When I worked for a trucking company we had these on hand at our office to document accidents for insurance purposes. We also handed out disposable film cameras to the drivers just incase. By the time I started though these were quickly phased out because cellphones pretty much took over all of that. This was in 2012!
a field is one scan of the sensor giving half the vertical resolution of a frame, a frame is two fields where it scans the sensor twice to get full resolution. the magic of interlaced video.
Frame vs Field is a direct holdover from the analog Mavicas which literally stored a series of frames of (almost) standard NTSC video on a proprietary magnetic disk. You could either store a whole frame using both fields or you could use the fields separately.
@@Stjaernljus I honestly thought that’s where Luke was going when he called it barely digital, expecting “it’s an analog sensor hooked into a digitiser” but I was wrong lol
Nice review. I've been looking for a photographer's perspective on these early digital cameras. Plenty of tech reviews out there. I've only run across one other, and that was a challenge to a studio photographer who had never seen one. Interesting photoshoot they did. Sorry we didn't have much of a chance to talk at VCF. I intentionally left my medium and large format cameras behind so I could focus on the tech. By the time I learned you were a photographer, the weekend was almost over. I've yet to field test my FD200 and FD90. The FD200 was the last of the floppy drive Mavica. It had both a floppy disk drive and a memory stick . It can save TIFF images to the memory stick which might prove interesting. I plan to take a look into the tool-chain for digital photo processing available to users of these cameras back in the day.
I got on to collect some Mavica Floppy cameras and I find them so wonderful. Because the floppy takes ages to write (especially long on fd7 because it's got x1 drive!) and the space is very limited on the floppy, I tend to be more selective with my shooting. Shooting just feels more meaningful even if the pictures in reality are pixelated post stamps. But the vibe these pics give you! omg. The pink sky is indeed pink and not red like my iphone would think. The overblown highlights are indeed very overblown and shadows are crushed. The grain is on everything. The pics just look like the 90s
I use the FD92 version....1.6MP & floppy or memory stick. I use them every day in my church pipe organ building/restoration business. Pictures are printed out A4 & look great. Mobile phones don't work here in rural Lincolnshire, UK. I note that mobile phone users don't seem to keep them very long. I dont buy anything that I dont think will last at least 15 years. I therefore don't bother having a mobile phone. If you compare the Canon offering from the same 1997 your MV5 came from, the Canon is very poor indeed yet was similar cost. Until I bought the first mavica (FD73) in 1998,I was using a very good 1960's Pentax SLR 35mm camera. One day we dismantled (well over three days) of pipe organ only to disvover I'd made a speed selection error on the SLR camera & had half a picture of everything. That error was costly in wasted time trying to work things out during restoration of that organ. After that I used the SLR on a couple more jobs & used the FD73 as backup. Now, if you compare the FD5 & FD7 (the 10x zoom version), the sensor is the same as the ones used in Sony Video 8 camcorders, whereas the 18 month later FD71 etc, whilst still VGA resolution, the sensor s the type used on Sony Hi8 camcorders. The quality difference is very noticable. Richard, UK
IIRC Standard quality is JPEG quality 60 which is about as low as you can go before the compression is very noticeable, especially on images that don't have a lot of data to work with (640x480 is after all only 0.3 MP), and Fine is 80 or so. It could be even lower for that camera, been a long time.
I have two, the fd83 and the fd200. I really love them. The fd83 looks like still shots from a vhs or high8. It also has threads and I put a wide angle or fish eye on em. The fd83 also has manual focus. It’s kind of crazy to use that because it’s hard to tell if you have it in focus from the screen. But I get great pics from the fd83 which is funny and fun.
I have fond memories in primary school of what is possibly the earlier model of this. The eject mechanism has a large slider that had to be slid down and to the left, where the disc would violently fly out the side and had no cover to protect it. It also had the curious feature where the LCD backlight could be switched off outdoors and you could rely on the sunlight to come through a window at the top to backlight the screen as a battery saving measure.
That exposure trick on 16:02 is what I do on my digicams haha, much easier to expose for the ground then recompose than manually adjusing the EV :) . Great vid Luke! :D
This was great. I hadn’t noticed the similarity between 24 and 36 film and the quality settings, I wonder if that was deliberate on Sony’s part. The little Star Wars gag totally got me btw. Hey, I’ll have you know I was pixel peeping on a 55" 4k telly :p It’s definitely a product of its time, but also somehow charming. I found it interesting how low of a dynamic range the NTSC video sensor had though, some other pure-digital cameras from the same time did way better in high contrast scenarios. I also found it interesting how you mentioned (loosely) planning for every single shot and getting annoyed when one filled up quicker than normal. Now, I DID do a lot of photography with 35mm as a kid on a midrange point and shoot. But I had no technique, and it was utterly freeform. I definitely watched the dial, but I would still waste 5 shots on a burst of a scene without a care. I accidentally did dual exposures once just because I was bored but hadn’t saved up enough pocket money for another roll. But by the time I was serious I was onto digital with 512 and 1024 MB SD cards, I never had a care for how many shots I could take on a single outing. I always had room. (Edit: actually my first card was a 128MB, I just remembered, but I never used it for shooting again once I had bigger.)
You've inspired me to get mine out and have a play around again. I have a perverse interest in them so I've got 2 working cameras and one I broke, as well as a dedicated floppy disk viewer. Funny carrying around a stack of floppies so I can take as many photos as I like
Field and frame give you either 1/2 the interlaced scan lines (field) or combined scan lines (frame). I had an FD7 and it was the ultimate potato cam. I was so happy when I sold it. They were very popular with ebay sellers since they didn't need to deal with memory cards.
My dad was an insurance adjuster for a company that sent people out to survey damage to homes from severe weather and disasters. He took thousands of photos on one of these (actually several since he used them enough to wear a few out) and loaded them up on a Fujitsu laptop.
3:33 Luke without context: "Hold it down and it makes it do what it's not currently doing." Not cool, Luke. Not cool. (Actually, I love your cameraffic content.)
Hey I have a question. So I have a very similar Mavica model to yours. Is well as the exact same floppy to USB drive as you. The disk reads in the camera fine but every time I try to read it on the computer ( windows 11) it does nothing, sometimes appearing and disappearing in a span of 2 seconds. The only thing the instructions on Amazon tell me are how to install windows 95 (I shit you not). Did you have any issues getting the drive to read.
I didn't have any issues, but I'm running windows 10. I don't know why that would cause a problem but maybe? Wish I could help more, but that kind of thing isn't my area of expertise
fun to take photos with, absolutely useless photos. I mean if you want nostalgia sure why not. but don't expect photos from the old mavica cameras that you can proudly post on flickr
