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CD-R In A Digital Camera: The Ueber-Mavica?
"(Now, Sony's announced (OK, preannounced) a new model with a 77mm CD-R drive built in. Several of the digicam sites have picked up on this. Imaging Resource seems to have gotten their hands on a demo unit first, has a bunch of pictures and product shots posted (they're who called it an "Uber Mavica"). Steve of Steve's Digicams is promising a "First Look" later today or tomorrow. Watch his news page for when he posts his take on it. This looks like a big deal in digicamland, because it extends the "no brainer" Mavica appeal into the multi-megapixel world, and eliminates the image-quality penalty in the process. (Of course, true Nerds may choose to wait another year or so until the digicams arrive built around the tiny 500MB micro-optical disks...)"
I'm excited to see a product which may spur sales (and availability!) of 77mm CD-R media, which when last I checked at Recorded Media Supply were available only in fairly large quantities (hundred lots) and cost considerably more than their bigger cousins. But they're so neat! Wanna split an order? ;)
I just got a set of Kodak rechargables for my DC-215(mill. edition), and I have taken a lot more than 31, and I still have battery juice.
Just remembber though, do NOT cover up the flash with a piece of paper. You will hear a weird popping sound and a burning smell.
77mm CD's have been around for quite some time, in fact, if you look at you cd-rom drive, there is a cutout for about a three inch disk, most of you probably use this for Oreo cookie storage, but it is actually a 77mm CD slot. I have a Nine Inch Nails 77mm CD from inside the "Broken" case, I've had it since the early nineties.
"If voting could really change things, it would be illegal. " - Revolution Books, NY
Why bother? Just use a CompactFlash camera.
CF is nothing more than a stripped down PCMCIA interface. This is why the adapters are so cheap since there is little circuitry needed.
CF is conviently smaller that PCMCIA and are cheaper per megabyte than PCMCIA flash cards due to their larger market.
The only edge PCMCIA has is the availability of hideously expensive high capacity cards. This edge is rapidly being eroded with the 300+MB CF cards coming out now.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Seems Hitachi have gone one better....
u n-7-ZZZV8A5679C.html
:-(
http://www.hitachi.com/about/pressroom/a-2000-J
a DVD-RAM camcorder that does stills as well..yummy
but only available in Japan to start with
Black box in the car ? Are you mad. End of year, the black box is analysed and Speeding and parking tickets issued accordingly huh ? Or are you trying to tell us you never ever speed, or park anywhere for any length of time, that you are not supposed to ? Big brother is here, and he is going to use black box..
I've used only two digital cameras: an Epson, and the Mavica.
The Mavica wins, hands down, for two reasons. First, because it gives better pictures, especially in low light (and has a flash). Second, most important, I can whip out the floppy, slip it into my linux box, and there's the JPEG format image. No messing with cables and Win95 software.
But for those who want to be able to cram several 6MByte images onto a single diskette/CD/Flashcard, what's the point? The optical quality of the lens is not what you could call "professional photo quality", the CCD can only give a limited number of pixels, and if the end result is for display on a 75 dpi screen, why try to grab images at ridiculous resolutions?
I'm quite happy to use a Mavica for web-page jobs.
If I want real quality, I'll either go for a good SLR body and a professional digital back, or use traditional film and ask the lab to digitize onto a CD-Rom for me.
It's just a question of using the right tool for the job.
Huh? You did read the article and see that the camera only writes to 77mm CD-R's, right?
You're right, but your comment ignores the fact that the world is changing, and not just amongst geeks:
Cable and xDSL "modems" have brought 10baseT to millions of homes, and the incredible sales (backordered most places) of gadgets like Linksys' little $150 NAT/Firewall/switch/DHCP server box convince me that this is a market that's rapidly maturing. Not to mention that such a camera would plug in transparently to any LAN, providing value to corporatations and SOHO customers.
Seems like a no-brainer to me: Ethernet silicon is at least as cheap as USB silicon, and you get to completely ignore troublesome drivers in the bargain - forever.
Internet standard interfaces have significant value for all kinds of things, not just networked PCs and servers...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Indeed, the IBM microdrive works in several digital cameras. You can find a list at the IBM compatibility matrix online. The Canon Powershot S20 is in the list and looks like a nice camera. It seems like a far better solution (performance and robustness) than the Sony approach.
I seem to recall reading somewhere that a 1GB version of the drive is expected in the near future.
Tim
The reason the MiniDisc hasn't caught on more for computers is likely concerns of the audio recording industry (Sony is a big recording company in addition to an electronics vendor). Otherwise, it would be the clear choice of things like the Zip drive and Superdisk.
Unfortunately, those cameras cost about $1000, and you still get crappy battery life.
Get a set of 1600 mAH NiMH rechargeable batteries, minimize your use of the LCD screen (if possible), and you'll get reasonable battery life. With my Kodak DC290, I can take enough high-resolution photos to fill my 64MB CF card (about 100 photos at 1792x1200) using a freshly charged set of NiMH AA cells. I've also run some extremely long time-lapse photos on a single set of batteries: one low-res photo per minute for 5 hours.
I'm not saying that digicams don't suck power -- just that it's a manageable problem.
--jim
...just put a 2.5" laptop Hard Drive in a camera, and give us FAST UBS, Firewire, etc. and the ability to link to other cameras and share pictures? With a Hard Drive, an LCD screen, USB, etc, there is a lot we could do with a product like that. Hell, we could probably find a way to hack the ROM and install Linux on it! :)
Score:5???
Here's an idea: Read the article, realize that they even tried smacking the thing while shooting photos and were unable to prevent it from writing, post something more informed on Slashdot. Just a thought.
The trick is that the camera has a usb port, and when you put the camera in pc mode the pc will just see a usb ls-120 drive with some jpeg's on it. cool huh? no special software required. So far i've only got it to work under 95, no NT, no win2k (yet). If anybody can tell me how to nake this happen in linux, you'll make a new friend
It's a 1.3Mpixel camera. this picture quality is real good, nice zoom. It can take low/high res pictures, low res can be in (extra) zoom mode, a quick 5 shot sequence, or a 10 sec quicktime movie (with sound!) fsckin cool!
the best part is that it lists for about a grand, but i found it for only $600 at www.harmonycomputers.com, they charge too much for shipping, but the total is still at least $100 below the rest.
-earl
p.s. here's my favorite pic favorite pic so far:
Yup.
Slot-loading drives can only use normal sized CD. I've been wondering why no one's come up with come kind of carrier/holder that these small CD would snap into so they'd work with slot-loading drives...
ummm, the above is copyright FyreFiend!
...Off to the patent office
- Apple Computer......proudly going out of business for over twenty years.
REAL Neo-Luddites don't use digital cameras. They don't even use manual 35mm cameras.
They use paint.
Yeah, I have a tough time taking 15-20 pics on my DCS-315 even with the 'long lasting' batteries. What B.S.
I just plug the damn thing into the wall now...
Neo-Luddite? Please. I bought my Mavica because of one overwhelming reason: floppies are highest common denomitor of computer storage media.
I just sold my Amiga. While it was extremely customized and very high-end, there's no way I could expect to use another digicam's proprietary interface with my system. Now, at home, I use Linux and FreeBSD. When I fill a disk, I can pop it into any of my servers or workstations, and instantly view my pictures. No moving weird cables around, no fiddling with arcane drivers, no praying that the manufacturer has actually heard of Unix... I get to concentrate on the content, rather than the media.
That, to me, is important. While I'm perfectly happy at hacking a microcontroller into a toaster, why should I have to screw around just to take a snapshot of my baby? Even more to the point, why should my wife? She's not a neo-Luddite either, but I'm glad that I don't have to teach her about advanced interfacing just so she can look at the pictures she took of her garden.
Finally, floppies make great "film". If I drag a 10-pack with me, I'm guaranteed to have more storage than interest in taking enough pictures to fill it. Furthermore, I'm not always in major metropolitan areas. If I run out of "film", I can grab another 10-pack at the nearest Wal-Mart. Where am I going to get memory cards, or possibly even CD-Rs in a town of 5000?
No, I bought my Mavica because I liked the freedom and flexibility that it offered. I had the money to buy any digicam I wanted, and the technical expertise to hack any of them to work on my systems. However, sometimes it's nice to have something that just works without hours and hours spent.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
How could I forget? We have a couple hundred recycled floppies that are destined for the Mavica, and once we use a disk, we don't re-use it, we just keep it as an archival copy. And floppies are indeed cheap, and you can buy them even at a grocery store, if necessary.
I haven't priced flash memory lately, but I'm sure it's not cheap. Same for memory sticks and tiny hard drives.
I do like your idea, though, for a hip-pack. Put a 2.5" (or even 3.5") hard drive in it, and you're good to go.
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
It's the Panisonic PalmCam Superdisk, Model PV-SD4090. I has one and am very happy with it. My cost was about $900 with a 2 year "accident" plan. Res is 1280x960 and can take about 800 pictures on one superdisk. If you use the "normal" picture res, you can take over 1500 pics on a disk. Uses a 1250mAh LI-Ion battery that lasts for about 200 pisc (100 flashes). Also can take about 80 to 100 ten second quicktime movies. Other features include red eye flash mode, timer, sound recording, 3x optical zoom, and rapidfire mode (16 640x480 at 2 pics a second).
Okay, since so many people are saying the same things, I thought I'd provide you all with some links talking about the various minidisc data solutions.
