Oddity Archive: Episode 227.5 - Ben’s Junk: Sony Digital Mavica (MVC-FD73) (1999 Digital Camera)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ต.ค. 2024
- Tagline: Finally getting into this newfangled digital camera stuff…whatdaya mean you can’t get 3.5” floppies anymore?!?
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I am a simple man. I see a Sony Mavica, I give a like. First models were built like a tank.
I have a late model Mavica, I think mine was the last floppy-based digital camera they made. One time I tossed it on the bed in frustration and managed to bust a micro-fuse; after applying solder across it, it worked again.
We like the Halloween episode. Don't sweat it.
Ben, that was one of the better episodes (the Halloween one).
I have a couple of these. Absolutely love them. Sure, they are basic and old -- it ain't like either one is a main camera or anything - but they are fun to take period-appropriate pictures with (like, let's say, a beauty shot of an SNES with Final Fantasy III or something like that.)
From what I can gather the floppy mechanisms are actually pretty rugged in these -- the half of Sony that actually builds quality (albeit overly complex) handled these, so barring something serious I'd imagine more of themwork than don't.
When I was in college we designed a tripod/remote operation system for a handicapped person to run one a Mavica off a wheelchair. It felt obsolete then and it was like 2003.
The first Mavica could switch between automatic and manual focus, I guess they removed that from these later versions?
Some very late models could also use memory sticks with a crazy floppy adapter
I sold cameras starting in 2004 and we had one that used the small CDR disc's or mem stick.
We had a Mavica in late 99 early 2000 - horrendous thing, pale washed out photos, low resolution but it was a technological marvel of the time. The days of film cameras were numbered!
Still better than a WWF Slam cam
My HS graphic Arts class (2003-06) used 2 later model Mavicas with gumstick & floppy. iMacs updated every year in that classroom with so many software licenses, but somehow only had those and a PowerShot no one wanted to use because the Mavica produced the best quality images with the lighting, plus solid battery life and easy-to-find in our classroom, but we used the MCs with proprietary USB gumstick readers. End of my senior year, somebody kept stealing the cards, so we locked down a hastily bought USB floppy drive and some floppys for a few weeks. Teacher offered to sell them, but realized I bought old offset press rollers off of him for $5 and knew I wanted those damn Mavicas, so the offer was hastily withdrawn. For the time, a perfect camera for that type of environment (PS/project pics)
For a 22-year-old stills camera, the images are really quite good!
i really liked this years the haloween episode! it was something new to the channel.
These are the most attractive vintage digital cameras. I love the whole mavica line. So simple and cool. And yes! There is video on ton of other mavica models!
Oh lordee that is the model I shot the 911 attack in Manhattan. Pictures went to dead hard drive heaven.
i have had a far worse JD12 in 1999. the picture quality is pure gold on this Mavica!
My first digital camera in 1999 was a WWF slam cam that probably took even worse pictures
What a cool blast from the past! I started college in fall 1999 and my school had these for rent through the computer lab. 👍
Poor Benny-Boy. Go get some rest pls.
THANKS 🙏 FOR SHARING THE CAMERA 📸 & I CANT WAIT FOR THE HALLOWEEN EPISODE I TYPE IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE OF MY BAD EYESIGHT
How strange that I bought one yesterday for $5. First used them in '99.
I once borrowed one from my college’s A/V department!! Loved how it used diskettes (remember those!)...
Back in the early 2000s the company I worked for had one of these. It was a bit of a novelty for me at the time. I was shooting with a 35mm SLR. It would be a few more years before I switched to a DSLR.
For a camera 20 plus years old, the pictures you took are sharp and clear.
78 shots out of 82, that is a success rate of slightly over 95%. For those who took/take pictures with film there are bound to be a few shots that don't make the grade, even among professional photographers, so a 95% success rate is nothing to be disappointed about.
Calling them “sharp and clear” is a bit generous. These were pretty low quality images, even for a digital camera at the time. A 100 year old film camera would make images sharp and clear, this, not so much.
Still beats the pants off my first digital camera in 1999, a WWF Slam Cam
I owned this model, used it for eBay, back when you had to host your own images. I remember having to upload the pics to my AOL Hometown account.
Ah, this brings me back to high school our school bought one.
Ben, you sound like you are getting a cold. Take care of yourself handsome.
I have 4 different versions of this camera, I love them lot of fun.
Our school had a camera we use used in third grade
I have all of the Sony Mavicas. You asked about the failure rate on the discs, you should not get any errors, especially with those *old* Imation discs. The older discs were of higher quality than newer ones and Imation were some of the best you could buy. Just a guess on my part but it could be that either the head on the camera is dirty or that is is slightly out of calibration. Either way after you use the discs a few times you probably won't get anymore errors.
