Greetings and welcome to an LGR thing! And this thing right here is the Sony
Mavica MVC-FD5, released in 1997 at a suggested retail price of $599. This was
not only the first of Sony's FD Mavica line of digital cameras but it was the
first digital camera to use 3.5" diskettes as its storage medium of choice.
Sony ad guy: "Take a look at the Sony Digital Mavica! High resolution and VGA
images on a full-featured digital camera, all of the convenience of a floppy disk!
Imagine that!"
LGR: Oh yes, no need for any bizarre formatting or disk types, all you
needed was a standard 1.44 megabyte floppy disk like you'd use with most any
PC of the time period. This was a big deal since most competing digital
cameras were using internal flash memory and often required serial cables and
proprietary software. So these cameras may have had an advantage in terms of
read/write times while taking photos, but retrieving said photos was objectively
slower and more cumbersome. And while removable flash media like CompactFlash
and SmartMedia cards were gaining traction, those were still more expensive
than floppy disks and also required adapters to plug them into your computer.
Heck, even Sony's first consumer digital camera, the DSC-F1, stored its images onto
non removable internal memory and cost a lot more as a result at $850. But three
and a half inch floppy disks, mm, they were positively ubiquitous! And combined
with the pricing of the cameras that continued to drop as the tech improved,
FD Mavicas accounted for up to 40% of the entire digital camera market in the
U.S. at their peak. Though it is worth noting that this was not the first time
Sony used disks in their cameras. This wasn't even the first Mavica camera! The
earliest prototypes appeared all the way back in 1981 and began hitting the
market in 1987, with the name Mavica representing these first two letters of
the words: Magnetic Video Camera. These early Mavicas used 2 inch Video Floppy
or VF disks, but despite that they were not digital cameras. Rather, these were
known as "still video cameras." This is a topic for another LGR video entirely but
the basic idea is that you've got an analog video camera that recorded a
moment of video and played it back repeatedly so as to provide a still
image to a video output device like a TV. But this changed in 1997 with the
release of the FD Mavica series, namely the MVC-FD5 and FD7.
Each of these were fully digital still cameras with a quarter-inch 640x480 CCD,
the biggest difference between the two introductory models here was that
the $599 FD5 had a fixed 4.8 millimeter lens and the $799 FD7 had a 4.2 - 42mm
lens providing a 10 times optical zoom. Of the original two models
I only have the FD5 here to show in this video, but over the years I've
stumbled across plenty of these things while thrifting. And two of those that I
want to show are the FD75 from 2001 and the FD87, also from 2001. I find these
models fascinating since, even though they come from the same year, the 75
feels notably older than the 87 in terms of capabilities. So it's amusing to
compare them side-by-side. While they do differ a bit here and there
what's common across all models of the FD Mavica line are their usage of
3.5 inch high-density floppy discs so no matter which one of the 18
or so models you choose from you can still use the same exact storage media.
Although Sony did attempt to bridge the gap between old and new storage tech
around the year 2000 with the Memory Stick/Floppy Disk Adapter. This allowed
you to use Sony Memory Sticks with certain later compatible Mavicas to
provide potentially hundreds of megabytes of storage using the same old
floppy disk mechanism. And amusingly required to CR-2016 batteries of its own
to pull off the job. Man, I love funky media adapters like this. And for the
most part you can also use these same rechargeable lithium ion batteries
across FD Mavicas, these being the InfoLithium NP-F300 and F500
series. Rather annoyingly though there are certain models like the FD75 that only
accept original Sony InfoLithium batteries, so modern third-party ones you
can find online today won't work without some modification. Seeing as most of the
original batteries have long since stopped holding a charge and can be
rather expensive when they do, this can be super annoying so look out for it!
Another commonality between these models is their inclusion of an illuminated
2.5 inch color TFT LCD screen on the back that acts as a viewfinder as
well as a way to manage camera settings and saved images. Several competing
cameras were doing this as well, but looking at a screen instead of through
an optical viewfinder was still a pretty fresh way of taking photographs in 1997.
But as much as these models have in common let's take a closer look at the
FD5, which I really appreciate for how straightforward it is. On the front of
the camera past the shutter release button and the flash you get a
4.8 millimeter fixed focal length lens with an aperture of 2.0, the
equivalent of a 47 millimeter lens on a 35 mil camera. And while the
focal length was fixed you have this macro mode switch which allowed you to
shift the focus much closer to photograph objects three to nine inches
away. And all your photos were captured with an ISO of 100 with a shutter speed
between 1/60th and 1/4000th of a second. And at a
0.31 megapixel 640x480 resolution, compressed in the JPEG file format at
one of two levels, which meant that you could store around 40 standard quality
images or 20 fine quality images on a single floppy disk. Around the left side
here you get the floppy disk mechanism itself which is pretty straightforward.