PC World - Is Sony's 140MB MiniDisc Drive the Next Betamax?
minidisc.org - Sony MDH-10
minidisc.org - Minidisc Data Product Index
Storewell (norway) - Selling the Sony MMD-140
minidisc.org - What was cool in minidisc (mostly audio)
newstimes.com - Computer News (November 28 1995)
It used to be a lot easier to scare up a lot more hits, but I guess some of that stuff has decayed over time. Amazingly enough, altavista has forgotten it :)
There was at least one other Sony-released Minidisc data drive, but I don't remember much about it. It's not like I have one. I have a Zip 100, because everyone else has one, even though they suck.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I have two Kodak DC-2xx series cameras. Transferring images is easy--I pop out the memory card and plug it into the PCMCIA (PC) slot on either my laptop or my Linux server (you can get a PC "drive" for under $99). There's a small adapter needed. Then I can mount the card as a disk drive and copy them off.
I'm very surprised that few people use this option. However, I beleive there are similar USB readers for Sony "Memory Sticks", etc.
A CD-ROM camera would be handy for specialized applications, like when you want to give the photos away to someone else on-the-spot. Kinda like how the old Polaroids worked. In that vein...why not put a tiny ink-jet printer in the camera that can print a little 3x5 photo? Surely they can fit a printer in the space of a CD-ROM drive, can't they?
--- Speaking only for myself,
There are companies that will do that, but they're in the $5000+ range. Of course, they're a digital-backed SLR...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...but minidiscs 1) are reusable, and 2) would come down in price significantly if there were actually a market for them. If Sony's not going to scrap MD technology, they're going to have to get people to use 'em.
Not that I prefer proprietary technology, I'm just finding it interesting.
You, my fine feathered friend are obviously both a true geek (a compliment!) and not a photographer. While these digital toys are wonderful for the coolness factor, I sincerely doubt that you will be seeing any pro photographers using any of them.
You have two serious misconceptions:
1> You will NEVER be rid of pixelation. (Unless someone finds a way to generate vector images from super-complex life still -- I'm not holding my breath). The whole thing of pixelation is that it is a representation of color and shape made for a grid. You cannot alter this fact.
2> Digital media is not long lasting. How many of you here believe that a CD, hard disk, etc.. will still functio (or even be remotely compatible!) in 100 years. Contrast that to the photos that we have from over 150+ years ago and I think that you'll agree that chemical film is safer and simpler in the long run.
[Disclaimer
Rami James
GUI Dev Guy
--
The thing that makes
rJames.org - illustration
A friend of mine has an FD71, and loves it not just because it has a floppy drive (he is quite computer illiterate), but finds it's easier to hold. He finds that the smaller (and cheaper) cameras are too fiddly to handle.
Java gaming nut - http://www.retep.org/ or for the rail http://uktra.in/
Well, there may have been several reasons for this. First, almost all computers sold have CD-ROM drives in them. I haven't seen a single puter with a minidisc-rom (MD-ROM?) drive. Second, if there's no data spec for the MD's, and no real way to implement it--i.e. no "data type field"--then they shouldn't put data on there.
Of course, my main concern for these things is the CD-R's susceptibility to vibration, and latency for the bloody things. Digital Photography Review had a review of the latest Mavica, and they reported a latency of 15 seconds, per picture after the exposure for the bloody things, when using a flash card. Granted, it's much better while using a floppy, but still, a floppy drive or a CD-R drive aren't the fastest of media these days. That's fine and dandy for portraits and other stills, but for anything else, it makes it kind of obnoxious, if not downright useless, relegating it to the "toys" section.
Nah... who needs battery life?
Reminds me of an old joke about a Russian gentleman with a suitcase, talking to an American tourist. The gist of the joke was that though it was a nice watch, it needed a battery the size of a suitcase. A Lithium-Ion battery is probably a requirement for these beasties, and by the time you have a charger, why not make it a cradle?
I do a lot of composite work, so I tend to use the 35mm for high res items, and the mavica for smaller items (like macro shots of a flower which is then included in the main shot).
How many of the other (non mavica) cameras can have additional lenses added? Not many.
Ok, they don't replace the existing lens, but I now have a wideangle, 2 telephoto and a macro conversion lens which are really handy.
During the Solar Eclipse last year, I used it with a 5x conversion lens & a filter, and it worked beautifully. Since then, I've used those eclipse shots to place an eclipsed sun in a shot comprising a nice castle/coastline scene (even though the castle wasn't anywhere near the eclipse, nor the coast).
Java gaming nut - http://www.retep.org/ or for the rail http://uktra.in/
Well, I have actually considered setting up your suggestion with the backpack. I have a VERY small CCD, that I was thinking of hooking up to a customized computer, and doing exactly that... However, bluetooth isn't really suited to the transmission of the data for a wireless unit. It's only 721 Kbps, which is nice, I mean, heck, it's faster than I get onto the net. When you consider recording COMMERCIAL GRADE VIDEO though, and buffering and such, you are really going to want a faster signal, especially if you are dealing with raw output, as you are speaking of. The other option would of course be on board compression, but that would increase the size of the camera. My recommendation would be to build the camera on the 802.11 standard, which is much faster. After all, why settle for a nice pirated quality .ram, when you can have a DVD quality mpeg?
Eh...
nikon coolpix only has a cf type 1 slot for compact flash storage cards which means a max of 128meg. for the same price you could get a ibm microdrive that fits into the cf type 2 slot on the canon s20, which is also 3megapixelsand small enough to put in your pocket. i cant wait till i get my crusoe palm replacement with a cf type 2 slot and pcmica slot and get a 2gig toshiba pcmica drive for the crusoe. then i could swap my 340 meg microdrive out of my s20 into my crusoe and download it all onto my 2gig pcmica drive. phun phun phun.
meridian at tha.net
seanmeister
It's not DVD quality, but X10 has a mini unit that works similarly.
Eh...
casi might come with a microrive but casio cameras are renowned for being fairly cheap quality. the canon s20 is smaller and much better quality, and also takesa microdrive but doesnt come with 1. i was comapring the two for some time. the only thing i liked about the casio was it took standard aa bateries over the expensive proprietary but much smaller and long lasting canon batteries. i also believe phillips? make batteries of this type for the canon cameras which last longer than the canon ones. they probably dont last alot longer than two aa's but are sure alot smaller. i got tha canon cause i knew the lens and camera quality would be better and it was WAY smaller to fit into the pocket. i ended up having to give it to my gf cause she loved it even more than me :)
meridian at tha.net
The really small 1F capacitors have a quite high ESR. Translation: they hold a hefty charge, but you can't drain more than a few milliamperes at a time out of them. That's the complete opposite of how photoflash capacitors are designed (for very short duration high current drain).
My buddy who develops defibrillator capacitors could go into further detail on the subject.
I think the technology that will obsolete this sort of thing is high bandwidth next gen mobile phones with low cost/always on data connections. Have one built into your camera and your photos are on your webpage a short while after you press the button. No local storage and no problem if your camera gets broken/stolen. Also when minor celebs snatch the camarea from some photographer and stamp on it, if the bandwidth is high enough, the photo may already be with the paper.
Bob.
Citiscape Shapes also has them here - 25 for US$56.25
I have a Sony Mavica F81, which I love specifically because it does exactly what you say: I can take my pictures, full up a storage unit (floppy disk), change it and take some more. I can go out in the morning with $10 worth of floppies and a recharger that plugs into my van's lighter, and I can take all the pictures I care to. No muss. No fuss. And photos that are great for publishing on the web.
News Headline Japan - Sales of Sony Corporations new tray loading CD-ROM have skyrocketed. Says Vice Prez Yamishi Hatsimora "We love all those suckas with slot loading CD-ROM's. Told you - I'm gonna git you sucka."
www.jackasscritics.com
blink to take a picture
Yeah, unless you got something in your eyes, and then you'd have no HDD space left in seconds!
Josh
-------------------
I agree about the viewfinder. I wish that it had either a real lens or a pivoting screen.
As far as the movie mode - while I rarely use it, it's great for sending waving babies to the grandparents, or quick 360-degree views of an object (to give a 3D "feel"). Besides, I honestly don't think that the added components amount to much. I mean, if you can already compress to JPG, then MPEG isn't a giant leap. The sound feature is so-so, but once again, I think it was probably cheap enough to add.
Finally, regarding pixellation, my -FD88 does 1280x960. No, it's not film. It's not too shabby, either, though.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
You might want to be careful about keeping all your archives on floppies. I have had nothing but bad experiences with info on floppies. I've seen new, brand name disks give read errors within a month. I've had 30 disk spanning archives ruined by a single bad sector in disk 23. I would hate to think of irreplacable photos gone due to media failure.
It might be a better plan to copy the floppies to your hard drive and when you get enough pictures burn a CD - CD burners are incredibly cheap as are the media. CD have the advantage of being even more widely accepted than 3.5s these days.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
For your purposes, digital cameras are as advanced as you need. For others, they will be in a few years. And some will never be satisfied.
What you have to look at is:
What do I need.
What do I want.
What works..
What technology is out there that is good or not good enough is a personal opinion.
For me (as an exanple) , I won't settle for 1023x780 because my desktop is 1280x1024, and I couldn't fill it. Second, I don't have a good use in buying a camera for play use at that res. Third, I don't want to spend that much for a camera that will do that. Fourth, I couldn't be happy with 3000x3000 because when I get married and want to capture my kids, I want it to be perfect, and to be able to see every scrap and scar to remember the fun times we had. Fifth, I just plain can't justify buying something so expensive yet. Sixth, I don't want propritary equipment who wants to force me to use windows.
Next for battery life, those fall under the wants, and not needs. I would be happy with 32 pictures on a battery. 100 is amazing I think, in terms of what the world offers. The nice, utopian one would be a universal disk that holds enough pictures to be a lot, but not to much to organize once you want to sort through them, a life-time battery, and a resolution that from 10 feet away is better than seeing something a foot away.
