Sony Mavica FD-91 review

[Morca007]

Sony Mavica FD-91

Whew, we are going a ways back today folks. This is the first digital camera our family owned, and at the time, it was impressive. Hard to believe, I know. But how does it stand up today?

First of all, the image sensor. It takes pictures at the astounding resolution of... Less than 1 megapixel! 1024 by 768. It's amazing how far we've come, even my Cell Phone takes 3 megapixel stills. Now, to be fair, at the time, this was pretty good, expecially for a consumer camera. It even stores these images on a standard floppy disk, so very convenient for modern computer users. This is accompaniec by a dated image quality, what blew us away then, is embarrassing now.

Now, one point that I will concede stands up exceptionally well is the 14x (optical!) zoom. This allows the user the flexibilility not afforded them in todays tiny pocket size cameras, which have to compensate by using digital zoom, which yields degraded image quality.

Unfortunately, this leads to the body being an unwieldy size. The barrel of the camera, makes for an imposing presence, far too large to fit in a pocket, yet not of the modularity to put into a camera bag. But, the tenacious photographer shall reap the benefits.

Usability of the camera is deceptively good. The camera is rife with switches and buttons, which, upon first glance, may appear intimidating. However, on closer inspection, they are labeled clearly, and placed rather intuitively.

So, how has this camera weathered the test of time? From a design perspective, quite well. It is a model of ergonomics, and could be adapted to a modern platform. Technologically, it hasn't fared so well, as is to be expected of any computerized system.
Final score (modern): 3/10
Final score (legacy): 7/10

[Saralonde]

Now that's a fascinating review . How far we've come! Hey, Googlit, any usage stats on flickr for this one ?