CD-R In A Digital Camera: The Ueber-Mavica?

DigicamMan writes: "Sony's dominated the digicam market (well, at least have owned 30-40% of it) with their "Mavica" floppy-disk based digicams. Never really a Nerd product, they appealed to Neo-Luddites who didn't mind trading off image quality to avoid having to deal with cables & software. (Mantra of the sales clerk, answering *any* question about a Mavica, relevant or not: "No problem, you just stick the floppy disk in your computer, and...") Worked great when "high resolution" cameras had 800K pixels. Kinda runs out of gas when you try to cram multiple 6 MB images into a 1.44 MB bag though." (More.)

"(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? ;)

Comments

About My Mavica...

[istartedi]

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 /.