Sony Mavica: Photos on floppy disks!

[Telecolor 3007]

Am I wrong, but there where also video cameras using MiniDisc?
Anyway, for whom presented interes this early digital cameras, since the image was not so good - even a cheap film compact camera could offer a good image.

Originally Posted by Dave A

Telecolor, Railway Express Agency in its final form ran from 1918 to 1975 and faded away as rail in the US faded away. More on Wikipedia. My first job in television was to make a weekly run to REA in 1970 to pick up a weeks worth of 2" tapes of some guy named Phil Donahue. A week later I would take them back to be sent on to another station and pick up a new weeks worth. The station looked like it was from 1890.

I've read the article. Now I'm sad

[AdamAnt316]

Originally Posted by Ed in Tx

Do not know. If the part numbers match up..

Problem is you can probably buy a used camera that works for what the shipping cost would be to send it to you!

I'll have to open my FD90 to see what it has inside it, and if the existing drive can be fixed. What you say about finding another unit may be true, but I'd rather not gut a working Mavica for parts if I can absolutely help it.

Originally Posted by Ed in Tx

Mine didn't give me any problems either for the first 30 years of use. Then one day upon power-On, *pop* smoke ... dead.

Yikes! I'll definitely have to open it up at some point for inspection. Right now, it's sitting on The Pile™ waiting for me to find a new use for it.

Originally Posted by Telecolor 3007

Am I wrong, but there where also video cameras using MiniDisc?
Anyway, for whom presented interes this early digital cameras, since the image was not so good - even a cheap film compact camera could offer a good image.

There are a couple of models of "MD Discam" listed on this page, though I'm not sure if any of them made it to the US market, or how well they sold if they did. Sony was known for trying all sorts of weird videocam ideas, like the infamous Ruvi..........

And yes, I think we're all aware of the inferiority of early digital cameras vs. film, but if you wanted to get an image of something onto a computer for some reason, you didn't have much choice unless you felt like scanning photos or negatives, which had its own issues. The Mavicas made this quite easy, given that removable media was far from typical in digital cameras of that era, and direct connection methods were very slow and tedious in the pre-USB 2.0 era.
-Adam

[Ed in Tx]

Originally Posted by AdamAnt316

I'll have to open my FD90 to see what it has inside it, and if the existing drive can be fixed. What you say about finding another unit may be true, but I'd rather not gut a working Mavica for parts if I can absolutely help it.

Could be the same drive, or could be completely different or almost the same except a different connector or mounting hole somewhere, no telling. If you can find a service manual for the '90 then the part number for the drive should be there.

[AdamAnt316]

Originally Posted by Telecolor 3007

Oh, still image on a tape. What could possibly go wrong? Just a stupid joke, sorry. But I wonder how they did recorded still image on a tape?
I knew that I've seen a page with M.D. cameras a few days ago, but didn't rember the adress of that page.
True the stuff with the connector. Paralel ports where slow and installing one on the camera would add size and weight. Well, the MiniDisc one had R.S.-232C port, because in the case of M.D.'s you needed a specail reader and probably not all where eager to spent money o an M.D. data reader.

According to this video, 'stills' taken on the Ruvi simply recorded five seconds worth of a video frame (with its associated audio) onto the internal tape cartridge, which could hold 350 of them (or 30 minutes of video). Not quite sure what they were thinking with the whole Ruvi concept, but that's Sony for you..........

My first working stand-alone digital camera, a Kodak DC3200, used a RS-232 connection by way of a funky cable (1/8" TRS plug on one end, DB-9 connector on the other) which I 'borrowed' from a broken Polaroid-branded camera I'd found earlier. Since none of my photo-capable computers were equipped with an old-style serial connector, I had to use it in conjunction with a serial-to-USB adapter cable. Somehow, this allowed for file transfer using the proprietary Kodak EasyShare software, though it was extremely slow going, and if I tried to transfer too many photos at a time, the program would crash. Given that my 256MB CompactFlash card (smallest I could get at the time) held several hundred of its ~1MP photos, I didn't transfer all of the photos I took with the DC3200 until I got a HP printer/scanner which had a built-in CF reader.

Originally Posted by Ed in Tx

Could be the same drive, or could be completely different or almost the same except a different connector or mounting hole somewhere, no telling. If you can find a service manual for the '90 then the part number for the drive should be there.

I downloaded the service manual, and indeed, the FD90 uses a different drive mechanism (part number 1-772-563-11), so II dunno that it'd work. Might at least be able to use it as spare parts for the FD91, if worse comes to worse.

Anyway, with Comet Neowise said to be in the skies, I figured I'd attempt to take some photos of it down at the local beach during sunset using the FD91. I took some photos of what I thought was the comet, but I'm pretty sure it was just a disembodied portion of the nearby contrails. In any case, it took some pretty nice photos of the clouds, plus some wider shots of the sky, water and a large house across the lake. Here are the photos:

(alternate views here and here)