nearly 2 decades, and only recently all just got thrown away....

Thanks for reminding us of how much we used to wait for computers to do their stuff back in the day.

I remember I lusted for this camera back then along with everything mac back then like the Quadra and Color classic, LCIII, etc etc... Good time to be alive, apple was on a roll.

I was gifted a used QuickTake 100 as I was heading off to college in 1997. It came in handy a couple of times for putting together storyboards for my video production classes. In 2000, I used it to create an ObjectVR of my truck. Cutting-edge stuff for back then.

@Snazzy Labs Hey man I ran into a bit of an issue after typing in a terminal command I got from one of your other videos, wondering if you might know the fix? in terminal, I typed in % defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float 0; defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -int 0 ;killall Dock in order to make the dock show/hide faster. I liked it but decided I liked the default transition animation better so decided to set it back to default. I set it to 0.5 as you suggested. What happens now is the mouse pointer will bein the dock area for a few seconds before appearing and the transition animation is gone. It now just appears instantly after 2-3 seconds rather than smoothly coming up from the bottom. Do you know how I could fix this? I restarted the laptop and its still doing it , and the sliding up animation is gone and takes a couple seconds to appear even at 0.1-0.5

Brilliant video. Had no idea this was a thing. Great stuff.

Ah the Color Classic! That brought back some fond memories! I did try out a QuickTake 100 around y2k or so, but it ate batteries at a ferocious rate, and all for 640x480. It was a neat idea, and Apple’s industrial design was excellent, but I think it was hobbled by available technology of the day.

How long did the software take to load in the end?

The photography montage was really fun. The comparison shots were great, too!

Eufy sucks as a company btw.

I love that just spent almost 30 minutes of my day watching a video on a product I will never own or see in person. It's impressive to see the camera improvements from where we started with that Kodak & the Sony to the QuickTake and I loved the comparison to the current gen iPhone. Also side note that load time was crazyyyyy. Would be interested to know the volume change between the original Kodak cam to something like the iPhones cam, must be like x10000 times smaller and to answer your question; no, I haven't watched Lord of the Rings too..

You gave us your quick hot take on the QuickTake. This video has some high stakes!

Great review, thanks !!! I have a QT100 as collectible, but sometime still using the QT200 because it is more usable with the screen and memory card (a 2MB smartmedia that I read on an iBook Clamshell/O9 with USB CameraMate Reader).

But... what did it fail exactly? Too slow? I miss the final conclusion talk. Poor program and Mac problems? Too much work? Poor quality? Well that was expected for early cameras.

Such a fun era. My first digital picture taken of me was with a 100.

I really like this style of video, really cool

The camera I didn't knew it exists. Its nice to learn a bit of tech history and its especially nice to see old computers, and even more old Apple ones since I'm not familiar with them and they are kind of cool.

In University I remember having time to make tea when opening SPSS

4:01 oh wow... that was a very good lead in to the sponsor. so good I watched the lead in 4 times! My only criticism is that your outfit changed.

I remember we had these in my middle school computer lab.

28:13 picture with the Quicktake 150 is a vibe

Hey Snazzy, what’s that hole above the display on your Mac Classic? It’s not a camera, but is it a microphone yet? Or an ambient light sensor? What would 1980s people have put in there 🤔

My dad was an amateur photographer back in the 80/90s and he would spend a weekend all day working on his Macintosh with photo editing. Yeah it was slow but in the day that was fast and is why the media companies bought Macintoshes.

I remember being fascinated with one of these back in my schools Mac-Lab

Man the new history vids are fire!

you have such a good personality

What brand was that flannel/utility shirt?

I had one! Loved it! I think in high resolution mode I could take 16 pictures! Was so cool. Sadly, they used some weird proprietary quicktime codec and now I can't see any of my old pictures! Do any of you guys know how to get them open in this day and age?

thanks for this. reminded me I still have a stack of QuickTake 100 images from 1994 that needed processing so I could import them into Photos!

very cool. thanks for sharing!

Omg!!! I remember this from high school. I remember using this in a class called Computer Applications. The program to open these images was crap. The program had a filter to removed fluorescent lighting. If there wasn’t enough physical memory, forget using virtual memory or even changing the application heap, it would crash the app and the computer 🤣🤣🤣 Oh how far we have come in technology. Thanks for showing this. Great trip down memory road. 👍👍

Love these style videos.

I have a QuickTake 100 and 150, I bought my 100 at VCF Midwest for like $20 and after I located the software I discovered it suffers from a major problem with these cameras where all the photos appear green. I was bummed until I found a 150 for like $40 locally which was crazy. I scooped it up and it takes perfect photos and had a bunch of photos from the 90s on it. I pull my photos off with my Macintosh IIci

There were a lot of these QuickTake cameras in public schools. If I remember correctly, there was a hefty discount if they also bought a PowerBook, too.

it really is fun seeing u play with retro tech. u can't deny it, such old trinkets "while being very primitive" had and still have their charm. i wouldn't buy anything like that anytime, but i'll definitely enjoy a throwback review

I think it had serial port RS422 (like all macs at the time) and not ADB

I didn’t expect to get a random street photography video in the middle of a snazzy labs vid. Even got the music right lol

i want more existential conversations with snazzy labs

I wonder why they bothered making a color camera when the intended use case was for pictures to go in B&W publications?

Is there a missing graphic at 2:58?

8:50 that looks like some device for shooting closer things, like a close up portrait or something Magnifying lens: macro Flash diffuser: eats up quite a bit of power but softens the light at close distance Viewfinder line thing: tells you to offset your composition at said distance

Looking forward to watching this, as a pro photographer I don’t use my canon 5d mark iv much anymore and use my 15 pro max

I’d say a color classic was not the best Mac of the period to use. The CPU and Ram were severely limited by the LC lineage of the platform. Your best bet would be to use an Apple Mac IIsi or even a Quadra 605. Those are all so much faster then the color classic

Back in 1994-1995, my high school offered a "Multimedia" computer class. It was mainly an Apple HyperCard class fueled by the extreme popularity of the Myst game. In this class, we had the ability to check out and take home a QuickTake 100. I remember thinking that the camera was neat, but way too expensive considering the poor user experience and image quality. At the time, I honestly didn't think digital photography had any real future. Guess I was wrong!

damn, I always like how ccd sensors look.

When I tried a few years ago, Darktable on Linux was able to open images from my QuickTake 150. Might be useful if you don’t have, or want to use , the original software. Strangely, it seemed to treat them as RAW images, which I’m fairly sure they’re not. I feel it did do a better job of decoding them than the original software though, despite the crazy CMYK sensor.

We had one of these at uni back in 1998 and yeah, quality was arse in comparison to a decent flatbed scan of a typical 6x8” film print. But it was a vaguely affordable digital camera for the time. A few years prior I’d managed to get my mitts on a Kodak DCS420, a 1.5Mpx modified Nikon F90X SLR, and that was way better even though the resolution wasn’t much different. For $12,000 though, it’d wanna be.