I have a friend who he and his wife both use Sony Mavica digital cameras with what seems to be great results. They have the Sony Mavica FD91 and FD83 cameras. Since these are not included in this web site Comparometer, I was wondering how these compare to the Olympus C-2000 Zoom or D600L or the Kodak DC240 or DC280. If anyone can comment, I'd appreciate it as I am struggling with making a purchasing decision at the moment. Thank You in advance for your assistance.

-- Gerel Thompson (gthompson@cinergy.com), September 02, 1999

Answers

Hi guys,

Sorry for the slooow response on this - I seem to be perpetually behind, so end up getting by our own forum only rarely. (Just added a couple of people to help w/the writing, so hopefully things will get a bit better.)

Staying completely out of the arguments over whether Sonys take good pictures or not, there's no question that we need to have them on the site. Sony has so far not been especially supportive though, while other mfrs have. Since we've been perpetually human-bandwidth limited, we've reviewed the cameras that are sent to us, and haven't had a lot of energy to spare chasing people who don't want to send them. I'm hopeful that we've finally gotten through to Sony though, and **hope** we'll have some Sony action very soon. (keep your fingers crossed)

FWIW, commenting without having tested the cameras myself (a dangerous position), I'd say that Sony has optimized the "total value" equation by accepting some tradeoffs in absolute image quality, in exchange for a really strong ease-of-use play (the floppy disk), and also thrown in longer-ratio zoom lenses, which I happen to think (personally) are a important digicam feature: With digital, cropping leads directly to lower resolution, so being able to fill the frame with your subject is all the more important than it is with film. It's a hard postion to argue with, given that they currently own ~40% of the US digicam market.

So... Definitely there'll be Sonys on the site at some point, it's just hard to predict exactly when. (I think I can promise one way or the other, that we'll have something up by the holiday season.)

-- Dave Etchells (web@imaging-resource.com), September 12, 1999.

Gerel:
Comparing a Mavica to the others is a little hard. If you are looking for super-duper resolution regardless of other capabilities then leave the Mavica (all of them) off your list.

If, however, good to moderate resolution is sufficient (The Mavica will give you more resolution than you will ever need for Web sites and computer monitor display - but don't expect to print an 8 X 10) then the Mavica really does blow all the others away. The FD-91's 14X zoom is unparalleled - and with the image stabilization makes it untouchable by anything else on the market. It records small MPEG movies (very small), and audio with your pictures (others can do that too though). Manual focus capabilities (Macros down to fingerprints) and excellent exposure control make this camera powerful and flexible. Saving to Floppy is fabulous - but the capacity is limited (argh!). In good resolution mode you get about 15 pictures per disk. At it's best bitmap mode you get 1. At 640 X 480 you can get up to 25. I wish I was still in the AOL free-disk-a-week club.
Don't get me wrong - this camera does have some weaknesses - and I've been eyeballing the new OLY - but for the money the features of the Mavica are tremendous. I would comfortably say that if resolution is not paramount nobody can match the features of the Mavica. But if any of the following are important to you, consider another camera:

Mavica Weaknesses:

• Resolution only to 1024 X 768
• Lots of time required between pictures
• Limited disk capacity
• Big and Bulky

Mavica Strengths:

• 14X Optical Zoom
• Image Stabilization
• MPEG Movie Mode
• Audio Capture
• Manual Focus with Macro
• Manual Exposure settings
• Saves to floppy

Des

-- Dan Desjardins (dan.desjardins@avstarnews.com), September 02, 1999.

Jerel,

I pretty much agree with Dan except that I would say that if you have an excellent photo inkjet printer such as the new Epson Photo Stylus 750 ($300) or 1200 ($500) you can get 4 X 5 prints from an FD91 that are as good as or better than 35mm prints you get from your local drugstore. Prints up to 8 X 10 are also excellent. Another point that should be mentioned is that most comparisons between image sharpness of various cameras refer only to full wide angle shots (no zoom). If however, you shoot distant objects with a camera such as the FD91 and another camera such as the Nikon 950 (has a lot more pixels) and then enlarge the Nikon photo so that the subject is the same size as the subject in the FD91 photo, the FD91 image will have many more pixel--up to 8 times as many if the photo was taken at 14X.

Rodger

-- Rodger Carter (rodger.carter@wpafb.af.mil), September 03, 1999.

Roger is right!
Stay away from digital zoom! Optical is the only way to go.
Digital zoom is a lame excuse to keep camera mechanisms simple - it destroys resolution extremely rapidly! Perhaps when they come out with 20 or 30 megapixel CCD's it won't be an issue...
Des

-- Dan Desjardins (dan.desjardins@avstarnews.com), September 04, 1999.

I also was surprised by the complete lack of coverage for Sony's extensive line of digital cameras. This site seems quite out of date in both information and presumptions. Sony's FD-88 has a 1280 x 960 resolution and the new D700 has a top resolution of 1344 x 1024. More importantly, the quality of images from these cameras, meets the specs. This is sometimes not the case with other cameras.

Imaging-Resource needs to add Sony cameras to its product matrix.

-- Will Lockwood (begree@ptinet.net), September 05, 1999.

It's true that mavica has always had industry lagging resolution figures. Even with the new models the above poster cites, Sony is still playing catch up. But there's a negative no one has mentioned here, that goes a long way towards explaining why mavica continually has the worst image quality in the digital camera industry. It's JPEG compression. Sony compresses the hell out of their images more than anyone, resulting in dramatically more JPEG artifacting. This is even a weakness of their new 505 offering, which compresses images twice as much as say the oly 2000 or nikon 950. Isn't it absurd that Sony puts a fancy lens and high res CCD on this camera, and then sabotages the image with high compression? Tragic! The advantage of this is that you can store more images. The disadvantage is the visably inferior image quality.

-- benoit (foo@bar.com), September 07, 1999.

Compressoin or no, the 505 images posted on Phil Askey's site seem to be as good as or better than other digicams, especially in the highlight areas. As far as Mavicas are concerned, higher compression is a necesaary tradeoff for the convenience of floppy disks. I have an FD-91 with a mere 1024 by 768 image sensor, but I am extremely pleased with the photos as printed on the Epson Photo Stylus 1200. This printer seems to make up somewhat for the lack of camera pixels. Other features of the FD-91 such as the 14X zoom and image stabilization made me pick this camera over others with more pixels. Incidentally, the advantage in pixels other cameras have over the FD- 91 exists only for close-up photos. When you take photos of distant subjects with megapixel digicams at 3X, and then enlarge the image so that the subject is the same size as that taken by the FD-91, there are far more pixels in the FD-91 image. For example, at 14X the FD- 91 will have up to eight times as many pixels in the final image as would a Nikon 950, not to mention being able to take the photo hand- held rather than using a tripod, super long-life battery, etc.

Rodger

-- Rodger Carter (rodger.carter@wpafb.af.mil), September 17, 1999.