Support this channel on Patreon: / 8bitguy1 In this episode I take a look at the original Sony Mavica and some of the floppy disk cameras that came after it.
I can't explain why, but it's just really charming how the video is edited when Brandon is explaining things and it cuts to 8-Bit Guy nodding with a big, awesome smile.
Right?! While it completely breaks all of the rules for framing a shot reverse shot, seeing the 8-Bit Guy's smile made it all worth it! I seriously have to watch his videos whenever they come out...even if I have to wake up in like 4 hours for work haha
My Mavica saved our family trip to Europe. I took three film cameras and a Mavica. At some point our film got x-rayed and only one roll was not destroyed. But the Mavica pictures survived.
I took a film camera and a digital camera on a mission tip once. I had the film hand checked to avoid that problem. Only to have it lost on one of the last days there.
LuiC I'm guessing that it's to cover up a few edits so it doesn't make for jumpcuts... but nowadays with videobloggers having jumpcuts in their accepted rulebook, the random shots of a silent participant really jolts us as viewers out of the explanation far more than a jumpcut would. And considering that traditionally a production like this would only have one camera so any reaction cuts of a interviewer would have to be recorded after the subject has said all of their answers. I just find the thought funny to imagine him setting up the camera and lights to do a few nods and stuff afterwards. Another option would have been simple cutaways to the cameras in question or whatever b-roll would be shot at that situation. all in all... I commend the effort. But the choice of cutaway became a bit distracting.
I love my first digital camera. Imagine taking unlimited pictures without having to pay for film and cost of developing rolls of film. It was nothing short of revolutionary. In fact, I have more pictures taken with my first digital camera than all the digital cameras afterwards combined. In short, I went nuts with my first digital camera, using it so much that the camera fell apart. I had a lot of free time as a teenager.
Back in 2000, I had one of those 0.5MP cameras from China where if you bumped the camera too much, the AA batteries would jar, and you would lose all your photos. I guess because the memory chip didn't have a battery backup haha
@@limemyth While yes it became popular with 2.0, it was still objectively inferior to firewire until 3.0. The main downfall of firewire was that Intel simply dominated the computer field and through their weight behind usb. It's not that USB is bad, and I'm glad we finally have a standard. But firewire was just better in literally ever way, but thanks to Intel's business practices we simply got "good enough" with usb
The windows 98 compaq I grew up with had USB, but you're right I don't remember using them for a few years. And then it was only for a gravis gamepad pro.
I remember buying a computer with a SuperDisk drive and the salesman kept talking about the USB drives the computer had being the future, but I was stuck on 128mb floppies thinking that was the selling point. Important life lesson I guess lol.
Haha, I was a teenager saving up for those 120MB floppy drives , then when I had the money together they had already disappeared. I don't quite understand why though , the USB flash drives really weren't very competitive then, and a 120MB floppy drive would have been a logical upgrade path.
Aaaah yeah! And those extremely low-res webcam videos! I also remember that videos back in 2006 and 2007 were in mono, stereo was not introduced until 2008 or something like that.
As much as I love digital and how far it's come in terms of quality, I still love film. The look, the whole darkroom experience...it's magical! I went out of my way to even buy a Krasnogorsk 16mm movie camera to try my hand at motion film. Love it.
9:20 those buttons on those old pay phones are supreme. Just the feel of them are so awesome, I always wanted to press on them as a kid, even tho I had no one to call. 10:06 this is probably going to be a new art. Using first ever camera created to take pictures of quantum computer installations, latest gen spaceships, and sending the footage through a sophisticated process of aging... lol.
Pay phones NO longer even exist and are no longer even used,all those that would exist outside in Public will not even work even if a person tried nowadays as the cable running to it is as you are aware is disconnected entirely and anyway they no longer exist as everyone these days has a Smartphone and uses that for calls,texts,social media etc
We had one of those cameras at work in ~ 2001 and I used it a fair amount. The optics and image quality were really good. I wished it had a write buffer so you could keep taking pictures without waiting each time for the file to be written to the disk.
480p was maximum resolution. It would make it where a disk only held about three photographs. The lower resolutions were grainy and ugly but a disk could hold more pictures.
June 2021: I still have my Mavica FD-7, some 3.5" floppy discs and an external 3.5" floppy drive. The Mavica took some real good quality pics at a pro wrestling (ECW) event I went to at a local college.
The Obsolete Geek people still this camera. During the 1990s ebay and internet antique dealers and vintage sellers bought these and made a good living with their new venture online. some of the older people 50s 60s yo still use this camera for work because they have a don't change what works mentality.
