I received a new goodie in the mail today; a brand new (to me) crappy camera! A Sony Mavica MVC-FD75.
Look at this bad boy. It fits nicely in the hand, sturdy construction, solid, and had a fantastic command centre on the back. Everything ever needed is a button press away.
This camera was state of the art! A 10X optical zoom! A flash! Multiple built in photo effects. A 0.4 megapixel sensor for stunning 640x480 photos! Yes, you read that right. 0.4 megapixels. Literally 400,000 pixels. 640x480! But the best is yet to be seen: the storage medium.
Yes, this camera writes its images directly onto a 1.4 MB floppy disk. You thought 400,000 pixels was a lot? Each floppy disk can old 1,400,000 bits of data! That's over one million bits! Whoa!! I ended up ordering a box of 10 floppies from Amazon. Yes. It's possible.
I already owned a USB floppy drive attachment. Please don't judge me.
I did some initial testing with the camera and, unsurprisingly, found it performed better in well lit environments. Low light pictures are very grainy. Here are some quick samples.
Not bad. Took this in my light tent and found that my lights weren't quite bright enough for full illumination. But not bad for a first photo. I was happy.
Here's one with a little more light, and it's a little less grainy.
(both of those photos are untouched)
Finally, here's a picture of a Tibetan mask that one of my former employees gave me as a gift. Picture one is a slightly retouched sepia format, and image two is after I was able to de-noise it. I think it turned out well!
So far it's an interesting comparison with my other 'crappy camera'. The other camera has a larger sensor and can take larger pictures, but this one has an actual optical zoom (not digital) and a useful view finder. Taking pictures with this camera is a more enjoyable experience. I'm going to have fun pushing this one to the limits too.
(c) All images and photographs, unless otherwise specified, are created and owned by me.
(c) Victor Wiebe