Sony Mavica CD500 Review

A typical playback screen. Icons shown for battery condition (both graphical and time left in minutes), image size and quality, picture number / total number of pictures with a graphic displaying remaining disc space. Across the bottom is the folder name, image file number and time and date.

While viewing a picture fullscreen you can toggle the telephoto zoom control and zoom-in to the image in multiple steps up to 5x. Once magnified you can scroll around inside of the image using the 4-way selector.

Playback index mode, nine thumbnail size images are displayed per page. You can quickly search through the stored images and display one fullscreen.

While in Index mode you can call up two pages of image information, the first screen displays the aperture, shutter speed, exposure compensation and ISO speed.

The second information screen displays the metering, flash mode and the white balance setting.

The 640 x 480 HQ VX movies playback fullscreen, the 160 x 112 standard mode movies playback in smaller windows. Audio will be replayed through the builtin speaker.

Play mode menu options:

Folder - Select desired image folder
Protect - Protect/unprotect image
DPOF - embed DPOF printing information
Slide - start slideshow, set interval time
Resize - Resize to copy image (5M, 3.1M, 1.2M, VGA)
Rotate - Rotate portrait mode images

The Resize Image option allows you to make smaller images in-camera for email or other purposes.

SETUP Menu Screens

Camera 2   Select the step value (+/- 0.3, 0.7 or 1.0EV) for AE Bracketing, Conversion Lens (On,Off), Hot Shoe (On,Off)

Disc Tool 1    Options for working with the CD discs, Finalize, Format, Initialize and Unfinalize

Disc Tool 2   Options for sequentially numbering the files or resetting the numbers with each new disc used. Create a new image folder or change to a different image folder. Enable the confirm before write option.

Setup 1 and 2   Adjust the LCD brightness and backlight, enabling the BEEP sound for buttons or just the shutter, select the menu language, set the internal clock and se;ect the format of the Video Out signal (NTSC or PAL).