Will that happen? maybe, but it still won't please everyone, but by then there will be something to replace cameras anyway.
I'm not satisfied with my non-digital camera, but honestly, Technology is wonderful and I'm glad to capture it somehow.
That is a fabulous idea. Unfortunately it requires either
a) A DHCP server on your network or
b) Someone to set the IP and add it to your windoze machine
and
a) Knowing how to use FTP. On Windows, this is actually pretty easy.
b) An ethernet card and hub in your main machine
I would buy such a thing but for the 90% of people using Win98, USB works great.
-- Too lazy to get a lower UID.
Personally, I use the "number pictures sequentially" feature to give every picture I take a unique filename. Then, I use a rotating queue of about 15 floppies as film. Whenever most of the floppies are full, I copy the JPGs into a directory on my file server, quick-format the floppies, and rotate them right back into the film queue.
I regularly backup my hard drive, and keep monthly off-site backups in my safety deposit box. Honestly, I trust that arrangement more than I'd leave any of my valuable pictures to floppy-rot.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I have one of the Mavicas with MPEG support. The movie feature is worse than useless. The maximum length movie you can take on mine is 15 seconds, and that eats a goodly portion of the floppy disk storage. What in the hell am I supposed to do with 15 seconds of video? Pass on my memories to people with short attention spans? The only thing that it's good for is party games, like "Film the drunkie" or "wait 'til his wife sees this". Those are fun.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
I have played with the Mavica and consider it one of the best consumer products to come out in years. I don't own one because I have been pondering the alternatives.
One of the more interesting alternatives (for geeks only) is to buy a Sony digital Hi-8 camcorder and a Fire Wire card. It is hard to believe that a good Sony digital camcorder costs as much as a Mavica, but it is true. I have seen still shots captured from this type of system and they are of similar quality to the Mavica. If you don't mind the Mavica quality, why not get two devices in one? I would personally find a camcorder more flexible in most situations.
Does anybody have thoughts on this type of setup?
I beg to differ. I own a Mavica FD-81 and I absolutely love this camera. The only "image quality" related complaint I've had is the tendency for the camera to use too much flash and create an overexposed image. It's easily correctable in Photoshop (just drag the "brightness" adjustment a little to the left, and voila) - but to avoid the hassle, it seems to be best to select the option on the camera to disable the flash, whenever it's possible.
Sure, this camera doesn't create super hi-res 6MB images, but so what? I really don't understand the need for that. One of the things I actually liked about the Mavica was the ability to create a decent looking 640x480 image, perfect for cropping and posting to web sites. I don't want to generate huge images that take forever to d/l from a web page.
In all the hype and rush to offer consumers "film-like resolution" digital cameras, they seem to be forgetting the large number of us out there who use these cameras as supplements to real 35mm cameras. If I want high quality photos, I use my trusty Minolta. If I want to post to the web, or upload photos to a friend, I use the Mavica. I never bought this camera to serve as a total replacement for a film camera!
As much as I can't stand them they seem to have this mantra, much like Microsoft, to keep at it until they get it right. CD-R's are going to be so much more cheaper than using smart media to store pictures. I guess I'll have to take a look at this when it comes out.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
I've heard they were called Buzz Cards... I got one in the mail a few weeks back from Fedility Online Investing.
Wheeeee
Can someone please explain the difference?
I guess the price difference is just misssing mass market, but where are the technical differences?
Why can't I use a 74 or 80 min MD in a data drive?
Cheers,
Peter
KdenLive/PIAVE - non-linear video editing
I'm just curious because you pointed out everything you thought was wrong or needed to be improved on with the Mavica, yet you "love it to death" and think it's a good product..
seanmeister
Nah... who needs battery life?
31 shots on my Kodak DC-215 wiped a set of Duracells - and everything on that is solid-state except the zoom bit.
Besides, isn't it curious that they'd push CDR over Minidisc?
Just my 2...
I don't think that's proven yet... it's quite possible to have proprietary formats on standard media... (ever try to read a mac disk on your pc without all kinds of crazy software?)
nope, if you have another ls-120 drive (which i don't) you can just put the "superdisk" in there, and go to town.
-earl
It's interesting what they're shoving in cameras these days. Sony's also getting ready to release a digital camcorder that also takes and prints still photos via a built in dye-sub printer. Pretty nifty if you ask me. How about a camera with some sort of wireless internet access? It'd be pretty nifty to have any pictures you take automatically uploaded to a website somewhere, or at least sent to a nice big chunk of storage back home.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
2. how long will it take to create a cd?
Presumably it will do some sort of packet-writing, where it only writes part of the CD-R at a time. That would be substantially faster.
Also, if the camera has a memory buffer, it could buffer the pictures in the short run, and write them more slowly. The Olympus C-3030 differs from its C-3000 cousin in that it has such a buffer, and thus can take multiple shots per second for a few seconds, and can take longer video clips.
In the long run, a wireless solution will probably replace USB et al.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Except that those CD-R are Sony specifics, so I doubt they'll be as cheap as 1$ a piece. Plus, 156 MB of storage doesn't mean you can fit as much : since it writes one pic at a time, it must be a multi-session disc... which means huge quantities of wasted space.
...but I mean you can buy a Flash Memory Card -> PC Card adapter for about $10 and move you pics to your laptop (or if you are one of the 8 people who have a desktop with PC Card support). Or you can get a Flash Memory Reader with a USB interface for $50 these days which isn't quite a fast, but is nothing to sneeze at either...
Did I mention the concept is really cool though?
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
You'd need a decent pipe to send any reasonable quality image, and the only wireless pipes currently available are pretty small and still expensive. Although I suppose it wouldn't be difficult to have it upload constantly, but then battery life (already a major concern for us digital camera users) would be a problem. It would be cool, though.
To confirm. I was referring to the high level of sensitivity that CD writers have to shock. IE, if you're jumping up and down on your dorm room bed while burning those Metallica bootlegs, your CD doesn't work.
Also, don't for get that lab tests VS real world are often different. My friend's CD player that has anti-shock built in is fine over one bump, but when we drive in the mountains, you're listening to the radio...
Eh...
Wasn't there a mavica (or other camera) that at some point had an imation superdisk drive in it instead of a floppy? That seems to be a better solution, because the media is reuslable, cheap, and small. (Plus, quite a few mac owners have superdisk drives because it's often the cheapest way to get a floppy drive on a mac).
If anybody has a copy of Rhapsody for Intel to give away, drop me an email.
So they took a minidisk and put it in a camera? That's not a bad idea. Not a new one though, either. What I'm waiting for is a palm-sized camcorder with jitter-adjustments - just mount it on the side of your head and run a fiber-optic link down to the waist where the actual unit is. Give it the ability to do wireless (ala bluetooth?) transmission to a base unit back at the van. It would revolutionize the way reporting is done. That, and if the price was low enough, I could see the vaporware product of so-called "blackboxes" for automobiles becoming a reality. I, for one, would love to have GPS tracking and stuff on my car - I hate missing my exit. Having my car beep or something (QUIETLY beep) to let me know if I'm about to miss my exit would be *so* cool. And writing out my vehicle's vitals to cd-r would make it easy to prove it was the "other guy" who creamed my car, not the other way around.
Both clik, jaz, and zip drive media will be left behind by the potential (inevitable, most likely) low cost of the cd-r media.
Spindles of regular cd-rs cost $30 for 50 discs. A single zip disk can cost from $10 to $14, a ten pack up to $100 (that's the 100mb versions). Jaz is simply overkill. And as for clik, at $10 a disc for 40mb, I'm pretty sure a cheap spindle of 77mm discs with higher capacity would win.
Not to mention that you'd need to buy a drive for your computer, which is eliminated with the CD-R format.
Video on existent removable storage is the way to go. I never really got excited about stills on a floppy or other removable storage, because of the image quality.
.jpgs.
Don't get me wrong... I used a DVC at work all the time and marvelled at how I could just take the PCMCA card with the 4mb flash chip in it out of camera and plug it into the laptop without friggin around with any software... but I would still rather use my 35mm camera and scan the pics; they take better photos, and photos are much more portable than
But with video, you don't really see the final product like you do with a picture; it's almost always a pain in the ass to transfer the files from the camera to wherever you want it, regardless of whether it's to VHS or to a computer. And cameras that do record directly to VHS are bulky as hell compared to the digital cams.
wasn't one of the original ideas behind iomega's click disks that they be used in digital cameras? they're only the size of a half dollar and can hold 40 meg...
more storage than floppies and wouldn't coaster if you shook the camers...
a flash card reader either, but alot of digicams have them. perhaps they would also give you the option of plugging a serial/usb cable into the camera and connecting to your box so that you can bypas the need for a zip/click/superdisk/whatever drive altogether.
on another note, why don't they have minidisk drives? they look so cool (mission impossible, etc) plus they would be more convenient that cds (more durable because of built-in case, smaller)
Battery life in digital cameras is bad enough as is - let alone how it'll get worse with mechanical equipment like a CD-R (even a small one). You have to spin the motor, operate the servos, and fire the laser in order to write. Combined with everything else (the LCD's suck power too, and so to the CCD's), I really don't see the future of digital photography including floppies or CD's much longer - even the optimized drives like the IBM Microdrives or the Iomega Clik are going to suck more power than flash.
Right now, digital photography is in a flux state anyhow. At the high end, it's been adequate for years (my old company was shooting production ads with digital medium-format backs like the Leaf back 6+ years ago), but the low end is just arriving at the point now where the quality equals what you can get from consumer-grade film.
Unfortunately, those cameras cost about $1000, and you still get crappy battery life.
