Sony Mavica MVC-FD7 Digital Camera from 1997, in 2016 - Review

[Xanthe_2871]

Today we will be looking at a 20 year old digital camera, one of the first consumer digital cameras, and seeing how it holds up in 2016. 

 

Brand: Sony

Price: $15

Available from: eBay

TL;DR: Don't buy this to use as your everyday camera. It's fine as a geeky toy, but it won't take photos worth using. 

 

I should start off by saying two things: I will not be reviewing this from the standpoint of a professional photographer, but instead from the view of a typical consumer. Second, while I was inspired to make this review based on the video by the 8 Bit Guy on YouTube, my review will be looking at the practicality of using this camera today, and not the history of digital cameras. I'll be using my own thoughts and ideas, but some repeating themes may be unavoidable!  

 

 

This is an old camera. Very, very obsolete. It's not even 1 Megapixel. It's actually 300 Kilopixels! It records images to a 3.5" floppy disk (Yes, you can still buy floppy disks). On that note, I highly recommend you buy used old floppies and not a new pack. Most unopened packs of floppy disks will have been made recently (10 years ago or newer), out of inferior materials. Older floppies made when they were in high demand work much better even with the effects of age. The camera does have flash, and zoom, (which is very important since you can't really zoom in or crop after the picture is taken, it's just too small.)

 

 

 

So you found a working unit, and some old floppies, what else will you need? Well, the battery might need to be replaced. The original probably won't work 20 years later! There are sellers on eBay offering batteries with new cells. You will also need a way to read the floppy disks. Any generic USB floppy reader should work, like one of these $8 ones. Now that you have your camera, battery, disks, and disk reader, let's take some photos!

 

Here's some sample shots:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wow, those are, pretty small files! Around 35 KB each. In fact, here's how they look on a 720p display:

 

 

And while I don't own a 4K display, it would look approximately like this:  

 

 

Now this might be my own poor photography, but I've noticed that the flash is often too bright for the scene:

 

 

All this aside, you can use this camera if you really want to. To it's benefit, one floppy disk can hold around 45 images, changing disks is simple and fast, the auto focus works very well, and images are so small that you can email +600 in a single email, or SMS around 35 of them, all without any additional compression needed. This camera is also very cheap, and while it could be considered a collector's item it's price should remain fairly low since there are a ton of these out in the wild. The biggest issue with actually using this camera is the frustration of using it just for fun and having a perfect event or moment you'd like to capture, but this camera is all you have with you... I've lost several good shots I could have taken with my phone or DSLR, but instead I tried using this camera because it was in my hands, but the image it took was totally unusable.

 

If you like retro tech, or that sound a floppy drive makes, or really small JPEG files, then this camera is for you! Even as a toy it's probably cheap enough for most geeks to justify.