It's a lot like a laptop floppy disk drive of the time. On the top and on the
right there's nothing really of note. Along the bottom you have the battery
compartment and there's also another battery compartment on the bottom right
of the rear of the camera. This takes a CR-2025 button cell battery to save your
settings. There's also a nice little circular d-pad here that works
surprisingly well, a button for turning on and off the display, the flash, some
brightness up and down options for the LCD screen, a switch for switching between
playback and taking photos, and of course the on and off switch.
And you get a nice little sound when you do that.
*nice little beep sound plays*
And once it's powered on you
have some on screen options and display notification thingies
which are navigated using that directional pad. So you can turn on and
off the timer, adjust the exposure value if you're not happy with what the camera
automatically does, and a menu for adjusting the clock, turning on and off the
beeping, switching the quality of the JPEG compression, and something called
"field / frame." And this demands a bit of a closer look.
Many of the imaging components inside the FD5 and the FD7 were shared with
Sony's own NTSC video cameras, capturing images by digitizing either a single
field or a full frame of the video feed that it was recording. Taking a picture
in field mode captures an interlaced video image and interpolates it, filling
in the missing lines to give you a 640x480 JPEG. And while taking a photo in
frame mode you're provided a full 640x480 JPEG image off the bat, produced by
combining two fields captured a split second apart with "unique" results. More on
that later. Anyway taking photos takes about 6 seconds to save an image to disk,
at least on the original slower speed disk drive models, and for the most part
it seems to be quite reliable as long as you keep the drives clean. If you don't
or if the disks themselves are of the cheaper variety you'll probably see the
dreaded and rather unhelpful "DISK ERROR" message. ugh. When you do get a successful
shot though, retrieving the photos could not be easier, at least for the time
period. Just put the disk in a floppy drive and bam: you've got JPEGs!
No software needed, in fact the Mavica manual recommended just using Internet
Explorer. Although Sony originally included
ArcSoft PhotoStudio in the package as well. Well, I don't know about you but I'm
ready to take a look at some photos taken with each of these cameras! I'm
just going to show you the same scene here on the highest possible settings
for each camera, which in the case of the first one, the FD5 here, is 640x480 in
frame mode and fine detail. And really it's not that bad, the colors are pretty
good compared to some of the other cameras that I've looked at
from the mid-1990s. Although its fixed lens is a bit zoomed in, the field
of view is not very high. And it's notable when you compare it directly to
this shot from the FD75 when I was standing in the exact same location.
And as you might expect you get even better colors with the FD75 as well. It is
still 640x480, but even though it is the same resolution the overall result
is much more cleaner and vibrant. Then we get to the FD87 and this just has a
much better sensor all around. You get a greater dynamic range for everything, the
colors are still pretty darn good, it's a little bit brighter, and of course the
resolution is higher: you get 1280x960. And it also includes a timestamp in the
bottom right by default, I did not know that was there until I got the pictures
onto my computer. But I think it's fun to see the march of progress through the
lenses of the different FD Mavicas like this. And of course for an even greater
march of progress: compared it to the camera on my Galaxy Note 8 phone, which
is to be expected but yeah. You can really see how the colors and everything
should look in this particular scene. And then if we go back to, say, the FD75 you
can see that it really isn't terribly far off in terms of the color
reproduction for a digital camera from the time period. And the 75 also has
another mode that it can shoot in which is bitmap instead of saving in
compressed JPEG files. It's kind of hard to see the difference just like this, so
let's zoom in here. This is the JPEG under the 75, you get that classic JPEG
compression. And then here is the bitmap. These are both at the same 640x480
resolution so it's still not great, but it is a little bit better. Of course the
downside here is that you can only save *ONE* bitmap per floppy disk. However, what
makes this model even more attractive in my opinion is the 10x optical zoom.
So check this out: this is just JPEG 640x480 still but zoomed in 10 times with
that nice lens on the front. I mean it's pretty awesome
and quite sharp. I'm impressed, especially compared to the three times
optical zoom of the later FD87. Again, I'm just not as big of a fan of the
color that it picks up here. Maybe it's just this particular lighting but the
tiger looks more yellow than it should, in reality it's more of a golden orange.
