This is More Successful at Being a Conversation Piece, than a Digital Camera.
Written: Jun 18 '01
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Pros: Records directly to CD-R. Also doubles as CD burner, and video camera.
Cons: More expensive than two separate superior items would be.
The Bottom Line: I don't think it is worth its current price.
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| grimjack2's Full Review: Sony Mavica MVC-CD1000 Digital Camera |
A friend who had bought one of the earliest digital cameras I ever saw, always bought the newest and best possible digital camera he could every few years. Today, he is still raving about his Sony Mavica camera after almost three years. This is very impressive to me since I think digital cameras have improved more on a month by month basis than almost any other piece of consumer electronics. When he got it in early 1998 there weren't 32+ Meg compact flash memory cards, or Sony memory sticks readily available. And before Win 98, USB never really worked. Therefore transferring pictures from all digital cameras to the computer was usually a long, slow chore. The Sony Mavica tried to change this by allowing you to record your pictures to 1.44 Meg floppy disks stored inside the camera! I was amazed that this even worked as well as it did, and was impressed that this camera seemed almost idiot proof.
Today it is easy to laugh at it, if for no other reason than because of how long it takes to write the file to the floppy disk. Not to mention the limitation of only being able to store a few medium quality pictures per disk. Well, finally the successor has come out. Only, instead of saving the images to floppy disks, The Mavica MVC CD1000 records onto miniature CD-Rs. There are no rewritable versions of these discs available yet, but you can continuously add pictures to them without the usual hassles of closing a burn session and such.
The CDs are supposed to hold 1000 640x480 JPEG pictures, or 160 images at 1600x1200 pixels. They are approximately 156 Megs in raw data size. Tiffs are also possible, but I didn't try that, having no use for them. The reason I was using the camera was to take the kinds of pictures that you want to send through email, post on a web site, and see on a monitor. I don't need to necessarily see them on a printer.
The camera also saves short digital clips, in MPEG format. It seems to only want to save no more than 1 minute clips, probably because it isn't burning them on the fly, but only when you've finished shooting. I couldn't find out how much internal memory this camera has.
Amazingly, the camera also works as an external CD burner through the USB cable. I am a little weary of external USB burners, but if you want to burn some data to a mini CD-R, you can now do it. The camera comes with a little plastic ring that fits around the mini CD-Rs so they fit inside a regular CD drive to read your data. I'm not sure why I'd use this as a burner, but it is a nice extra feature to have.
I thought the pictures looked great. A 2.1 Megapixel is more than enough for what I want, even though there are several 3 Megapixel cameras available now.
The video is only so-so. I don't think the images were any bigger than 160x120 in size. I have yet to see a camera that could take decent video, and this is no exception. At best they work as brief little email attachments. I would never try to capture any 'special moments' with it. I took a few pictures from outside looking into a dark shadowy room, and the images from inside looked very good. It handles low light, and light variations far better than the last digital camera I used.
I said before how slow it felt to save a picture to its ancestor's floppy disks. Well, these pictures seem to be saved in about 3-4 seconds, at 1600 size. It still seemed to take over a second for a 640x480 picture to be saved, which is too slow to sometimes catch an action shot while it is happening. I found it very strange that you are unable to preview a photo before it is saved to the CD. I was certain that I just didn't know how to do it until I read specifically that you cannot. I've always thought that this is one of the best features of using a digital camera.
The camera weighs just over 2 pounds, but didn't feel that heavy to hold at all. But it is rather large, making it impossible to fit in any coat pocket. It also seems to have an unusual shape making it difficult to imagine storing easily. It actually looks more like a video camera than a photo camera in shape. Most people I showed it to thought the same.
The battery is rated as lasting at two hours of normal use. Since I tried taking multiple little video clips and several pictures of different sizes, and experimented with the flash, it only seemed to last a little over an hour and a half.
The LCD display is about 2.5" and looks pretty good. There is some new technology that is supposed to turn it off when no one is looking at it. This seemed to work, although I imagine it would be easy for it to go off when you don't want it to, and stay on when you wish it didn't.
Another feature is an advanced picture stabilization, which Sony says negates the need for a tripod. All the pictures seemed steady to me, even though there was a slight delay in taking the picture when I was trying to catch moving objects. There were no blurs with even the objects I shot from dozens of feet away. There is a manual focus, but the automatic one worked perfectly for me.
The lens is a true 10x zoom, and also has a 20x digital zoom. The 10x zoom is probably achieved because of the cameras long shape. I have been very unhappy with the digital zooms of many of the pocket cameras.
For some of the technical specs, the shutter speeds can be set from between 1/500th of a second to 8 seconds. It has a maximum view of a 39mm SLR lens. Serious photographers may find this poor, but not the casual digital photographer, whom I think this is aimed at.
The camera definitely succeeds as a conversation piece. Everyone wanted to see the mini CD-R and look at the camera's viewfinder. The only time it failed to impress was when people assumed it was a video camera.
It might have been nice if it also had a spot for a memory stick, but I guess that would add even more cost to the already pricey $1300. There are still advantages to using removable media like those. The fact that not every picture you take, you will want to keep is made very frustrating with the concept of the permanent CD. What I always liked about the Compact Flash cameras was that you would take five pictures, and then just keep the two or three you like. Here they are all saved, no matter what you do. If I wanted to give a CD to someone to keep, I might not, because there are ones I might not want to share. You can delete pictures, but since this doesn't give you any room back, I can only assume that it isn't too hard to view them again if you know what you are doing.
At a price of $1300, it may be a better idea to buy an $800 digital video camera to take much superior movies with, and have $500 to buy a great digital camera that will take images of equivalent quality, but will be saved only on Compact Flash or Memory sticks.
Voting not to recommend this camera is a close call, but I just don't think it is going to be worth the money in the long run. Separate items can do better, and the memory stick would actually work better with today's technology.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 1300
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Epinions.com ID:
grimjack2
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Location: San Rafael, CA, Marin County
Reviews written: 181
Trusted by: 124 members
About Me:
Film is my favorite art form. I live a life of constant amelioration.
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