Digital photography has really taken off the last couple of years, but I won't replace my trusty Nikon until I can buy a 3K x 2K pixel camera with 3x optical zoom, lens switching capability, USB and CF support, and enough battery life to take 150-200 photos on a charge (with flash as needed) for about $500. The feature set is out there today at twice that price. Until then, I'll continue to schlep my handy Apple QuickTake 200 (with 5v Smartmedia) to parties as my only digital device.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
You will NEVER be rid of pixelation.
If the pixels are smaller than film grain then digital cameras win out, however. Pixelation is only a problem when it negatively affects the defninition of images.
Digital media may not be long lasting but digital data IS. You can't back up and restore photos in a lossless manner.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
Sony's CD-R camera is actually the fourth recent attempt at more economical mass storage for digital cameras. The first was Iomega's Click drive, which copies the contents of 32MB or smaller Compact Flash cards or 16MB or smaller SmartMedia cards onto cheap 40MB Click disks. This is almost as useless as it sounds, but it was the first alternative to flash cards. Next came IBM's 170MB and 340MB Microdrives. These are hard drives in the Compact Flash Type II form factor, which is essentially only physically thicker than Type I. Since only a few cameras have Type II Compact Flash slots, this isn't a universal solution. However, Minds@Work (http://www.mindsat.com/) developed the Digital Wallet, a device that copies the contents of Compact Flash and SmartMedia cards onto a 6GB hard drive. The only advantage Sony's creation has over something like the Digital Wallet is the whole "no cables to fuss with" mentality, while the disadvantages are numerous - cost, size, speed, etc.
Many people have declared their eternal love of Mavicas because of advantages like the above mentioned "no cables to fuss with" ease of use. In reality, a USB equipped camera only needs a small cable and a driver. Once the driver is loaded, all you have to do is plug the large end of the cable into a USB port on a computer or USB hub and plug the small end into the camera. This should be well within the ability of anyone who can handle complex tasks like walking or opening a newspaper. Alternatively, you can use a card reader which, after being installed, simplifies the task to putting a card into a slot. Next there's the low cost of floppies. A pack of 250 floppies may be cheaper than a 340MB Microdrive or 6GB Digital Wallet, but it is considerably larger and requires a more expensive and bulkier camera. Finally, there's the "but I only want to e-mail pictures or put them on the web" argument. Most digital cameras are able to take pictures of at least two different sizes - 1600x1200 and 800x600 for example. Also , it is quite easy to crop and/or resize a picture in software. By starting with a small size, you have less quality to work with and are limited to e-mail and web use - don't even think about printing out an 8x10. These are just some of the many reasons why a lot of people prefer real digital cameras to Mavicas.
Next up: digital vs. film. If you consider yourself a true "professional," then you will probably want to stick with film for another year or so. High resolution SLR digital cameras are still rather expensive, but that should change soon. Digital cameras do offer many advantages however. First, there's no film to deal with. This eliminates the bulk of film as well as the need for developing, scanning, etc. Digital pictures can always be printed, and the latest inks and papers can resist fading for 10-20 years or more, with even better inks and papers always on the horizon. With proper backup and duplication techniques, the digital original could easily outlive the photographer. Digital cameras also have the advantage of immediate viewing of a picture. Instead of either hoping a picture comes out or spending years becoming an expert photographer, you can try different settings and features with instant feedback, which makes advanced photography accessible to people who don't want to deal with large quantities of equipment or film developing. Film cameras require less battery power, but even using the flash, zoom, autofocus, and having the LCD display on for extended periods of time, I have been able to get 50 to 100 pictures on a set of batteries. With 2 or 3 sets of batteries and a charger, battery use is hardly an issue. Film also produces slightly higher quality, but if people are satisfied with prints made from a Mavica, I think a 3.3 megapixel image should be at least tolerable.
I recently took a 2.1 megapixel camera and 340MB Microdrive on a 2 week vacation, and I wouldn't have wanted anything else (except maybe a Digital Wallet, but those weren't available). Everything worked perfectly, the pictures came out great, and I'll have a detailed web site up in a few weeks instead of months (in my spare time). Digital photography is here to stay, but Sony's latest contraption is destined to fail. A CD as primary storage is a bad idea. As a secondary system, like the Click drive or Digital Wallet, the idea might work. Otherwise, Sony has only succeeded in building a unique oddity.
To use such a CD in caddies and slot-loading drives you need to use an adapter. Works for me!
Check the Sony web page for info on the new 85 and 95 Mavicas, they are compatible with the floppy - memory stick adapter.
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
"I'm excited to see a product which may spur sales (and availability!) of 77mm CD-R media, which when last I checked at Recorded Media Supply were available only in fairly large quantities (hundred lots) and cost considerably more than their bigger cousins."
You can sometimes get these things at computer shows. I picked one up from a KGP Productions PC Show a few months ago. Cost me something like $3-4 for one piece.
The only problem I see with this camera is the 77mm CD-R media -- Sony's going to hear from a lot of people who tried to stick them in their slot-loading drives. Many of these drives will jam when given 77mm media. They can also cause problems with tray-loading drives, if they're not centered on the tray properly the litte CDs can get jammed inside.
to that end, i have found no digital cameras that will fit my budget and deliver the image quality i need. on the otherhand, i've got a several-years-old 35mm, and a scanner that does 900x1200dpi in hardware, which is greater than the output of the film. i generally scan photos at 3000x2000 pixels or so. and the scanner cost me $200.
so for me, given the resolution choice (one-to-one with final image size, or much, much larger) and the cost, i settled on the scanner. for now. i hope that one day i can get a digital camera that is adequate. but right now, they're still bleeding edge (aka: "professional grade").
Last time I went out to the local zoo with my point and shot camera, there was no wireless network for me to dump digital pictures to. USB/ethernet/Bluetooth will only be good for moving the persistant data from the camera to another machine. The camera will still need some kind of persistant storage media such as Flash, WORM, or disk.
First of all, Österreich ist spelled with two "r"s ...
... not just used for fun ;-)
And then, these ligatures are not redundant, they are just ways of writing German in 7 bit ASCII, or on some foreign typewriters. The umlaut is always preferred (including the ß), only when you can't use it, you use the alternate spelling.
The umlauts (or "accented characters", as you call them) are just part of the German alphabet, like "x" or "n"
And yes, ae can stand for ä, of course.
EagerEyes.org: Visualization and Visual Communication
Propane?
carlos
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Wont this be a slow medium for writing pictures to disk? No to mention a battery sucker? What about those poor saps buying a new Camera to replace their old ones who find out the hard way that find out their CD-Reader won't read CD-Rs? Don't say it wont happen. Check the newsgroups, a ton of CD-Readers as fast as 24X can't read em. I know, almost every PC in our company has a creppy CD that won't read CD-R s. I have heard that you may be able to install a UDF? software program to solve the problem, but who knows?
I'm reading too many posts where no one read the article.
The model in question DRC-PC100 is indeed a CD-R camera. DO NOT confuse it for DCM-M1, which uses the 640 Megabyte MD-II format.
Although the DCM-M1 camera bests the CRC-PC100 in most areas with it's own ethernet port and webserver it's only a 640K pixel camera... No good for those high quality shutter bugs.
The DRC-PC100 will serve a nitch market, just like the DCM-M1 does. I'd personally love to see a 2 Mega-Pixel version of the DCM-M1.
I like the Fuji cameras, too, though I stayed away last year because of the (then) 32MB SmartMedia limit. If you want small, very nice cameras, look at Canon Powershots. They have a new one coming out, the S100, that is built in the Elph 2 case. THAT is SMALL. Uses Compact Flash. Apparently the new one is type I only; probably as much a concession to battery life as to size.
**First, how will it deal with shaking? Hopefully, well.
This is discussed in the article. They whacked on the camera pretty good during write, and it didn't fail.**
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Ok, smacking a CD writer once, and walking down the road with it are 2 very different things. A new walkman works better than an old one. How is this going to stand up to REAL USE.
**Second, will you have to finish the CD and nullify the oportunity to write more data to it in order to get the pictures off?
This is discussed in the article. The disc must be finalized before it can be read anywhere but in the camera, but the camera also has USB so you can transfer images out that way. **
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In some formats, you can finalize and open a second session. This product hasn't got an official "this is what is going to be built" model yet, which may behave quite diffently
**Third, will it be generic CD-R's, or it gonna be a "memory stick" at the last minute, totally proprietary, and useless in anything buy a sony product.
This, too, is discussed in the article, which you obviously didn't take the time to read before posting. It uses standard 77mm CD-R media, which can be read in just about any CD-ROM drive. **
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Ever hear of a Kodak Photo-CD, didn't really take off, did it? Ever see those CD-RW's labelled especially for MUSIC? They cost 5 times as much... I've been writing music to regular CDs for a long time now, seems to work about the same, doesn't mean that they can't screw with that somehow in order to sell a proprietary product.
**Please, people, take the time to read the article. And moderators, why do you up-moderate posts by people who haven't even bothered to familiarize themselves with the source material? Those are good questions, but they're answered by just doing a little reading.**
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Please, take the time to visit the real world and how real business works. There are plenty of data formats which are all pretty much the same thing. Copy protection on CDs comes in a lot of formats, you might have to have a CD which is only SLIGHTLY different to work in their products, which was pretty much the idea behind the memory stick... To lock your customers in on your products. As for shaking. It's one thing to smack the brand new one. You can put sawdust in parts of a car to make it run better too, for about 5 days...
You are what you do when you count --Steakley
Eh...
The obvious answer is because people already have CDROM drives in their computers and nearly no one has an MD-DATA drive. As the article says they are trying to appeal to people who don't want to fool around with cables and software to get the images on their pc. Just stick the CD in the drive and you're done.
