Handheld electronic cameras, in the sense of a device meant to be  carried and used like a handheld film camera, appeared in 1981 with the  demonstration of the Sony Mavica . This is not to be confused with the later  cameras by Sony that also bore the Mavica name. This was an analog  camera, in that it recorded pixel signals continuously, as videotape  machines did, without converting them to discrete levels; it recorded  television-like signals to a 2 x 2 inch "video floppy".  In essence it was a video movie camera that recorded single frames, 50  per disk in field mode and 25 per disk in frame mode. The image quality  was considered equal to that of then-current televisions.

Analog electronic cameras do not appear to have reached the market  until 1986 with the Canon RC-701. Canon demonstrated a prototype of  this model at the 1984 Summer Olympics, printing the images in the Yomiuri Shimbun,  a Japanese newspaper. In the United States, the first publication to  use these cameras for real reportage was USA Today, in its coverage of  World Series baseball. Several factors held back the widespread  adoption of analog cameras; the cost ,  poor image quality compared to film, and the lack of quality affordable  printers. Capturing and printing an image originally required access to  equipment such as a frame grabber, which was beyond the reach of the  average consumer. The "video floppy" disks later had several reader  devices available for viewing on a screen, but were never standardized  as a computer drive.

The early adopters tended to be in the news media, where the cost  was negated by the utility and the ability to transmit images by  telephone lines. The poor image quality was offset by the low  resolution of newspaper graphics. This capability to transmit images  without a satellite link was useful during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and the first Gulf War in 1991.

US government agencies also took a strong interest in the still  video concept, notably the US Navy for use as a real time air-to-sea  surveillance system.

The first analog camera marketed to consumers may have been the  Canon RC-250 Xapshot in 1988. A notable analog camera produced the same  year was the Nikon QV-1000C,  designed as a press camera and not offered for sale to general users,  which sold only a few hundred units. It recorded images in greyscale, and the quality in newspaper print was equal to film cameras. In appearance it closely resembled a modern digital single-lens reflex camera. Images were stored on video floppy disks.