Sony Mavica MVC-CD1000

Here's a typical Play mode screen with all pertinent data overlayed on top of the picture. You can navigate forward or backwards through the stored pictures or call up a thumbnail index (see next frame).

This is the INDEX screen or what most of us know as a thumbnail mode. You can quickly select any image for fullscreen viewing.

While an image is viewed full screen you can toggle the zoom lever and magnify the picture up to 5x and then freely scroll around inside. This is great for checking critical focus on a small subject.

And this is the play screen while viewing a fullscreen 320 x 240 High Quality MPEG movie clip. 320 x 240 standard and the 160 x 112 movies come up in a much smaller window on the LCD.

Steve's Conclusion

The Sony Mavica MVC-CD1000 will not be available until August 2000 and it's already generating more interest than most of the higher resolution digital cameras.  Why?   Because it is the first camera to have a CD-Recorder built into it and it stores the pictures on 3-inch (8cm) CD-ROM discs.

Sony knew that the success of earlier Mavicas was due to the use of a standard 1.44MB floppy disk drive. Users could shoot their pictures and then simply put the disk into a PC or Mac disk drive and instantly access the image data. No special cables, no ports to configure, no optional card reader and no special software was required. I pointed out in the FD95 review that once the Mavicas began using 2-megapixel CCD sensors the image size was too big to fit more than 3 or 4 pictures on a diskette. It was now apparent that a higher capacity storage device had to be developed, one that was as portable as the 3-1/2 inch floppy disk.

Enter CD-ROM ... the year 2000 answer to floppy disk. We all know that you don't buy software on floppy disk anymore, it comes on a CD-ROM disc. Every desktop PC, Mac and most laptop computers now have a CD-ROM drive. In fact, most people now have a CD-Recorder in their desktop computers but the size and weight of a standard CD-R drive make it unusable for a portable camera. So the wizards at Sony developed a small, lightweight and rugged CD-Recorder that uses the smaller 8cm discs and pretty much built it into the existing MVC-FD95 camera.

When I first saw this combination of camera and CD-Recorder I applauded their decision to go with what is probably the most cost-effective storage media on the planet. But then I wondered about the durability of such a fragile thing as an optical drive in a device like a digicam. I mean this camera is going to be used by the consumer, not a technician, would it be able to take the day to day beating that most other digicams receive?  I'm happy to report that I have given my test camera a real beating, even thumping it and moving it during the write to disk process and have yet to have ruined a disc or lost an image.

The most critical time to be careful with the camera is when you first initialize a disc or when you finalize it. During these two procedures there is a prominent warning displayed on the LCD screen and the user is told to place the camera on a flat surface and not to move it. The rest of the time you are free to use the camera the same as you would if it had a flash memory card in it. Image data is written in fairly quick, little bursts to the disc and the 1600 x 1200 pixel JPG images can be written in about 3-5 seconds.

The most common question I field about the FD95 or the CD1000 is how well it would work for sports photography. It's a double-edged sword, the big telephoto is ideal for sports but you have to put up with the way the camera operates. After snapping a shot the color viewfinder and/or the LCD display is frozen until the write to disc process is completed. This makes following action a real pain. Both cameras are also a bit slow to autofocus, especially when going from near to far. You can use the manual focus but it's not a perfect science.

I'm happy to report that the image quality of the CD1000 is a vast improvement to that of the FD95. It uses about half of the compression in the JPEGs and no compression in the TIFF images. Searching around the Internet turned up the mini-CD recordable discs for less than $2 each. The CyberGuys (www.cyberguys.com) just added them to their catalog (part # 154 0543c), priced at $18.98 for a 10-pack with mini jewel cases.

The CD1000 will solve the problem of "Oops, I just accidentally erased the picture off of my flash card!" Once you save an image to the CD-R disc it is there forever. The only way you'll lose an image is if you lose an entire disc. Images can be written to those CD-R discs but they can't be erased. Most of us empty our flash cards to the hard drive and then store the pictures on CD-R discs. The CD1000 will now eliminate this intermediate step and give you the digital equivalent of film negatives.

Sony has definitely got a winner here. I predict these cameras will fly off the shelf as soon as they appear. Many of us were dumbfounded by how many FD91's were sold for close to a $1000 a pop when other simlilarly-priced cameras offered twice the image resolution. The key selling factor is that big lens and many people are willing to put up with the size, the bulk and the price to get it. So my advice is if you want one of these cameras you better grab it when you see it or it'll be snatched up by the next shopper who sees it.