Giroux Daguerreotype is world's first mass-produced camera, about to become the most expensive one too

If you thought that shooters like Olympus' E-P1 or Leica's M8 had old school aesthetics, think again. The real old school -- we're talking 1839 here -- was all about wooden boxes and brass lens protrusions, as you can see above. The double box design of the Daguerreotype lets you achieve focus by moving the smaller inner box away from the front-mounted 15-inch lens. Exposure times can take up to half an hour, though, so you might wanna budget for a sturdy tripod as well. Speaking of budget, if you know the meaning of the word you're not probably not the target audience here, as a May auction in Vienna is set to start at €200,000 ($280,000), with predictions placing the final sale price closer to €700,000 ($980,000).

[The G Posted Jan 29th 2010 8:42AM]

This is an amazing piece of history.

[ehisforadam Posted Jan 29th 2010 8:47AM]

A camera more expensive than a Leica!? This calls for another special edition!

[sourav Posted Jan 29th 2010 1:53PM]

@ehisforadam I always though Hasselblads are lot more expensive than Leica.

[duruguay Posted Jan 29th 2010 2:48PM]

@ehisforadam
Wait until you see the price of the lenses.

[MarkB Posted Jan 29th 2010 8:56AM]

It looks nice and all, but where's the slot for the SD card?

[Bratan Posted Jan 29th 2010 9:20AM]

@MarkB
If under SD you mean Squirrel Driven, then yes it's included. Capable of 16 exposures on a charge of 5 hazelnuts.

[MarkB Posted Jan 29th 2010 9:23AM]

@Bratan *ONLY* 5?! It' amazing what they can do with technology these days!

[rekkid Posted Jan 29th 2010 9:53AM]

@MarkB This is an "old-skool" camera, it takes a floppy disk

[choco Posted Jan 29th 2010 6:47PM]

@MarkB
LOL.
Whats ironic, though, is that the photos taken on this thing are still around and still viewable after all this time. (even if the glass negative breaks you can still see the image on it). One teeny scratch on your HD, or corrupted storage media and bye bye x-hundred photos.

[kiyu727 Posted Jan 29th 2010 9:06AM]

No xenon, no purchase





/s

[sweet greggo Posted Jan 29th 2010 9:39AM]

Hopefully you will be able to do video on teh Daguerreotype 3G.

[newone Posted Jan 29th 2010 9:45AM]

This is already worlds most expensive camera. A similar was sold for about 500 000$ a few years back.

[Epon Posted Jan 29th 2010 9:56AM]

What?! No YouTube mode?!

[One Love Posted Jan 29th 2010 10:31AM]

Step 1. Cut a hole in box.
Step 2. Put your xxxxx in a box.

[pinktech Posted Jan 29th 2010 11:14AM]

Does it shoot RAW?

[RitchieTheBrit Posted Jan 29th 2010 1:29PM]

@pinktech - As RAW as it gets!

[bolezhinkov Posted Jan 29th 2010 12:51PM]

omg its old. insert ironic comment!!

[brucie2010 Posted Jan 29th 2010 3:16PM]

Does it take Full HD video? :)

[Krahnos Posted Jan 29th 2010 5:11PM]

Daguerreotypes are very very cool. It's like having your picture taken on silver. I assume this is an original model, otherwise I'd have trouble believing anyone would drop $1M on one.