On the plus side the 87 is just way speedier to use since it has a 4-speed
floppy drive: four times faster than the original FD5 and twice that of the
FD75. So you got a trade-off of different features going on for these
different models and I really like that. Makes it fun to collect them. And another
thing that makes it fun is the FD87 has these different filters, such as black
and white mode, the classic sepia toned mode, a negative color mode, and the most
confusing one to me is this one: solarize mode. I'm not sure what this effect is
supposed to be doing, it just sort of washes everything out and lowers the
color depth. Personally if I had to pick just one of these cameras to take out
and take pictures with it would be the FD5, the very earliest one. And it is
the one that I ended up using the most simply because it is so simple! The
further away that it is from a modern digital camera, even like the FD87, the
better. Because I like taking photos of environments and objects that would be
era appropriate for the camera itself: electronics, vehicles, buildings. And with
something like the FD87 I just don't get that because it just feels like a
crappier modern digital camera. Whereas the FD5, or even the FD75 to a degree,
that is trying *so hard* to make believable photographs! And across the
board I am just impressed with the way that the sensor picks up color. Granted,
it is very sensitive to the type of lighting that you have. It can be hard to
get different exposure settings correct or the flash, especially in indoor
settings. Taking a selfie with the flash is not recommended. But just under some
evening lighting it's not bad at all. In fact, I was also impressed with the
lower light situations of these cameras. I haven't even showed it on certain
other ones that I've made videos about because it really just couldn't do
anything with lower light. But the FD5 on up did pretty well with lower light
situations. And there's something about the artifacts that you get around
certain types of light that makes it fascinating to take photos with in my
opinion. And with how easy it is to look at what you've taken and then go back
and delete it from the floppy disk if you don't like it, then that's just awesome
and gives me more freedom to experiment with exposures and such. And here's
another thing that I really like about the FD5 and that is its built-in macro
lens. That little switch on the front lets you get really really close to
certain objects and get a nice clear photo. It can be kind of
hard to actually see if the photo you're getting is really clear or not on that
tiny little blurry LCD, but when you get it right it looks pretty good for a
digital camera from this time period.
Another fascinating feature --
ha, "feature."
-- is that frame and field mode option that you can shoot with that I was talking
about earlier in the video. You can really see how it works more akin to a
still video camera with its different interlaced images mixing together. You
see the people right there walking by, there's the little lines going in there
because those parts of them are moving. It looks very much like a paused frame
of video, like what I would see on my MiniDV camera tapes back in the day. It
just depends on how fast something is moving, but it is especially noticeable
on like this photo right here: just look at the wheel, it looks like there's two
shots going on. And really there are because the frame mode is mixing two
fields into one. And the whole idea is to get a more detailed image, so for
instance this shot of an AdLib sound card right here is taken in the field
mode. And then this one is taken in the frame mode. And it's not a huge
difference, but it is there. Let's zoom in here a little bit again: we've got field
mode right here, just kind of look at the text on the card. And then we have frame
mode. It's not a massive difference for most situations so I just kept it in
frame mode like, all the time, and made sure not to move the camera around too
much. I'd rather just pay attention to the things moving around and have higher
quality. And yeah that's about it for the Sony FD Mavica line of cameras for this
video! Personally, I find something wildly
charming about the floppy disk Digital Mavica series. Using old digital cameras
is enjoyable enough to me but having my pictures saved onto a floppy disk in
real time, it takes it to another geeky level! Yes, there were later Mavicas
that saved to eight centimeter mini CDs that were much more capable all
around. But those don't appeal to me the same way as the less capable floppy disk
cameras. There's nothing quite like hearing floppy drive noises and feeling
the whirr of a disk drive mechanism after you take a photo. There's also the
fact that FD Mavicas are so chunky and heavy, like you'd expect a whole lot from
them, yet they do so relatively little! Especially the simplest
model, the FD5. It's the slowest, it takes the worst pictures, it doesn't even
have a zoom lens. It's the model that's farthest away from modern digital
cameras and I love it for that. I can use any number of modern cameras without
thinking about it, but this is an event to use without being too difficult to
retrieve your photos. I can absolutely see why the Mavicas were so popular
from around 1998 to 2002 or so. They really provided a great service to those
that needed decent digital pictures as quickly as possible. And I can also see
why the line was discontinued by Sony in 2003 as there really wasn't much reason
to keep making them with the advent of USB and cheaper flash storage media.
And if you have any experience with the FD Mavica line of cameras let me know in
the comments! I know a ton of people used these in their schools and small
businesses and just all over the place, so I always like hearing about that kind
of stuff. And if you enjoyed this video of me talking about them then thank you
very much! Perhaps you'd like to see some of my other episodes, there are new ones
going up every Monday and Friday here on LGR about digital cameras, old computer
hardware, and software and just all sorts of stuff. But anyway that's all for this
video and thank you very much for watching!
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