Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
63,278
30,337



Former Apple employee Tim Holmes recently discovered a set of photographs taken on an Apple QuickTake camera -- one of the first digital cameras made -- from the night Steve Jobs returned to Apple after it purchased NeXT.

Holmes notes in the description that the colors are incorrect in the photos because of the poor quality of digital cameras in 1996, and that Jobs' jacket was actually black, not purple.

jobsandchahil.jpg
Working late on a Friday on December 20th at Apple Computer as Mac OS Evangelist, my manager came rushing past my office door saying to come with him to Town Hall, Apple's theater for announcements, company meetings and the like. It was clearly not a company meeting...
Joining Jobs' in the image above was Satjiv Chahil, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing at the time.

Article Link: Former Apple Employee Rediscovers Photos from Steve Jobs' First Day Back at Apple
 

SamGabbay

macrumors 6502a
Oct 15, 2011
757
868
Might as well be black & white....

attachment.php
 

Attachments

  • jobsandchahil.jpg
    jobsandchahil.jpg
    45.2 KB · Views: 42,681

John.B

macrumors 601
Jan 15, 2008
4,192
705
Holocene Epoch
From Tim Holmes' Flickr page:

"I tend to take a camera everywhere, so I had my Apple QuickTake camera, which Steve Jobs killed within the year. The colors are way off due to the poor quality of digital cameras in 1996, Steve's jacket was black in real life."

Makes you wonder why Steve Jobs would kill off a digital camera that rendered black as a vivid shade of purple. ;)
 

towg

macrumors regular
Jul 9, 2012
244
18
Cardiff
I dont believe for one second that Apple sold a camera that made purple into black. And thats from a photographers point of view.
 

medazinol

macrumors 6502
Jul 17, 2002
267
382
Los Angeles
I met Gil Amelio in Toronto when he was doing a tour for Apple dealers shortly before they bought NeXT. He was a bit of a bozo, he didn't know what he was really doing.
The good thing that came out of the luncheon though was his quote that I still use today: "Software is not like wine. It doesn't get better sitting on a shelf".
 

ArtOfWarfare

macrumors G3
Nov 26, 2007
9,544
6,042
The wall in the background looks like a fairly dark color, but we know it couldn't have actually been black because then it would look bright purple. What color should that wall be?

Edit: What color is Gil wearing on the right? His jacket came out black...
 

liavman

macrumors 6502
Sep 22, 2009
462
0
"..From September 1988 to February 1997, Mr. Chahil served in various capacities, including Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing and the Founding General Manager of the New Media, Internet and Entertainment division.."

Interesting Mr. Chahil who is seen with Jobs in that picture left Apple at the low point and missed out on all the upside and all the fun. Just an observation!!
 

SoAnyway

macrumors 6502
May 10, 2011
477
183
I went through the set and seen what appears to be other [former] employees posting comments. I'm wondering if these were meant for the public as a whole or for those in the Apple inner circle. Either way, good to have seen these before they're private.
 

Anonymous Freak

macrumors 603
Dec 12, 2002
5,559
1,245
Cascadia
From Tim Holmes' Flickr page:



Makes you wonder why Steve Jobs would kill off a digital camera that rendered black as a vivid shade of purple. ;)

Wow, yeah.

Although mine still works, and it has never done that. Maybe an early firmware version?

----------

The wall in the background looks like a fairly dark color, but we know it couldn't have actually been black because then it would look bright purple. What color should that wall be?

Edit: What color is Gil wearing on the right? His jacket came out black...

If you look at "black" clothing under *VERY* bright light, it will often have a tint to it - blue and brown are the most common.

Likewise, they have tint in infrared. That tint is generally much greater than the visible-spectrum tint.

Early digital cameras generally did not have good IR filters. With no IR filter, you see into the infrared, so the IR tint shows up *WAY* more prominently than you would possibly see in real life. In real life, these probably had a very slight brown tint. The sensor doesn't quite know what to make of the extra (infrared) light coming in, so it overloads one or more of the subpixels. In this case, the blue and red ones - causing a purple tint.

Amateur astrophotographers (people who take pictures of stars,) sometimes remove the iR filter from their new/fancy digital camera because it increases the sensitivity - and stars emit IR quite well, too. I've never tried it (my IR-filter-removed camera died last year,) but I would wager that a camera so-modified would take similar pictures.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.