In the world of digital cameras, very rarely will you find the combination of practicality, convenience, affordability and performance. For a long time now, I have known about the practicality of the Sony Mavica MVC-CD400 in the corners and confines of library archiving and cataloguing. Later on, I have learned much more thanks to two friends respectively working in the archives of a religious organization and the police headquarters. For sure, the Mavica has come very handy. After all of these information-gathering opportunities, I set out to have a closer contact with this camera.

No more will you have to be shocked by the exorbitant price of CompactFlash, SD, Memorey Stick and other media or memory cards. If you are interested in purchasing this Sony Mavica, you will be glad to find out that it comes equipped with a storage device that is dirt-cheap. Yes, some of you may explain the high costs of the memory sticks, CompactFlash and others by the fact they are reusable. No matter what, the cameras that have these media will never be able to outperform the Mavica in the areas of convenience and affordability of storage devices and platform. Consider for a minute that a three-inch CD-RW costs about a few dollars. This means you can always buy a whole package and take with you on your vacation. All you need to worry about is an extra set of infoLithium batteries on hand. Besides, most computers can read these CD-Rs or CD-RWs. Compatibility with all personal computers is one of the great appeals of this camera. Practically all computers will be able to read these images.

Sony offers CD-R-based digital cameras as in the Mavica

Go ahead and ask anybody who owns a digital camera. You will find out that storing these beautiful and memorable pictures in their computer's hard drive can ultimately cripple their system. The point is that pictures consume lots of space. The next thing you will notice is that a computer that used to be pretty fast will remind you of the one you had just replaced. With the Mavica, you can record images to the 3-inc CD-R discs. The latter cost about $4.99 after rebates. The Memorex CD-R 50-pack falls in this category. The Memorex CD-RW discs cost a bit more. At $10.00, you can get a decent pack. If you shop around, you can get some great bargains all over the place. With 156 MB of storage capacity, you can't go wrong with the CD-Rs. No deals can beat t he CD-RW discs which can be erased and reused as many times as you want. My advice would be to store on the CD-R discs images you want to keep for archives (i.e for ever). On the CD-RW discs, you can store ephemeral images. The convenience of these CDs makes an investment in this camera worth every cent of it.

Traveling to foreign countries becomes much easier. You won't have to be worried about finding a computer to download your pictures. As long as you have enough batteries or a charger, all you will need to do is to get a new CD-RW and put it in, you are in business again. It's shown that the CD can store up to 1000 VGA still images and more than 90 minutes of MPEG video. That's a lot of bonus you will get from this camera. Which other camera on the market gives you so much freedom away from your home computer?

Let's take a closer look at some of the features of this camera

The Sony Mavica comes equipped with a 3x optical zoom lens (Carl Zeiss Vario Sonnar); Image Format: JPEG and TIFF; LCD size: 2.5, MP=4. If you are looking for another one, we will also inform you that Sony has the 2.1 megapixel MVC-CD250.

Recommendations

If I did not receive a top Kodak digital camera as a gift, I would consider purchasing a Sony Mavica. This camera is very practical as it uses media that are readily available at an affordable price. You won't have to have a heart attack if you want to upgrade your card. You are asked to pay according to how much ram you want to purchase. When the time comes for me to replace the Kodak that I currently use, I will definitely consider a Mavica. At work, I will also encourage the purchase of some Sony cameras to make available to others in the company.

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You may consider reading about the Olympus C-750 Ultra Zoom



Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 575
This Camera is a Good Choice if You Want Something... Flexible Enough for Enthusiasts