11:35 - That was the first digital camera I ever got to play with. My mother would bring it home from work all the time. I can remember making 20 seconds videos on it and being amazed :-)
I love the fact that you provided a professional's experience with this piece of technology for the video. It really helps give a well-rounded sense of how the hardware was used.
Great video, I still have my Mavica FD95, with Sony add on wide angle lens and filters, extra batteries and the original box it came in. Having a real lens really allows this camera to take some fantastic pictures .
Just picked up an old Mavica FD-90 at an estate sale for $15 (he totally nailed the price lol), I can't get over just how fun it is to take photos with. The feeling of taking a photo and instantly feeling the disk spin up and write is just superb, and the images have a dated yet perfectly acceptable quality to them, especially when it comes to color depth. Couldn't be happier with it!
I have an old Canon camera which uses CF cards and it also creates a DCIM folder too. Funny thing, the Nintendo DSi and the Nintendo 3DS also create a DCIM folder when taking photos
most devices that captures media will use DCIM folder since its a universal generic root name for computers to read and recognise from it ( dunno about iphones since apple are backwards )
2:26 IRQ conflicts-- oh gawd, I need a trigger warning before you mention that, it brings up traumatic memories. What a nightmare it was dealing with that crap.
A disk/cd case full of them when doing computer repair LOL. Now you can fit all that stuff on a USB flash drive that easily fits in your pocket. My how times have changed.
When I was a senior in high school in '99, I went to a vocational school for computer classes, they had much larger budgets for it than my school (although my school had one of the first AutoCAD classes ever). They had the Mavica and my teacher even let me borrow it for a project, I took pics of EVERYTHING with that camera, still have a few that haven't been destroyed, but man we were so elated at the technology at the time :D
was lucky to get one for free (FD92) ebay battery $20 , i am happy with it, a great trip down memory lane. what i would have been able to capture during that time it came out (2001)
It's a fairly good demonstration of how our mental images of those time periods, even having lived through them, are heavily influenced by the media recorded of them that you can view today. I can remember being a very young child thinking that color only existed after 1950 because of all the black and white pictures my grandparents showed me. I recently unearthed my collection of film negatives for pictures I took in the late 90's / early 00's with my first camera (I didn't get a digital camera until ~2006). I paid to have them scanned in and wow, they look so different than the pictures of the period I see the most (mostly from my dad's first DSLR post 2002).
Pretty cool, I distinctly remember my teacher back in 2001 having a camera using 3.5" floppies that looked distinctly like the Mavica as it was used for some class photos and field trips.
So far ahead of its time, so memory comes back from my 4th or 5th grade elementary computer class, we used these! Was awesome! We were working on publisher or word if i remember right. So cool though. Looking back as a photographer now and using a sony a7ii and canon 5d mark ii both full frame. It’s just so neat! Thanks for sharing and giving so much info on it.
I remember these very well. I used the Mavica a few times myself at work. I still have work photos saved on my computer from '98-'99 using that camera at job sites.
11:04 thats weird that he filmed himself smiling and nodding when the guys was taliking to the camera, and if the guy was still talking when he was nodding and smiling, the camera would have been right were the guy was standing lol
The Mavica was AWESOME! Back in the 90s. I worked in a test lab and I convinced the boss to buy one. It was really great for making test reports with pictures of our setups.
I can't believe I found this video! I was a self employed web designer/developer back in 97 - 01. The biggest PITA was digitizing analog pics. The Mavica changed my world, I loved that thing! Most reactions were like: "What........is.........THAT!?" As good as it was, the Olympus Camedia C550 made digital cameras go mainstream. I still have my Camedia and I'm telling you it takes better pictures than many modern digital units. The way it captures light is just other worldly. When I want to take some serious photography, I still pull out the C550 all these years later.
Really glad you did a video on the Mavica, my first experience of using digital cameras. My grandad (grandfather - I'm from the UK) had one of these, it was a more advanced model than this as it could take 1.3 megapixel images and video (didn't last long on a floppy disk but you could do short clips). I remember going into an electronics store at the time and the big selling point they mentioned was that you didn't have to buy expensive memory cards whereas floppy disks where affordable and readily used. At the time, they performed really well but were typically more expensive than memory card cameras in the UK.
I hope he didn't have a 2nd camera, so all those reaction shots were shot separate. XD I appreciate the effort though, this channel keeps getting better and better!
