Mavicas

[Cobra!]

Mavica (Magnetic Video Camera) is a series of cameras by Sony from the 1990s and 2000s that used 3.5" floppy disks as their storage. Aye, you read that right, floppy disks!

As someone who is into old tech and wanted an excuse to use the piles of floppies I have (and not have to buy much now-expensive film), I decided to get myself one... or three.

I recently got a handful of Mavica cameras on eBay the other week on eBay for a decent price.
3 cameras came in the lot. Here's a picture of two, taken with the third. (The third is the same model as on the right)



However, no charger was included, so I decided to order one separately, but had to settle for a cheap and nasty aftermarket one due to the prices of the original. I finally got the charger and got to give them a whirl! They all work, and one of the batteries still holds charge!



I went to Costo with it and took some photos in the highest res possible, and for a 90s camera that is optimised for floppies, the quality isn't half bad! They go up to 1200p resolution, though you can only store 4 photos in that res, which still isn't bad considering we're dealing with 1.44MB, but if you only have a few disks, it adds up. You can of course go lower to save on disk space, but I have enough floppies to afford to just go max.



They're not quite as fun or special as analogue, but they're still a lot of fun to use, especially when swapping disks around to take more photos! The form factor is surprisingly comfy, too!

Believe it or not, Mavicas actually have a practical use case for me. I'm very concerned with conserving space, and newer cameras don't take photos that exactly save space, so if a camera is built to work with floppy, they're naturally going to be small in size.

It also quicker for me to transfer photos taken with it to my computer than with a phone. With a phone, I take the photo, then upload it to a cloud drive, where I wait for it to upload, and then wait for my PC to download it.
With a digital camera that uses internal memory, I would need to plug in a cable, wait for the PC to recognise and open it, and then transfer files.

With a Mavica, I can just take the floppy out, slot it into the FDD, and transfer there. The transferring process takes longer, but I think the ease and speed of getting them on the PC makes up for that. They eject quicker, too, naturally.

The Mavica will by no means replace my analogue cameras, but this is the perfect middle ground for me for when I want to just snap a photo somewhere without wasting film. Analogue will be for special and holiday photos. Mavicas for everything else.

So has anyone ever used these? What are your thoughts?

[Frost Sheridan]

yo, i absolutely love mavicas! i have a mavica FD-200 (looks like you have one too) that i use as my primary camera. not only is it fun because it takes floppy disks, but it's also just a really nice camera in general! it's got great ergonomics - it's a chunky boy that feels great in the hand and is easy to operate with one hand - and even though it's a digital camera from 2002, it can still take some great photos! sure, it performs pretty badly in low-light as you'd expect, but it shines in outdoor or well-lit settings. the photos it takes are a perfect balance between quality and early digital charm - they're a bit noisy and crunchy, but still look good enough that i don't have a problem using it for most photography. (although when i really want high-quality photos, i'll use my modern sony mirrorless camera instead!)


here's a selection of some various pictures i've taken with my mavica:

some friends and cool beans at Western PA Furry Weekend last year:


mist, a dragon of mine, in front of my computer at night:


a tree covered in ice: (looks pretty neat!)


a couple cool buildings at a local university campus:

[TheFrugalGamer]

Oh, I remember these because LGR did a review of them a while back!

I'm really impressed by the quality you got with the larger screen resolutions. I'm sure 4 pics per disk would've been a pain back in the day, but it's funny how trivial that becomes once the tech is cheap enough to make carrying around a bunch of disks feasible. I'd super love to have one of these myself, but I'm really trying to hold off collecting yet ''more'' gadgets, since my home is already straining under the weight of my existing collections. That said, if I had all the space/money in the world, I'd love to get into early digital cameras, back from just before they became outmoded by phones. There were some neat ideas back then.

[Cobra!]

I'm really impressed by the quality you got with the larger screen resolutions. I'm sure 4 pics per disk would've been a pain back in the day, but it's funny how trivial that becomes once the tech is cheap enough to make carrying around a bunch of disks feasible.

Well, like I said before, there are lower resolutions available to save space. With the lowest, you can store like 30 photos on a single disk. It's probably what most people did back in the day. Here's a comparison between the lowest and highest res taken from the FD-200.



For spaces such as this one, the lower one will do fine, but I feel for other spaces, people would probably give weird looks.

The FD-100 only takes 480p res, but you can select between standard and "fine" qualities.

[CyberCat2000]

My workplace actually has one of the CD Mavicas! Specifically, the CD1000, quite possibly the first camera to use 8cm CDs as a storage medium.



Haven't actually gotten around to using it yet, but I have powered it on to make sure it works, and it seems that it can still take blank CD-Rs! (Not RWs, though; it seems to act weird around them.) Just gotta buy a battery for this thing...

The fact that this thing can take CD-Rs only presents an interesting situation. Like film, you gotta be wise with your shots, as you can't delete them once you take them. (Though unlike film, no development is needed, heh...) The later CD Mavicas, however, can use CD-RWs, so I might eventually try to seek those.

[Cobra!]

The fact that this thing can take CD-Rs only presents an interesting situation. Like film, you gotta be wise with your shots, as you can't delete them once you take them. (Though unlike film, no development is needed, heh...) The later CD Mavicas, however, can use CD-RWs, so I might eventually try to seek those.

I was thinking about that recently. CD Mavicas (or rather should they be called CDvicas? CDs aren't magnetic.) are sort of the digital equivalent of film, and I suppose to many, it skips the step of getting the film developed and have it put onto a CD, because this just goes straight to the CD.

If I ever see a CD Mavica in the wild, I'll probably pick it up, but you know, it's still digital, so I likely wouldn't be using it over film. :P
(Translation: I have enough old junk as it is, and don't need more)

[brisray]

I didn't ever think I'd see these things being discussed ever again. The thread had me scurrying to look through another box of ancient technology.

Fisher Fuzzy Logic FVC-770 Hi8 8mm film recorder from about 1993.

Sony Digital Mavica MVC-FD83 from 1999.

RCA Small Wonder EZ101 video recorder. VGA quality video! Woohoo! It dates from 2006. This thing was brilliant back in the day, I took it everywhere.

[Cobra!]

So I’ve been using he Mavicas for a while, and sending photos made with them online, like in scenarios like “I saw this today” or posting in forum threads like “Show your desktop!”

So far, nobody has suspected a thing.