Technical details

All pics were taken with a ~$900 Sony Mavica MVC-FD95 Digital Camera (that I borrowed). I took about 320 pics.

1. Easy to use
2. It is quite light for its size.
3. This has very good telephoto facilities but the wide angle (39mm equivalent) is not really wide enough for landscapes.
4. I found that it was quite slow at taking pictures and if the shot was of a bird it had flown away by the time the camera had taken the picture.
5. I got 90 minute battery life and the recharge time was quite good.
6. Changing floppies was a pain in the rear (10 pics/floppy at 1040x768), it also has 1600x1200 resolution but you only get 4 pics to a floppy.
7. I loved the AE (shutter) mode (my real camera is a Canon AE-1).
8. It has built in flash.
9. The mpeg video mode is useful (it captures the sound as well)
10. Quality of the pictures at 1040x768 was good (enough for the web)

Would I buy it? I would consider buying a newer model, the MVCCD1000 Digital Camera, Sony simply substituted a three inch CD-R drive for the 3.5 inch floppy drive - vastly increasing the camera's image capacity. I would like a wider angle model, but I will still borrow the Mavica FD95 when I go back to Jamaica. The camera would be well suited to studio work.

Mostly I used 1040x768 resolution, reduced to 800*600 for the web.

All sunsets have been enhanced digitally, yep, I increased the red (I saw no nice sunsets in Mandeville) although the blue dawn picture is as I shot it.

Most of the aerial shots have had their contrast increased.

The gamma function was used on some shots to lighten shadow, especially for Jamaican faces.

The jpeg's are at 85% resolution, except files over ~150k, which are 80%.

Image processing and the thumbnail webpages were created using ThumbsPlus an excellent tool from cerious.com. I use HotMetalPro for the html. The files are uploaded using Cuteftp.

back