A brief diversion from all things film.
The year is 1999. The millennium bug crisis is in full swing. Mama Mia the musical premiers as does Toy Story 2. Mika Hakinnen claims his second formula one drivers championship.
It is also the year Sony announce the Mavica FD83 digital camera.
It features a 15.6mm f 5.2 lens
The Mavica can not only produce mpeg movies but one mega pixel images , albeit interpolated.
With a 6 times digital zoom our 15.6mm lens becomes an equivalent 37-111mm zoom. The Focus can be set to manual if we like.
Even with the battery in, the camera is surprisingly light and very comfortable in the hand.
Above is where it all happens. The camera is essentially a point and shoot with all settings like aperture and shutter speed being looked after by the camera, auto exposure. However we can change metering modes to spot, low lux, sunset and moon, landscape and a quick focus mode called pan focus mode??? There are some picture modes, more about those in a minute. The menu system is relatively straight forward. Flash can be turned off if we prefer.
Below we can see the zoom lens rocker switch.
Above we have our media port for recording our photos. SD card?? Looks a bit big for that. Perhaps a Cf card then. Wait a minute, that logo on the side of the camera looks a lot like….. a floppy disk????
Yes indeed, the Mavica records our images on a 1.44mb floppy disk. Cool🤓 At it’s highest settings you can fit a whopping 8 images a floppy.
Write times are …….. a couple of seconds accompanied by the melodious tones of the floppy drive writing to disk.. zzzz…zzzzzz….zzz….zzzzzz.
But how do you transfer the image to a modern computer? Once again reason to keep a healthy supply of old computers around the house is supplied. I fired up an old pentium 4 computer that dual boots into Windows XP or Windows 98. There was no issue seeing the jpeg’s and then transfering to a more suitable memory stick. This can then be used on something a little more modern.
Just look at the difference in file size between the images out of the Mavica and my Nikon D500!🤪
The image above was taken in low light conditions.
The one below made use of a macro function within the camera. I actually was expecting the pink carnation in the front to be in focus, clearly the nearest point of focus is further away..
The image above demonstrates, I think, the sharpness of the zoom lens
An average looking scene in all its one mega pixel glory. Colour rendition is pretty true to life. I mentioned that there are some picture effects that can be selected and scene live in the cameras 2.5 inch screen.
So we have so Solarize…
Sepia toned…
Black and White.
What about the video mode?
Here is a 15 second recording, that’s all you get on a 1.44mb floppy disk, recorded at 320 times 240 or was it 160 times 112. I really can’t remember. Enjoy.
How far we have come in the digital camera front. Where does that leave the Mavica? Firmly in the past? Yes, but.
I thoroughly enjoyed, yes I can use the word enjoy, the whole experience. To go out and enjoy taking pictures without worrying about the digital minutiae that rob soo many of enjoyment of our hobby was truly liberating. That’s were the Mavica’s strength lies. But don’t take my word for it , try it for yourself.
arhphotographic 