The Nikon Coolpix has a viewfinder that rotates independent of the lens/body. And the Coolpix (now up to the 990, 3MegaPix) is pretty consistently rated one of the best by digicam users. See DCResource for more info.
Digi Cams are not yet good enough to do this. But with my film scanner and my Epson 870 (better than a mini-lab) printer. It looks good enough to fool anyone.
Go into Best Buy or CompUSA, or any Mom&Pop computer place, or online at Dell, Gateway, etc ...
... ) Also, I would trust a CD-R with my date slightly more than I would a Jaz or Zip disk, not to mention that for 77mm CD-Rs, the drive would be smaller than either of these drives ...
...
Zip and Jaz drives are not rare, but they're certainly not part of the default desktop machine except in certain fields. (Mac users in advertising, publishing, rendering etc tend to have them disproportionately
On the other hand, there's the skipping problem that people have raised, and I don't know how / whether it's been addressed
I sure would like to pay $1 / 100MB or so vs much much more for CF (including MicroDrive), SmartMedia, stupid ugly Sony chewing gum, PCMCIA cards, etc, and be able to examine the results in yer avg. consumer box, yet not be limited to the resolution and storage limits of the floppy-based ones.
For now I'm stuck with SmartMedia camera that I otherwise quite like, though.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Why isn't there more use of minidiscs or zip disks. In the case of minidiscs the technology has been long established is availabe and is pretty reliable.
Sony makes one of those too, it's actually a camcorder/digital camera that records to MD, I messed around with one at a local Fry's and it's pretty cool.
No one got beat up more often than the mimes of the old west!
Sorry, no. It's that it takes what is today a supercomputer to encode DVD video and audio in realtime. Even the audio alone would really be cutting it close on today's top-end personal computers. And nothing can write quickly enough if you don't heavily compress it, so that's not an option either.
Sony's camera UI and features are great - easy to use, lots of things to tweak, great zoom, great light level response - but they seem to have trouble with the storage medium. Floppys are cheap and convenient, and the 4X drive is nice and fast, but the image quality is too lousy.
Other solutions? Memory sticks are too proprietary and deficient. CD-R? Why not reusable CD-RW? Why not another storage medium that is smaller and more shock-resistant? SuperDisk, Zip, Iomega's "Clik"... oh yeah, not Sony. Minidisc... there's the shock problem again. DAT... killed off by Big Music. IBM's mini-drive... not Sony again.
Sony needs to get over their proprietary formats (they did "invent" the 3.5" floppy drive), and adopt something more useable in a digital camera. That issue solved, combined with their great camera designs, would be hard to beat.
Oh, yeah, don't CD-R's eat electricity for lunch? Get plenty of spare batteries!
Not really... true Nerds, like Andy Ihnatko, have been taking digital pictures of everything in their line of sight, and writing about it, for years. With better cameras than the Sony, too.
Not many Wintel and Linux people read Ihnatko's stuff, because the old saw, "Macs are for graphics" is often wrongly correlated to "graphics are for Macs"... but his stuff is worth reading if you are interested in this stuff, no matter what platform you use.
Amid his humorous Mac-centric rants, you can find some darn good advice about digital photography (and other gadget lore).
As for Sony using CDR's? Well, every innovation drives down the cost of earlier iterations of any given gadget, meaning that this might make the camera I actually want a little bit cheaper. Even if I don't want the Sony, this is good news to me. :)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Check out home.t-online.de/home/jodda/camedia. htm, for example.
Chris
one word: Aftermarket.
There are many companies making chargers for Sony batteries. Shouldn't cost you much.
MD is really big in Europe. Any electronic manufacturer has a comple of them in their lineup. For me they are the perfect compromise between portability and availability.
Sure, an MP3 player is a bit smaller (Not much.) and can be loaded directly from your computer. However I can't "Music Sync" it with my CD Changer. So it's really an even race there.
It really is a great format. And since there still are no commercial MP3 decks available they will continue to thrive for a while.
About 3 months back I saw an advert, someone had made minicds that would fit to creditcard size, you could store 50M on one and then hand them out to clients/friends/etc. I cant remember the price but it was cheap
CDROM Cellar (UK-based) sell these - check the CDR section. Megadata brand - 1.50ukp each. They also sell the cute small CDRs that devices like the camera would use for the same price.
Okay, I hate to keep any kind of back and forth war going, but I would like to address these points, which again are covered by the article.
Ok, smacking a CD writer once, and walking down the road with it are 2 very different things. A new walkman works better than an old one. How is this going to stand up to REAL USE.
Actually, the article made it sound like they were whacking the CD Writer repeatedly during the write (and in different locations), not just once. I'm sorry I didn't specify that more clearly earlier.
In some formats, you can finalize and open a second session. This product hasn't got an official "this is what is going to be built" model yet, which may behave quite diffently
Well, the demo unit looks pretty much like a finished product. I'm betting pretty heavily that while they will be addressing firmware bugs for a little while (Sony hates to release buggy products, the PS2 Launch in Japan notwithstanding. I'm pretty certain, based on what I know about production cycles, that it's in a code freeze - No new features are likely to be added at this point, until they're ready to produce a new model.
Ever hear of a Kodak Photo-CD, didn't really take off, did it? Ever see those CD-RW's labelled especially for MUSIC? They cost 5 times as much... I've been writing music to regular CDs for a long time now, seems to work about the same, doesn't mean that they can't screw with that somehow in order to sell a proprietary product.
Again, the article discusses this issue:
and
So in other words, you can read these suckers all over the place, though some additional software (For UDF) may be required.
Please, take the time to visit the real world and how real business works. There are plenty of data formats which are all pretty much the same thing. Copy protection on CDs comes in a lot of formats, you might have to have a CD which is only SLIGHTLY different to work in their products, which was pretty much the idea behind the memory stick...
Yeah, I can see how you might think that, and in fact the 77mm CD-R media they are using IS in fact Sony media. However, since Sony is otherwise going with the ISO standard, I think it's strongly unlikely that you won't be able to use any 77mm CD-R media in the camera. It's not like Sony is the only source for Minidisc media, and I think that they're going to want to be able to support other manufacturers' media just so that people won't consider this another minidisc (although I've already explained that that's not such an issue IMO) or betamax. Sony's already making a commitment that you be able to read the [finalized] discs anywhere. When you pop a blank CD in, as per the article, it asks you to "initialize" it. So why would you assume that it's going to be proprietary media?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm excited to see a product which may spur sales (and availability!) of 77mm CD-R media...
I'm sorry, but imho, 77mm CD-R media doesn't hold a candle to Minidiscs in coolness factor. 7mm discs are small, shiney and light, but they lack the slight rattle - the sign of quality - in any light geeky item when you shake it. Not to mention that there is both dark plastic, transparent and shiney parts to a minidisc. Plus, they're already widely available. The only problem is getting them into your computer.
--
Did you ever try to read a M$ Joliet CD on anything other than windows before everyone and their mother ended up supporting it? The only reason you can't read a mac disk on a PC without help is because Microsoft doesn't want to make it any easier to own and use a mac, so they're not developing a driver and including it with windows.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Check out this site for some specs on a digital camera which uses minidiscs to store your photos.
For fans of the minidisc such as myself seems like a much better idea. Minidiscs are smaller, have protective cases built right in and are proven portable recordable technology.
Too bad all the good minidisc stuff is only available in Japan.
TKThe technology is very cool, but not quite cool enough to make up for the removal of a couple of the primary reason for purchasing a digital camera.
A digital camera is nice because you do not need to continually purchase film and the storage of photos can be made much easier. These qualities give the photographer the ability to take as many photos as they want, keeping only the good ones.
The CD-R is spent film. You would need to keep track of shot counts. Your "film" now contains a whole bucnh of pictures you most likely don't care to keep around (at least if your as much as a novice photographer as I am), and you must carry around extra disks. This is not the end of the world, but I would also get frustrated over the extra steps/cost of archiving only the pictures I want...I would need to choose the good ones and transfer them to the archival CD-R(W)/DVD-RAM/etc...
Make it Mini-Disk to be compatible with their new video camera...or CD-RW, and this might be a lot better IMHO.
Don't forget e-mail. I regularly e-mail pics of my kids to friends and family, as well as posting pics on my website. The files from my FD-71 are just about the right size for downloading using the dial-up connections that most of them use. I may be a nerd, but the people looking at my pics aren't.
As for the lesser resolution, I find 2 or 3 very good pics per disk (30-40 pcs), about the same ratio I get with a regular camera. This despite the lower resolution. I'm just not a good enough photographer to warrant taking (and imposing on others) huge, high-resolution pictures.
I want a digital camera integrated with my cell phone. That way, I don't have to store much of the images -- I can just upload as I go. Take it a step further and integrate that with the digital photo album websites out there, and even mom-mom and pop-pop can participate quickly and easily.
--
As someone who sells digital cameras, I can tell you why superdisks and zip disks aren't used more for storage, aside from the fragility of the media. It's because sticking a superdisk drive in a camera makes it huge! The panasonic model people have been mentioning was larger than any of the Sony Mavicas, while everybody else was working on small cameras with compact flash or smart media cards. Not only was the Panasonic much larger, but was twice the price of its smaller brothers, some of which outmatched it in terms of resolution. One of the major problems selling the sony Mavicas, aside from the small number of pictures that can be stored on a floppy, is the size of the unit. Of course, the people I sell to are looking for point and click simplicity, and want a camera that is small and easily portable, and that's where camera design is moving, with things like the microdrive.
Über
Of course, some websites might not allow entities, and html doesn't work everywhere.
