Hi guys,

I do a lot of mission work where there are no photoshops available for picture developing. Hence the need for a digital camera. The one I'm considering would be along the Sony Mavica line simply because of the floppy disk storage (I can't afford a dozen media cards, and I often don't have a laptop with me on weeklong village excursions to empty a media card onto). However, I'm not at all impressed with the low resolution of the Sony. Does anyone know if Sony will be developing the same line of camera using the Zip disk for storage? This would improve resolution and picture quantity dramatically, wouldn't it?

Thanks, Mark

-- Mark Roller (m_roller@hotmail.com), June 16, 1999

Answers

Sony has developed a 200MB storage media called "HI-FD". The drive has been manufactured by Sony and a few other OEMs. This product has been available on the market about 7-8 months, and it has not done well comapre to the popular Iomega Zip and 3M's Imation division 120MB SuperDisk. If sony decides to use a larger media of that sort, they would use their own HI-FD rather than popular Iomega's Zip media. However lack of sales for HI-FD drive dictates to follow their Cybershot line of Digicams (using Memory Stick). I would guess Sony is moving toward the "Memory stick" which is the reliable, proven, and available up to 224MB ATA Flash PC card (PCMCIA). I have the Mavica FD-91, I really like it's 14x zoom and Steadyshot. If you want the ease of floppy data transfer, Sony is the only choice, if you are looking within the Mavica line, I do recommend the FD-91. I really like mine. However there are many other good DigiCams if you do not have to have the floppy storage media.

-- Fred (tabarrok@ariver.com), June 16, 1999.

I'm guessing they haven't done zip because it'd instantly flatten the digicam battery. Maybe you should take another look at lugging a small/cheap portable. Getting pics into a laptop via PCMCIA is even easier (and much faster) than via floppy. Anyway, it's not likely carrying a zillion floppies is really going to be any easier. If you care about image quality, mavica should be at the bottom of your list -- unquestionably the worst image quality in the digicam world today.

Sony Mavica, because there's one born every minute.

-- benoit (foo@bar.com), June 16, 1999.