Christophe Jacquet

Retro-digital photography: using the Kodak DC50

Kodak DC50

Kodak released the DC50 in 1995. It is a 290K pixel (756x504) digital camera, with a 3x zoom. I recently came across one of these, which is still functional. This article explains how to retrieve the pictures on a modern computer, using a custom serial cable. (Photo by Ingo Kwiat, CC-BY-NC.)

Note that this article applies to the Kodak DC40, Kodak DC50 and Kodak DC120.

Transfering photos: cable and software

The DC50 has an internal memory. To transfer the pictures onto a computer, we need a special serial cable. On the camera, the connector used is a 8-pin Mini-DIN, also used for serial ports in older Macintoshes.

We need to build a male-Mini-DIN-8 to female-D-SUB-9 cable. The pin labels of the connectors are as follows:

Mini-DIN 8D-SUB 9
Mini-DIN 8
Mini-DIN 8, front view of the male connector
D-SUB 9
D-SUB 9, front view of the female connector

What about the pinout of the cable? Various pinouts are available on various websites; they are all wrong to some extent. Here is the (very simple) pinout used, that works for me:

Mini-DIN 8 pinsD-SUB 9 pinsRS-232 function
52RX data
33TX data
45Ground

Leave all the other pins unconnected.

With that cable and Kodak’s official software (still available archived website) one can download pictures from the camera. Works like a charm on Windows XP, with a serial-to-USB adapter[1].

I was able to use speeds up to 115200 bit/s.

Example

Here is the kind of pictures this camera can take (click for original size):

2012117_DC50.jpg

Color-balance is… perfectible.

Note

[1] Tested with a plain USB-to-serial adapter, based around a FTDI FT-232R.

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