This Page shows the specifications, including the fact that it has both a screen which can be shut off and a viewfinder with a smaller LCD in it. No, it's not a real viewfinder, but it is a viewfinder; Shielded from the light and usable right in your face.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In the past Sony and other japanese companies have chosen to not sell cool technology to the american public. This goes all the way back to 1987 when the japanese version of the Nintendo (Famicom) had some rudimentary online services.
A lot of technology utilizing the MD format has been marketed in Japan since it was created as a format in 1992. The Minidisc.org has a extensive list of such products.
The most interesting page has cool data devices
A really awesome system could be created using technology Sony already owns. They could start selling MD-Mavica's here and introduce a MD drive for the Playstation 2. You could then upload your photos into the PS2's Hard drive and send them to people or use them as part of a 3D game. This would also allow you to buy downloadable music from the web and record it to MD. And since the MD cameras can also play MD audio discs you would have a multipurpose device like the Sony DSC-MD1 or the Sharp MD-PS1.
Hey Sony are you listening!?! Americans Want these cool toys too!!
Boss:I'm not Indecisive; I'm flexible.
Employee: That would explain how your head got where it is.
-scott adams
Science is the Real TRUTH!
The reason that digital backs are so expensive (IIRC) is that no body makes square CCDs, and the hasselblad takes square pictures. For studio use, consider a product I got an ad for in the mail (I forgot the name, but I'll look it up if anyone asks me to) that looks like a laptop with a big lens on the front. You plug it into your studio's network and take pictures with it. Something like 4+ megapixel, good enough to make a flawless 18x20. Each pic is about 11megs, uncompressed.
Don't criticise someone who is attempting to use free software for not using enough free software.
Username taken, please choose another one.
I'd think that using zip or jaz disks in place of CDR's in cameras would be a much better idea, and most likely would enable the camera itself to be smaller in size. So why haven't they done it yet? If they have .. Where the hell can I get one?! :P
> I think Minidiscs are just too expensive and
> proprietary.
Blank MDs can be had for less than a couple of
bucks these days, and plenty of companies
manufacture them. Are they really more proprietary than CD or Compact Cassette - aren't they both Phillips products?
Max.
Yup, we have a DSCD770 megapixel, which uses a PCMCIA-to-memory stick adapter. I got the floppy adapter, and can now pop a 128mb memory stick into the floppy drive on my PC and read it. The new Mavicas are able to use the floppy-to-memory stick adapter too, AFAIK.
The down side is Windows-only software support for the adapter (for now). Anybody working on Linux or *BSD support for these widgets?
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
I (also almost all of the people who work around me) have an amazing Plextor CDROM drive with a caddy cartridge for the disc. There is no detent for a 77mm sized disc.
So this format isn't necessarily going to be always more convenient than a PC card storage.
I don't think he was talking about the picture when he was talking about it dealing with shaking. I think it was more along the lines of "How is it going to write to a CD if your hands are shaking all over?"
-- Dr. Eldarino --
In all fairness you mentioned hanging over the fireplace which implies a portrait shot, so today's (and tomorrows) ink jets are not going to do the trick. Additionally, most people have portraits professionally done, while they still take a crap load of snap shots. While todays digital camera/ink jet setup is not the same as a pros it is plenty good for snapshots and home framing.
I have a (now dated Kodak DC260 and an HP PhotoSmart 1000) and while printing is not as cheap as developing, I only print the shots I want to frame, the rest I keep online. Unless you get within an inch you cannot tell that the 5x7 are not normal 35mm prints. As the technology advances the quality gap (and durability gap) will continue to close. As the prices drop this will narrow.
But I can say the pay off is now. I have two kids and we take hundreds of shots. I only print out a handful and save the rest to cd-r and online. Its not 35mm but for us it is better (not really cheaper - about the same), but better.
My name is not spam, it's patrick
Home Automation & Linux -- now I know I'm a geek
As per the review: 156mb.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The only catch is that it can't handle the Type III cards, so things like a microdrive are out. Still, it's a really nice system to have...
Remember, kids, it's only premarital if you plan on getting married.
One of the very important things about a camera (IMHO) is that it needs to be convenient enough to carry around that you don't wind up leaving it at home because it's too big. I've gotten lots of great pictures when I didn't expect to be taking pictures, but I threw the camera in just because. I never would bring a Mavica along "just because" - it's just too large.
Mavicas also have really very poor image quality. They're great for doing web work but IMHO aren't even designed to replace film.
Also I don't see what the problem is with flash memory. I spent an extra $130 when I bought my camera for a 64MB flash card, and $8 for a CF->PCMCIA card adaptor. I can take about 120 2.1 megapixel images at highest quality, which is more than I will probably ever shoot in a day, and I can empty the card every night.
Granted, if I went on a long vacation where I didn't want to take the laptop, I'd probably have to buy more RAM.
I don't trust moving media in a camera, either. I might go for an IBM Microdrive, but that'd be about the extent of my trust.
(Why is Slashdot forcing a space before my end-anchor tag?)
Tey ention that as well... seemed to survive being slapped etc as it was writing an image but had to be placed flat for initialising and finalising a disc
troc
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
And I just shelled out buku bucks for their FD-91 35mm camera!
It sucks when even CAMERAS have a product life cycle now!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Agfa has a nice camera the EPhoto CL30 which has
a Clik! Drive built in. Much cheaper, although has
only 40MB.
Check it out here
I think he meant for transfer, use Ethernet, 802.11, or Bluetooth; and store the pics internally on some kind of storage such as solid state or mech hard drives.
Don't criticise someone who is attempting to use free software for not using enough free software.
Username taken, please choose another one.
multimediacards (what a mouthfull) can fit 32Mb on to the space required for a postage stamp.
Why are we still using floppy disks?
Deleted
The NiMH battery in my canon A50 lasts long enough for me. It just has one problem: it always run out when you don't expect it. Tough shit. Easy solution: travel with an extra battery. Problem: I can't buy it anywhere. My brother tried to call Canon and co ... to no avail.
Hey, Maybe now that MS is split we'll see mac floppy support in windows.
...and has at least 1280x960 resolution.
If the guide is not respected, or the material not cared for, confusion will result, no matter how clever one is.
You need to cache 1 or 2 pictures to avoid having to write to the disk in real-time. The compression ratio they're using is about 1MB/picture (160 pix per 156MB disk), so that's 1-2MB. They could either do this with flash, or just use regular RAM (which they need to have for their compression/processing stuff anyway.) RAM is cheaper, but you need to keep it powered while you're using it, so there's a risk of losing the last picture you've taken if you run out of battery, but flash has a limit on how many times you can write to it, which isn't a good thing for the memory that you copy every picture to before saving on disk.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
- weighs less
- costs less
- stores slightly less
- let's you delete crap pictures
and a wealth of other features. I just don't see the point of a CDR in my camera.LOAD "SIG",8,1
LOADING...
READY.
RUN
Au contraire, methinks that the people who are wary of ables and such like might just be more likely to get one of those PCs with all sorts of gizmos installed, like the internal Zip drives which seem to have become increasingly popular.
===
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
mostly in high-end cameras (like the SLR-conversions in the $8-15,000 range). Which counts me out;)
...)
On the other hand, an in-camera PCMCIA slot isn't *too* far from what many notebook users do use, which is a PCMCIA adaptor for smartmedia or compactflash, and I think even the idiot sony sticks. Since CF includes the IBM MicroDrive, a camera with a slot for it and a PCMCIA equipped notebook (or a desktop with a reader) would be a good approximation of the speed / capacity of full-on PCMCIA support in-camera. Besides, except for the larger cameras, PCMCIA is larger than you probably want / need in a camera. (Though this Sony is a bit of a space hog as well
Cool thing with the Sony here is, I have yet to see 500MB of camera-storage for around $7, as it would cost in mini CD-Rs. By the time I would have re-used enough storage to justify much more expensive flash solutions, I might be interested in upgrading;)
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I've bought both from them, but I haven't burned any yet. One of these days I'll have to download the LinuxCare nootable business card iso image and burn it to a business card!
... is a digicam with a USB port and drivers loaded to dump the images directly to a ZIP drive or external CD burner, with no need for a PC. With the drive external, you don't run down the batteries in the camera. Well, no more than usual.
When I'm traveling, especially when I go overseas, I don't always want to take a notebook with me. They're too bulky, and prone to theft. But a ZIP drive is small and light enough to pack, cheap enough to replace if needed, and not as attractive to steal.
Yeah, and are they suggesting that we build such a camera with Lego? Proofing, boys, proofing!
Put the blame on meme
The resolution is still a bit low, and the CD-Rs, as cool as they are, are not an increase in available space. CF cards are available at higher capacities... Hopefully the CD-Rs will be substantially cheaper though! Add more storage space and a make the resolution 6 megapixels or more (and make it an SLR with interchangable lenses) and I'll be at the camera store with plastic in hand.
kiku wa ittoki no haji kikanu wa matsudai no haji
If you read the review, you'd see that it has a 'steady-shot' system that Sony have been putting in their camcorders for years (works very well in my Hi8).
You would also note the interesting discussion about finalising, what it takes and how to get around it - you can hook up a USB cable and take images off the unfinlaised disc for example.
I wish people would read the articles before posting (and the getting modded up?)
troc
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
They mention even. Too much coffee has been spilled over this keyboard........
Troc's dubious podcast and blog: http://www.trocnet.net
There is the Panasonic that writes to a SuperDisk. The camera also serves as an external SuperDisk drive. If you are looking for mega storage, try the Casio with a 340 MB IBM Microdrive.
It seems to me that burning to a small disk would be quite slow compared to these two methods.
I know Sony has been pushing their Memory Stick technology very hard. Even some of the new Vaios have a Memory stick slot. There is also a Cybershot line to complement the Mavica.
