Sony MVCFD83 Mavica Digital Camera
One drawback to the Sony Mavica MVCFD83 is that it's larger and more awkward to hold than most newer digital cameras (it has to be to accommodate floppy disks). The other major drawback is that it only boasts a top resolution of 1,024 x 768--much better than the MVC-FD73's 640 x 480 resolution, but not top-of-the-line, either. It's perfectly fine for Web pages or e-mail attachments, but you might notice a difference in large print sizes. Sony touts an interpolated resolution of 1,216 x 912, but you'll still see lagging quality compared to a real 1,280 x 960 resolution. The Sony Mavica MVCFD83 also gives you a great selection of programmed auto-exposure modes to help you take good pictures in a variety of situations. We found the fixed-focus ("panfocus") mode especially useful in preventing the constant refocusing that peeved us on other digital cameras. The manual focus ring was also a bonus. The Sony Mavica MVCFD83 also gives you four fun special effects. The MPEG-1 movie feature was great as well, although your movies won't be longer than a minute due to the limited storage capacity of floppies. The short movie clips are ready to be posted to the Web. The Sony Mavica MVCFD83 also lets you record audio clips with your still photos--another bonus. The Mavica line's greatest strength is that it uses floppy disks instead of memory cards to store photos. We found this convenient in many ways--the MVCFD83 lets you copy images and whole disks onto a new floppy, so you can give friends and clients their own copies of photos on the spot. You can even copy a disk full of non-JPEG files, like text or other data. Floppies are cheap and easy to find, and you can just leave your old pictures on them and buy more if you want. However, you can't fit as many images on a floppy--16 is about normal for this camera, compared to up to 40 or more on a SmartMedia or CompactFlash card. We also really liked the simplicity of reading files from the Sony Mavica MVCFD83. If you have Windows 3.1 or later you can read images and movies directly off the disk without having to install extra software (in most cases) or download the images through a serial or USB cable. It makes it much easier to get started and allows you to download images to other computers without carting around a cable and software. The Sony Mavica MVCFD83 uses a rechargeable lithium battery pack, which we found superior to the quick-draining AAs most other digital cameras use. We especially liked the remaining-battery-life indicator in the display window. |
While it still lags slightly in resolution, the Sony Mavica
MVCFD83 packs a lot of great consumer features in an extremely easy-to-use package. If you
need a professional-quality digital camera, look elsewhere--but if you want to take decent
pictures with the convenience of floppy-disk storage, long battery life, and the fun of a
wide range of special effects and the ability to take movie shorts, the Sony Mavica
MVCFD83 is a good bet.