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!