What is a Memory Stick? It is just what the name is, and it is a Sony proprietary thing that works across different devices.
Sony's high-end cameras use Memory Stick, and here there is a floppy adapter for a Memory Stick.
"...we are moving toward a Web-centric stage and our dear PC will be one of
EverCode
yeah, i heard of em, and i want one...
just heard they were kinda expensive... hope not.
Me and a friend are starting a web server, and he is selling things online, and we need a camera. we also need to take thousands of pictures for it... so we need something that doesn't need great quality, but needs lots of storage...
hey, i like the floppy mavicas though... my grandpa has one, looks nice.
-Moldy
Still cheaper to use full-size CDRs.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
There are floppy adapters out there for most of the standard flash-based memory cards out there. That means you take pictures with your digicam, pull out the card, stick it into the floppy adapter, then into your computer!
Now consider exploiting this for usage on the Mavica line of digicam - plug a memory card into the floppy adapter, and stick the floppy into your Mavica. Pretty brilliant, huh? With about $20 you just destroyed the one main limitation of the Mavica camera.
By the way, Sony have finally figured out this little tidbit, and the latest model (the MVC-FD95) comes equipped with a 16mb memory stick (this is proprietary sony format) to floppy adapter.
I bought the FD73 model for travelling around Europe. Allowed me to easily upload the pictures to a webpage at cyber-cafe's. (You every try convincing a cybercafe that you want to install some software and mess with the cables on the computer? Try explaining it to them when they hardly speak english :) )
I went and lost the battery charger for the camera. Thankfully it was near the end of my trip. *BUT* now they want £80 (About $150 USD) for a new battery charger.. Bastards.. And of course any website I try to order it through for a more resonable price won't ship outside of the good 'ol US of A.
Thankfully I'll be going to Canada in a few weeks.. I should be able to pick one up there a lot less...
First, how will it deal with shaking? Hopefully, well.
Second, will you have to finish the CD and nullify the oportunity to write more data to it in order to get the pictures off?
Third, will it be generic CD-R's, or it gonna be a "memory stick" at the last minute, totally proprietary, and useless in anything buy a sony product.
Eh...
Ah, read the article Sony has. the 77mm disk are even usable on an iMac
i think this will really popularize digital cameras. one of the reasons i haven't bought one is the floppy disk/serial cable/flash card thing. it is such a pain to get the pictures from the camera onto your box (and if you want linux support...well, you're pretty much out of luck as far as i can tell). but putting the images on a cdr solves all the problems (at least most of them) facing digital camers; image quality, storage space, compatability, and ease of use. plus, you can keep the pictures around forever on that media since it is (or at least will be once it goes production) cheap. good job sony (something i don't say often...)!
CDR Outlet has 25 packs of 3" CDRs on sale for $40. Check the following link .
Strikes me that its about time the brought out a minidisk data drive for PCs then a minidisk mavica would be a no-brainer. Also since minidisk media is under 2 quid (ukp) they might take over from floppys and zip disks.
Bob.
Man, I don't know what your using but I have a Yamaha IDE 8x sitting on carpet and I do jumping jacks next to it without a problem. My old HP couldn't do that, but thats one of the many reasons I didn't buy another HP.
sig this
On that other thought .. A Lego camera might be an interesting concept, but you'd probably have to superglue the Lego pieces together so the camera wouldn't fall apart. (: Kind of tacky though .. wonder how much it could be sold for on eBay ..
Isn't that kinda...slow and dumb? Why not ZIP/Jaz disks? On the other hand, maybe they figure the people who refuse to use flash+cable are unlikely to have ZIP drives...
--
Compaq dropping MAILWorks?
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Having said all of that.. why did you buy a Mavica?
It was a clearance sale. I got a very good deal. In fact, later I hit myself for not buying more and re-selling them on eBay, because I probably could have made some money. Were it not for the sale, I'd probably still be drooling at the digicams. Given my current budget, I can't really justify a 800-1000 dollar expenditure for a nonessential item.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
So as an amateur photographer, can I do double exposures by slapping the side of the camera while it is writing to disk? On the serious side, I'm curious if any of y'all have looked into the digital backs for Nikon, Hasselblad, and Canon? These are larger in size, but for studio use are unbelievably superior to anything Sony has to offer... Just the fact that I can use my Zeiss lenses, and keep the interchangeability is almost worth the $15,000 for the Hasselblad back!
regards,
Benjamin Carlson
"If voting could really change things, it would be illegal. " - Revolution Books, NY
Every CDR system I have seen suffers from bounce, unless your machine is sat on concrete it's pretty inadvisable to jump around in the same room as a write in progress, and shaking the machine about is a definite no-go. So how would a CDR camera work? Unless this drive uses a CDRW or perhaps a load of flash for temporary storage which is written to the drive all in one go.
Of course, I do not wish to engender bad feelings either. I am just sure that this unit will NOT succeed. Perhaps the second generation and third generation unit will, but experience tells me that the original units, the very first ones, will wear out in less than a year. These are the problems that I see could bar an initial takeoff. There are ways to make sure that you are the only player in the field, even if you make it look as clear as day. I feel that somehow, that will enter this device. It may not. Also, everyone who has one of the first CD players knows that it skips. A lot of notebook CD RW's are a joke, you can't move with them at all. And they have been lab tested, and didn't skip in the tests either. After you use it for a few weeks, you'll see that you're ruining a CD or 2 too many though. Especially on battery operation. Your battery develops memory, and soon you're trying to write to a CD, with a half burnt out battery, while walking, it just seems to me that while the technology is there to do this, the product probably isn't. As for the firmware to do a second burn to the CD, it sounds as if half of it is there according to the article. You can do it on a PC. It's a software problem, not a hardware problem... So, I don't see why they couldn't modify the software to do so.
Eh...
I assumed you wanted real DVD quality. If you just want ~VHS quality, then yeah, real-time with dedicated hardware isn't a problem. But it won't match a real DVD movie's quality.
Instead of worrying about the next kind of micro-storage device we can build into a digital camera, the industry should be focusing on taking it out entirely. This is what technologies like Bluetooth are supposed to make possible. You carry around storage in whatever form you like--your PDA, a 1-Gig drive in your backpack, an IBM microdrive on your belt--and the camera stores directly to the external device. This would also allow the camera to be smaller, use less battery, etc. In fact, if you used a color PDA, you potentially wouldn't need the color preview screen on the camera either.
Bluetooth products are mostly still in prototype, but AFAIK nobody is even talking about this with cameras. Seems like the way to go.
Brin's book The Transparent Society talks about lots of issues related to ubiquitous cheap camera and audio techology. One suggestion he has for dealing with crime, bad cops, etc. is portable video cameras that transmit back to wherever (your car using short-distance high-bandwidth links, your house, etc.) So you can have a "Rodney King" camera in your pocket or on your shoulder when that cop stops you for DWB.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
this may sound weird...
how about a video/still digital camera that sends the recorded image via rf/microwave/whatever to your laptop computer or special storage device with mounds of disk space. it would be a pain in the ass carrying all the equipment around, but could have gigs of storage. i imagine only pros who need high quality and a ton of storage would be willing to pay for it. just an idea.
This unit uses the smaller cd's for their CD-RW (or was that CD-R?). IMHO, worthless compared to the power of a real MiniDisc. A real MiniDisc holds almost as much as a real CD. They are encased in a plastic housing, making them a lot more durable (no smudges or scratches), and are re-writable about a million times. MiniDiscs would have made a more superior choice of medium.
As a side note: I use MiniDisc's for portable audio. I even write MP3's to them, rather than using a pure mp3 device. My portable Sharp 722 goes with me on my commute.
http://www.minidisc.org holds the "MiniDisc Community" home page. It is pretty informative.
About 3 months back I saw an advert, someone had made minicds that would fit to creditcard size, you could store 50M on one and then hand them out to clients/friends/etc. I cant remember the price but it was cheap. They could be printed as well, by the people doing them. I think Ill get some made up with Vice president on them (al a American Psyco). --------- "Once I'm done with kindergarten, I'm going to find me a wife" -Bert, AGE 5
Don't get me wrong, I love it to death, but here are a few critiques:
Now, it's a good product, but they have ignored some things that could make it a truly great product. First, scrap this business of having to hold it at arms length and look at the video screen. The screen is nice for previewing pictures, but I would rather look through a viewfinder.
Mount the viewfinder so that the camera would be turned 90 degrees towards you when shooting, with respect to the way it is held now. (my ascii art sucks, so I hope I am conveying this clearly). In that position, you would be holding the floppy unit "flat". I think that would be much more natural.
Also, as I look at the newer model Mavicas, I see that they have added a lot of features like sound, MPEG movie mode, etc. Big mistake!!! The whole point of having a Digicam is to take stills. If I wanted a camcorder, I would have bought one. All the effort they spend engineering those features is a big WASTE!!! If I were in charge of the Mavica design, I would strip any feature that didn't have to do with taking excellent still pictures, and plunge any savings into making the CCD larger. Pixelation is what keeps digicams from being a perfect replacement for film cameras. Eliminate visible pixelation, and you've got yourself a killer product.
Here's hoping Sony people read /.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Hard disks don't hold up well under normal camera usage. Bounce, heat/cold, etc.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Most cameras come with a serial port for transfers as well as their storage media, whatever kind they use. In fact, at the very low end, there's often *only* a serial port. (Try the digicam area at your local Walmart to check out the most abused cameras you're likely to find in the First World; strange inventory from quite nice to ugly outdated pieces of junk.)
Quite a few cameras do come with a USB port; Kodak makes some models that do, for instance, and one of my new lust-objects (The Fuji FinePix 4700 aka Leica Digilux Zoom) does as well.