This is the first digital camera I had. And I remember taking it to a an auto show, people were stopping me thinking it was the coolest thing. I still have it, and it still works.
Haha my husband had one of these when I first met him. I screwed around with it for a while. The resolution was okay...certainly better than my own first digital camera. I think he used it to take pics of his artwork.
i always wanted to see 80's 90's things on internet and i'm happy to find your channel i will buy all previous techs to re live the moments you guys enjoyed back in 90's let me earn good cash to buy all these whenever listen to old songs and watch tech i cant get enough of these masterpieces people of my age are interested in new techs and im here watching 90s life and listening to john lennon,johnny cash, Bruce Springsteen,summer of 69...
Yes to a point. 640x480 just isn`t up to modern standards at all. Heck, I can get 3000x2000 out of scanned 35mm film. Digital cameras back then were awful as the sensors and lens were just not up to the task at all. 35mm blew it out of the water in quality.
untseac When I was making home videos for DVD, I shot all the stills to be used in my "movies" in 640x480 because that was close to the destination display (Standard definition CRT TV set.) For that it was fine. (I still use it when I need a Pre HDTV look).
I remember sitting in coffee shops in 1997, flipping through the newest issue of Chip or PC-World magazine and drooling over those Mavicas! Back then I could barely afford the coffee, let alone the cameras! Thanks for the memories! 😊
That camera brings back memories. My uncle was always on top of new tech. He had it all when It came out. Macintosh II, PDA's, Holy smokes he made a big deal when windows 95 came out. Thank you for brining happy memories.
I've found most smart phone cameras well...suck. Course its supposed to be a phone not a professional studio camera in the first place LOL. My $150 Canon Powershot A510 takes far better photos than any cell phone camera I've had...cell phone camera is great for an emergency but if you are taking pictures to use professionally you should be using a professional camera LOL.
Hahaha There’s actually some truth to this. The picture quality in less than perfect conditions (low light, moving subjects, etc) requires a larger sensor and a bigger lens to excel. It is literally a constraint of how much light your camera can collect in time. Phone cameras have tiny sensors and tiny lenses and will produce shit low light shots no matter how advanced the technology gets. An old DSLR camera or even dedicated point and shoot will outperform the tiny phone camera in less than perfect light conditions.
My main AIM teacher back in late 4th to 5th grade(2009 to 2010) had a floppy disk camera that she had us use for multiple projects & would use the camera to photograph events. It had incredible image quality & could take quite amount of photos. Still impressive for a digital camera that stores to floppy disk.
I picked up a Mavica FD-90 just like the one in this video at a recycler. It's in nearly perfect condition, which is pretty crazy considering it was in a box of junk in the back. It's an amazing camera. It brings back so many memories of my dad's Sony Hi-8 camcorder, plus it's right about as old as I am.
I had a portable parallel zip drive back in the late 90's mainly because it was cheaper then the LS-120 for both the drives, and media, plus the overall software drivers where better on Windows 98, but then again even with 200MB, zip disc and 1GB Jazz drives none of it lasted much longer once CD Burners became common place shortly afterwards.
It's funny that David said that no one ever tried to make the floppy drive faster... but the LS-120 drives read standard floppy disks a lot faster than a standard floppy drive. The original drives were super flaky though, and read 1.44's poorly. I still have dozens of superdisks in a box somewhere....
Diggnuts True that, and I remember the commericals somewhat making that a selling point, but like i said price was a big factor for the ZIP drive, and should have also mentioned some computers even came preinstalled with internal 100MB zip drive by default like some Gateway, and Compaq models if I remember correctly.
Commodorefan64 Compaq backed both horses in the media race, they also preinstalled LS120 drives in some of their machines. I owned both Zip and LS120 back in the late 90's but by far preferred the LS120. I actually still use a LS120 today to read/write floppy disks in my modern PC.
Tommy Whitaker No it should not. Digital images are soulless, plain representations of the real world without any appeal of ever being looked at again. Opposing that analog images DO have soul, they are timeless and will more likely be looked at again. Ask almost any wedding or portrait photographer they will tell you just that.
Tommy Whitaker Well ok, but of what use is that? Nobody will live long enough to make use of those longer lasting digital images. It's only of use for future generations because they can access our images more easily.
Stop with the poetic bullshit! Photos have souls? That is just meaningless pretentious gibberish. Im pretty sure people in the late 1800s would say that paintings "have soul" as opposed to those technical artificial machine-made photographs. Some people think that being stuck in the past is wise and everytime a new technology replaces the old one, these people complain like little kids about "souls" and similar crap, but their emotional arguments never stand the test of time.
