Hey folkes, why do I not see the brand name "Sony" anywhere, They were the first and are very much alive. To make an intelligent choice one needs to know what is on the market. can anyone out there tell me what their cameras are like?

-- Rinus Borgsteede (rinuspho@cadvision.com), March 21, 1999

Answers

I have seen pictures taken by several of the Sony Mavicas, including the FD91, and the quality of the pictures doesn't compare favorably to other cameras. Also the storage medium that Sony uses in its cameras (floppy disks) even though they are 'very' cheap and readily available everywhere, they can't hold much data in them. 1.4MB can't hold an uncompressed high resolution picture. I think that that must be the reason Sony uses highly compressed formats in its cameras, and therefore the result is inferior quality pictures. Rodolfo Don

-- Rodolfo Don (rdon@garlic.com), March 21, 1999.

Sony currently has the Mavica line of products. The Mavica line uses standard 3.5" floppy disks. The ease of data transfer is what Sony has been cashing on. The Smartmedia used by many DigiCams including Oly has had a very slow growth, for a long time 8MB was the largest size you could get, eventhough now you can find larger Smartmedia, copmapre to ATA type II PCMCIA card used on the new Sony DSC-D700 camera doen not have a chance. Check the new Sony DSC-D700 and Canon PowerShot Pro 70 (uses dual CompactFlash cards and supports IBM 340MB Microdrive). You will be happy with either one of these two products.

-- Fred (tabarrok@ariver.com), March 22, 1999.

Other than the $1500 700 model, Sony doesn't get taken very seriously at the high end of the prosumer digicam market. They offer substandard, dated digicam tech for inflated prices (mauvica). Nevertheless, large numbers of consumer lemmings will buy inferior cameras simply because it has the Sony brandname, so it is a serious contender sales wise. I hope this site continues to devote its attention elsewhere. They probably just get ignored because they don't have the company relationship to get free review cams. Sorry for the exceedingly opinionated post. :)

-- Benoit (foo@bar.com), March 22, 1999.