The button for the flash does not change the output level, it cycles between forced flash (always on), auto (camera determines if flash is needed), or off.
The purpose of the disc copy feature is so that you can give a copy of the photos you just took to someone else. Let's say you took some pictures at a birthday party and someone said they would like a copy of your photos. Since pretty much all computers had floppy drives back then you could copy you original disc in-camera to a spare disc and they would have a copy of the pictures you just took and look at them when they get home.
I bought one of these in early 2000..they were absolutely great..when i bought it i was thinking needing to buy floppy disks...well a few years prior i would back up my desktop onto floppys then switched to a CD so i had stuck a box of 100 floppys in my closet ..never needed to buy any...
As for climate..i traveled with my Mavica from Seattle to LA and Sydney Australia and the Philippines and never had a problem with disks or camera ..
As for image storage your numbers are about right i shot 3000 photos with the camera and my average was about 10-15 per disk..the reason for the range was due to content of photo and JPG compression...
As for "Video" actually you can kinda shoot "video" but it takes some work..on the menu select Multi Image mode ..the camera will take 9 photos 0.25 seconds apart and save them into a single image..they are about the size of thumbnail then on a computer cut them up and create animated "GIF" i played with it a couple of times too much work....
As for transfering images..i tried the backup floppy to floppy time consuming for sure usually 3-4 disks swaps to complete...I usually just carried 10-20 disks with me and shot everything i wanted..then back to a desktop or laptop and transfer the files to the HD deleting ones not wanted then formatting the disk ready for next use...trick i used at the time was to put blank disks right side up in my camera bag filled disks i put in upside down...
the 10X zoom (non-digital) was a big plus for the time..
I used the camera for 5 years sold it when i bought a full digital camera with an SD card..
there was also an interesting accessory for the FD-73 you could buy an adapter that was the size of a floppy and you could put in a gum stick memory card in it so you did not need floppys. i never bought one so do not know how good they were...
Hmm... Two corrupted images in the total amount that you shot seems more like a disc thing: I shot photos for my school magazine once upon a time with this camera’s predecessor (FD-71) - almost identical, but it had a window on the top that diffused (?) the backlight/acted as a window so you could let natural light come in - and in my entire time shooting with it (some 300 images or so), never had a corruption.
Doze harsh, crunchy, 0.8 megapixel jpegs doe! Ugh. I don’t miss them!
I have a Sony Mavica MVC-FD92 from 2001 that I got from Goodwill for $10.50 USD.
I have three of these. The same model in this video, and a FD92 and a FD97 both are from 2001 and shoot 5 seconds of crappy video at a time.
Actually my two 2001 mavicas record up to 15 seconds of video…they have that 2005-2008 low quality TH-cam vibe to them.
Looks good. Shame that camera phones like the Sanyo 5300 and then smart phones cut into things this.
Chloe Sullivan's camera from Smallville
I liked your halloween video
How can it be 45 deg in Autumn? That's insanely hot.
Fahrenheit.
Interesting how much digital camera tech has changed in 22 years! One stupid question, though: How do you insert/eject the disk? I mean, I saw the eject slide on the back, but do you insert it manually until it locks into place, or does the camera have a motor that pulls the disk into place and pushes it out after pulling on the slide? I’m so used to the spring-loaded slots for memory cards these days that I assume the disk slot would work the same way, but I don’t want to assume anything.
From memory there’s a spring-loaded door to guard from dust. And the door itself is thicker than a PC floppy door. You’d push the disk in, and it would go through the same motions as a PC drive, with the exception that the depth with which the disk sinks to in the drive itself is perhaps a bit shallower? But yeah: otherwise identical loading, and when actuating the eject lever, the disks are ejected so they’re halfway in the slot. Problematic if you’re holding the camera disk slot down - enough energy to fall out of the camera and onto the ground.
Nice pics! What kind of battery pack did you use? Originals are super hard to come by and im afraid i will get an error message w third party stuff
An original battery. My old Digital8 camcorder uses the same battery, so I just pulled it from that.
I simply won’t stand for you referring to the late 90’s / early 2000’s as the “olden days” 😂
I'm offended that you call this wonder of digital photography JUNK! It is not. It was great at the time it came out and it is still cool to use today to have that "retro" look in photos. I own four Mavicas and love them all. I hope someday to own every model made from 1997-2003, including the CD Mavicas. The amount of photos you can get on one diskette depends on whether you have the camera set on standard or fine mode; with fine giving you the highest resolution but also taking up more disk space.
Judging from your comment, I'm gonna guess two things:
1. You're taking the "Ben's Junk" name FAR too seriously/literally.
2. You barely watched the video at all.