As the first ever mass-market color digital camera, the Apple QuickTake 100 is probably the most unique camera in my collection. Its eye-catching form factor is more like binoculars than a regular camera, and it doesn't operate like a regular camera either. The fixed-focus and fixed-zoom prime lens, rangefinder-style optical tunnel viewfinder, complete lack of a graphic LCD, and very limited non-expandable photo storage (8 to 32 photos depending on selected resolution) makes it feel just like using a disposable camera. This shooting experience is definitely unique and a fun change of pace from other “regular” cameras, so I recommend picking one up if you happen to find one for a good price. You'll like it!

The QuickTake 100 has the most unique image quality of any digital camera that I've ever seen, at least partly due to its primitive debayering algorithm and limited color palette. You really need to just check out the photos section below and see for yourself. The best way to describe it is that its photos look like unused images that you'd find hidden deep within the directory structure of a 90s multimedia CD-ROM program. It's pretty wild.

As I mentioned earlier, there's not much to the operation of this camera - you just point and shoot. There's no focus, zoom, exposure adjustment, or even any way to review or delete individual photos. The only options you get are controlled by the four buttons surrounding the cute little segmented LCD on the back of the camera: you can set the flash to always-on, always-off, or auto, set the photo resolution to 640×480 or 320×240, enable a 10-second self-timer, or delete all of the photos on the camera. The LCD displays the current state of these settings, number of photos taken, and number of photos remaining at the currently selected resolution.

Selecting the resolution actually plays a big part in the shooting experience. Because the QuickTake can store only 8 photos at 640×480 or 32 photos at 320×240, I'm constantly switching between resolutions while out shooting to manage my remaining storage space. Most of the time I'll stick to 320×240, but if I want to shoot a highly-detailed or complex subject, I might need to switch to 640×480 and use up more of my precious storage space (one 640×480 shot takes up as much space as four 320×240 shots!). This constant balancing act between quality and quantity is really part of the fun of using the QuickTake.

The QuickTake 100 predates both USB and apparently removable flash storage, so retrieving photos off of it is a bit of a challenge if you don't have a classic Mac equipped with a DIN8 serial port. Fortunately, Apple released the QuickTake software for Windows as well as Mac, and building a DIN8-to-RS232 cable is straightforward. The software was written for 16-bit Windows though, so it won't run on modern 64-bit versions of Windows. This guide by gml3ff on GitHub contains a download for the Windows QuickTake software, links to where you can buy a compatible USB-to-RS232 adapter and premade DIN8 cable, and instructions on how to set up a Windows XP virtual machine on your modern computer if you don't have a Windows XP computer available. That premade DIN8 cable seemed to work for them, but the pinout didn't seem correct to me, so instead I built my own cable following the pinout included in this excellent article by colino, reposted below:

After building that cable, I found a USB-to-RS232 adapter in a box of mystery cables, installed the QuickTake software from gml3ff's guide onto my Sony Vaio PCV-W30 running Windows XP, and was able to retrieve photos from my QuickTake successfully!