I'm unsure about what level of support these USB-port cameras have under Linux, though it appears from recent traffic on the gPhoto mailing list that there is support in the works for image transfer over USB, with the goal of user transparency as to whether the camera is connected via serial, USB or some other means.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
> It's that it takes what is today a supercomputer to encode DVD video and audio
If you do it in software, yes. It would be far more sensible (not least because it would me cheaper) to use mpeg2 hardware compression though IMO. However, that isn't really the point I was (admittedly sarcasticly) trying to make.
My point is that that wouldn't be enough to allow it to be replayed on a standard player anyway. It must be CSS encoded, and that is what is under control of a few greedy corporations as I have already said.
It doesn't matter if the mpeg compression is infinitely fast and cost free. If it wouldn't be replayable on a standard DVD player, few people would be interested.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
i know, i can't imagine what they were thinking. the best part was when they first came out (summer 98) and iomega was passing out those little "clicker" things (push down the metal tab and it clicks) at their (huge) booth at pc expo to hype the click drive. what dumb marketing person decided it would be a good idea to do something like this???
The most recent issue of Maximum PC has a review/preview of a new Digital Video Camera from Sony that uses their Mini-Disc technology.
However, it does cost $2500, and doesn't even have FireWire^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H iLink^H^H^H^H^H^H IEEE 1394.
That said, 156MB is pretty small. I've got a 128MB CF card in my TRGpro. There's a 400+ MB Microdrive-type product coming soon. Never mind, it is for people not interested in playing with cables.
That said, both SmartMedia cards and Sony's own Memory Stick can be used in a floppy-disk adapter, and that works up to 64MB. (and draws a lot less power, is smaller, etc).
Basically, it's a cool product, but it will need some luck to really get into the market...
Why isn't there more use of minidiscs or zip disks. In the case of minidiscs the technology has been long established is availabe and is pretty reliable.
I wonder how many people will get a coaster full of memories when the CD-R fails to burn or drains the last few amps from the batteries.
Digital Cameras are at the stage where they don't need marketing gimmicks (floppy disks, CD-R etc). What people need is something as usuable as a 35mm camera - you take your pictures, fill up a media storage unit, change it and take more.
This is what users need right now.
and all the internet cafe's here in Israel have floppy locks, or tape over the drive. no one can insert a floppy, period.
why?
fear of viruses.
I think the camera seems to be heavy and big.
I prefer my Olympus c2020 with same resolution,
but lighter.
Althought the idea of getting a cd, filled with
the photograph seems very interesting.
May be this make smartmedia cards to be cheaper.
OverLord
There's some interesting MD stuff at the MiniDisc MD Data Product Table page, including two MD still cameras (one Sony, one Sharp, both 640x480) and a MD Data2 Video camera - with heaps of links. Enjoy.
I wonder why we haven't also heard about video camcorders with build in DVD-RAM to record video in realtime to a DVD disc which you could replay on a standard DVD player and easily make high quality copies to send your friends and relatives?
Oh yeah, It's because the DVD recording format and in fact almost the entire industry is under the tightly held control of a few elite greedy corporations who aren't interested in what the consumers want. That's right isn't it, I forgot.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
you can't take a floppy adapter for smartmedia and put it in the mavica FD series cameras and expect it to A) work and B) recognize the larger media.
why?
because the floppy adaptors all work on the concept that you must install a windows driver first. the camera doesn't have any such driver or any such way to install said driver.
the camera acceots only dos formatted floppies. if you give it another format, it will happily dos-format your floppy for you.
The Geothe Institute now prefers avoidance of older forms and favors an added "e" in place of an umlaut and the use of double s.
- stare at something to get the camera ready
- squint to zoom in, widen your eyes to zoom out
- blink to take a picture
That would be cool.
--
The real Webmaven is user ID 27463. I don't rate an imposter, because my ID is such a lame-ass high number.
CD Mavica
Add a headphone jack and chip...
MP3's to come?
Also, It's like having a backup already made 4 u. And the fact that it can also write uncommpressed tiff's is big + 4 me, becasue quite a few times, i've wanted to edit image in photoshop etc... but the commpression can show up and spoil the whole photo.
I spose there are a few downside though, bigger, more battery power etc... But depending on what your using it for, It might not matter.
Note that AC wasn't me. I stand by the points that I made. I think that some people are just a bit too bloodthirsty. They see a post modded up and want to cry about it. Feel free to mark this offtopic, it is, but I would like for this reply to sit on the board long enough to be seen a bit.
Eh...
honestly, I'm going to give this product a maximum shelf life of maybe 2 years. It might seem like impressive technology now but there are some definite dated ideas about this technology:
1. its mechanical. mechanical things break (when was the last time you wore out your ram?)
2. how long will it take to create a cd? even with significant advances in cd burning speed, they might be able to squeeze out 5 minutes for a full cd (which is still incredibly optimistic). well, 5 minutes is way too long for normal people (people who never BBSed for any length of time at least) to tolorate.
3. people can deal with cables, usb or otherwise. it used to be commonly accepted that if something wasn't on floppy disk or cd, it wouldn't gain broad market appeal, not at all true now. We;ve seen things like mp3 players and video cameras having solid links and easily selling well.
proposed solution: throw a lot more ram in it and just hook it up. CDs only waste time and money. late
-f
My Langenscheidt's "Basic German Vocabulary" spells it with an umlaut, but I couldn't figure out how to make my computer say "umlaut" ... the traditional answer is to follow the normally umlauted vowel with an e. (Spelling the German word for king, for instance, "Koenig.")
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I concur with the points made, and would like to add a few more:
- Floppies are cheap, and readily available wherever you go. I'd much rather buy a couple of boxes of floppies for a trip than try to lay in a supply of memory sticks or flash memory modules. I am not going to lug a laptop when I go hiking.
- While the form factor is a bit awkward, I would rather have seen a digital camera with an Imation SuperDisk drive in it that took the 120 Mb disks AND floppies.
- What I Really want, is a small camera that has a single cable (power/data) to a hip-slung battery/hard drive combo. Then I want to be able to slide the whole hip-unit into a desktop computer like a removable 5.25" hard drive, And I want a firewire or USB cable between the hip-unit and a laptop when I want it.
That is what I'd pay $1000 for.
--
The real Webmaven is user ID 27463. I don't rate an imposter, because my ID is such a lame-ass high number.
Well, having been a nerd for more years than a lot of slashdot readers have been alive, I have to disagree.
I do a lot of web design and I can tell you I wouldn't have many visitors to my sites if I sprinkled "multiple 6 MB images" throughout. The 640x480 resolution of my Mavica FD-71 is more than adequate for web images, and the amazing zoom is well worth the lesser resolution. The advantage of the floppy disk is certainly there, but it's not the only one.
My wife is not a nerd, but the floppy disk functionality means she can take a picture, then load it right into whichever Mac her student is using at the time. We don't have to worry about having cables for each computer, or loading software on each one, when their small hard drives are already overflowing. (Schools rarely have the latest and greatest, and while she spent about $3K on school supplies (not including computers), she doesn't get paid enough to be buying new computers for her classroom.)
So yes, when everyone has super-high-resolution monitors (more than 72dpi), and photo-printer output is not fiendishly expensive, high-resolution digital cameras will be more important. For now, however, unless you are a professional in the (print) design world, a good old Mavica should be just fine.
One last anecdote: Not long after we got the Mavica, my wife's grandmother had her 93rd birthday party. Naturally, we brought the camera. A little over a week later she passed away. We ran out and bought a new printer (cheapie Epson color inkjet -- <$200 at Price Club) and printed out one of the pictures we had taken. We put it in a frame and put it out at the funeral. Most people didn't realize that it wasn't a photograph until they got up close to it.
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
Ah yes, except those of us with slot-loading CDROM drives will be screwed, no?
c.r.
Apparently you didn't notice that it said 77mm CDRs in the article. Undoubtedly because you never read it.
Pop out your CD-ROM tray. Notice the indentation about 3 inches around which is usually located under a regular CD when it's in the tray?
Ever wonder what particular function it played? I'd assume that you are not the type to wonder about possible Bernoulli principle effects, so I'll just straight-out tell you that not all CDs are the same size. There are big ones and little ones.
The camera takes the little ones.
The little ones hold significantly less than the big ones, thus you can't take 650MB of photos on one Über Mavica CDR.
I mean how will I supply a burner with enough power to burn actively when im taking photos? A burner usually suck up a lot of power, so how can they get this thing working good and portable?
Free Porn! or Laugh
Ever need an online dictionary?
Something cool would be to have a PCMCIA port on the camera instead of a floppy drive. iOmega's click disk currently holds 40 megs, and there are PCMCIA hard drives that hold much much more. Besides, you can use them over and over again, and they're available now.
That's just the point. Someone will provide high quality video/audio to the consumer. And when they do there will be those that break ranks with the rest of the "consortium" and they will try to profit from the new technology.
Some of these breakaway technologies will fail, but one of them will undoubtedly gain the critical mass necessary to force the content providers to switch to the new media or face destruction. Some of the industry elite will jump to late, and will become also rans. The people who were first movers on this new technology will fill their spots among the industry elite and will immediately throw all of their efforts into subverting any change to the status quo.
The high and mighty have opposed change throughout history, but it still has marched inexorably forward.
The fact that DVD players can't include firewire simply means that the DVD firewire combination is not going to be the combination that breaks open the digital media dam. Someone will have to come up with something else.
Don't worry though, they will. Just don't expect it to come from a source that has competing products in a much higher price range.
Why wont they sell me a digicamcorder with
a non removable hard disk, with video out and
various digital outs?