Did you just say film doesn't last long? You know what a negative is? They can last for hundreds of years with proper care. But oh, you probably also believe an 800x600 image is better than film quality. Film is and always will be better than digital, digital just offers more convenience. If digital was better why are most movies still shot on 35mm? Because, short and simple, film looks better.
My Dad had the Sony with the black floppy in front of it @ 0:18 He got it to use for eBay. He was one of the early auctioneers. Was state of the art for its time. Blows my mind the value of some antiques...
I remember that a friend of mine had a Mavica and when she emailed out the photos, we couldn't open the photos because they weren't in .jpg format. I had to hit one of those "clearance" software stores to get some cheap software that do the conversion.
Digital is only now rivaling film for resolution. I still take pictures of lots of things using film, I just don't take 5-20 of each shot, I compose, and take it right the first time.
asherael the problem was always the Pros, as soon as they move on to better tech the masses never get access to their previous pro tech as the companies making their tech never bothered to target the masses. Even in 2019 the masses are using 10 year tech for video and DSLR's. It is getting better but we still have a long way to go. Look at the Pro DV cameras with DVC pro in the mid 2000's they never reached the masses. DV cameras from 2001 still outperform any video consumer camera in 2019 hands down.
@@danfuerthgillis4483 I'm not sure if you're exaggerating or not. Panasonic G85 and Sony a6300 are pretty amazing cameras with astounding 1080p and great 4K. How are 2019 consumer cameras lacking?
@@blossom.ch4 I have the Canon D60 for pictures mainly. My JVC DV Camera from 2001 has Zero and I mean Zero grain when shooting a concert in low light (only stage lights) it leaves the Canon D60, GH4 , Nikon's in the dust. The problem is the 2000 DV cameras had much bigger sensors so they had barely any grain even in low light condition. It is completely unacceptable that my $50 JVC DV Camera camera from 2001 rivals a Canon c100 in terms of low light performance and grain. Also the day shots at 720x480 ( DV res) absolutely annihilates even a Canon Mark 3 lol. No offence buy a 2005 DVC Pro camera even at 1440 resolution that destroys any 10,000 semi pro consumer video camera. Ask yourself this question why are you buying a digital camera that has locked frame rates? Professional Industrial cameras do not have these locked frame rates they shoot any frame rate from 1 fps to the max of the hardware. Also the lack of lenses support is a joke as you are forced to fuck around with DSLR's just to have lenses support lol.
Danfuerth Gillis none of what you say is actually true. 🤯 DV cameras had small sensors between 1/2" and 1/6". On top of that they were CCDs which were notoriously bad in low light. Modern CMOS sensors are vastly superior in every respect. I don’t know why you set your old Canon DSLR as the benchmark but modern digital cameras (like the GH4 you mentioned) are leagues ahead in image quality in terms of resolution, low-light performance and dynamic range. Your bit about frame rates is absolutely nonsensical as well: modern cameras usually support all the mainstream frame rates like 24, 25, 30, 50 and 60. Why would you want to record in a non-standard frame rate that couldn’t even be played back correctly on a monitor that only supports a limited number of frame rates as well? There’s absolutely no reason to do that. Instead, you choose a standard frame rate and adjust the shutter speed you want to use at that frame rate.
Wow, my dad had one of those and still used it well into the late 2000's. I always thought it was so weird but oddly convenient, especially in a country where you could still see floppy discs being used in 2010.
Woah woah woah, wait. Y'all city folk actually got public charging stations for them electric thingamajig cars of yours? That was the most interesting thing fer me in this video!
Fox Wright Lol, wow, it was a joke dude. I commerce to my nearest city for work every day. Although we're up in Northern Michigan where almost no one has electric cars, so our city doesn't have charging stations installed for them. I actually didn't realize they had those yet in other cities, because, like I said, just about NO ONE in my local area owns or drives them. Seriously, it was a joke, get over yourself. I can't believe you felt it necessary to take time out of your day to insult some random poster on the internet.
3:03 There were PCMCIA adapters for desktops, but they took up a 5.25" drive bay and could be problematic, especially on WinNT4. (These adapters typically required shutdown of the desktop before changing cards.)
So I watched this video a couple years ago and went rummaging through my house the other day and found my moms old mavica! The videos were honestly really good for 1997 very cool to see.
I used a mavica when I worked at the Swedish Volvo cars factory 2004-2008. I took photos of the assembly robots to make instructions for new workers. It actually worked very well!
