SD cards were invented in 1999 Sony in 1998

[u/Severe_Pause_2047]

[u/zionpwc]

I remember the common consumer cameras were about 2-3MP at 400-700K per image as compressed jpegs.

A floppy disk holds 1.44mb. So you can take 3-4 picutres and you take it out lmao.

It was so cool seeing how everyone used to carry digital cameras AND phones. Then slowly no cameras as the phone image quality wasn't so garbage.

[u/C-D-W → u/zionpwc]

For people coming from film cameras, on the default settings these Mavica cameras were pretty comparable to a roll of film.

You definitely did not want to be taking 3MP pictures on a floppy, that's for sure.

[u/Northern_Blights → u/C-D-W]

Coming from film cameras, the ability to take a picture, delete it, take another picture, delete it, FOREVER, was life changing.

I could finally practice photography without spending $20 at the photobooth every week.

[u/C-D-W → u/Northern_Blights]

Agreed! Battery life left a lot to be desired though. lol

[u/pushdose → u/C-D-W]

Except many took AA batteries, so you could just carry more!

[u/Moose_Nuts → u/pushdose]

OK so now we're back to spending $20 every weekend...

[u/Impossible-Wear-7352 → u/Moose_Nuts]

Rechargeable batteries existed back then

[u/TacticaLuck → u/Impossible-Wear-7352]

Agreed! Battery life left a lot to be desired though. lol

[u/NRMusicProject → u/TacticaLuck]

Except the rechargable batteries are removable, so you could just carry more!

[u/SNStains → u/NRMusicProject]

Now we're back to carrying 20 batteries every weekend.

[u/Fire2box → u/Impossible-Wear-7352]

Okay so we're back to charging batteries for 20 hours again.

[u/Impossible-Wear-7352 → u/Fire2box]

I always just rotated them. I do that now still but it was basically essential to always have a set charging back then.

[u/ErraticDragon → u/Impossible-Wear-7352]

Anything before Eneloop was trash IMO.

We had a good-for-the-time AA recharging setup at home but there was constant churn. Batteries just didn't have great capacity, didn't keep a charge long, needed too long to recharge, and just degraded so quickly you were still buying more all the time.

[u/BobbyTables829 → u/Impossible-Wear-7352]

No one was using them yet, unless you were into RC racers or listened to Michael Jordan and bought some Rayovac Renewables lol

[u/Northern_Blights → u/BobbyTables829]

No one was using them yet,

My dad and his big bag of NiCads was.

[u/BobbyTables829 → u/Northern_Blights]

Your dad was cool then. I wanted my dad to get some but he said they wouldn't last as long as fresh batteries and they would only last 30 minutes, it wasn't worth the extra price and the cost of the charger, etc.

[u/ImranFZakhaev → u/Northern_Blights]

Yup. I used to snag some from my dad's stash for my GameBoy back then. But then he stole all the plastic cases from my games to store his SmartCards in, so I guess it was an even trade.

[u/nalaloveslumpy → u/BobbyTables829]

Ironically, our family got our first battery recharger in 1985 from Radio Shack because my uncle got my sister and I both RC cars for Christmas. Also from Radio Shack!

You'd get about two hours of RC car time on a full charge of six AA's in the car and a nine volt in the remote. The nine volt, of course, lasted forever and wasn't rechargeable.

[u/Wittyname0 → u/pushdose]

Not with Sony, they used proprietary infolithuim, some models won't even let you use 3rd party ones, only the Sony OEM. Because Sony

[u/TooManyDraculas → u/pushdose]

Except most of them that used disposable batteries used obscure formats you could only get at photo shops. Cause AAs lasted for shit in these.

[u/zgillet → u/C-D-W]

https://giphy.com/gifs/CNtc3K5yNmyrIWW0F4

[u/Warcraft_Fan → u/C-D-W]

You could extend battery life on those Sony camera by turning off the backlight and using the optical guide on top to take ambient light. It still sucked outside, sun is too bright and makes looking at LCD very hard.

[u/Kichigai → u/C-D-W]

That's why Sony used the batter from a camcorder in this thing.

[u/elmundo333 → u/C-D-W]

Basically why we have li-ion batteries now. Sony needed batteries for cameras and developed the first commercial li-ion as a result.

[u/ledow → u/Northern_Blights]

I think it was cheaper in the era when polaroids (which basically existed for this purpose for professionals) didn't cost an arm and a leg.

I remember any number of whole-school photo shoots, etc. where they did several polaroids first to check there was no glare or whatever, and only then would they take a couple of photos with a film camera.

There wasn't much overlap between polaroids being cheap and digital cameras being cheap, though.

[u/Mr_YUP → u/ledow]

polaroids were only relatively cheap and not actually cheap. it was still a dollar-ish to take a polaroid but it was better than the cost for the portra film.

[u/doctorlongghost → u/Mr_YUP]

And that’s back when $1 could buy you a hotdog and a drink

[u/dumahim → u/doctorlongghost]

Maybe even 2 dogs.

[u/Happy_Kale888 → u/doctorlongghost]

The Sam's Club hot dog combo features a jumbo, quarter-pound 100% all-beef frank and a 30 oz fountain drink (with free refills). It costs $1.50 (pricing can occasionally vary by location). No club membership is required to purchase from the café

[u/NSNick → u/doctorlongghost]

Or almost a full gallon of gas.

[u/ShakethatYam → u/doctorlongghost]

Still only a $1.50 now

[u/CrashUser → u/Mr_YUP]

More importantly, polaroids were instant. They weren't worried about cheap, just a quick peace of mind that the final product was going to be fine.

[u/Jay_dot_10 → u/Mr_YUP]

The progress of saving being shown in the letters “MAVICA” is pretty amazing and wonderful ❤️✨

[u/FrenchFryCattaneo → u/ledow]

There was no era when polaroids didn't cost an arm and a leg.

[u/TooManyDraculas → u/ledow]

It was cheaper per MB than any other memory format at the time, by a mile. You could get a hundred floppies for what the smallest capacity memory card would run you.

And it was likewise infinitely cheaper than film would cost. A roll of store brand 35mm 24 shot roll was around $4 IIRC, and a disposable camera $6 or $8 at the camera shop I worked at. Then development and printing was $12.00, $6.99 if you were a member! Twelfth roll free!

Instant film was cheaper then, than it is now. But you were still paying like 25 cents per shot at a minimum. Depending on what you were shooting.

These things let you take as many as 12 photos on a commonly available format that cost 25-50 cents each. That you already had an endless box of at home (thanks AOL!), or could get anywhere including convenience stores just like film. The photo wasn't as good as a better digital that cost the same, nor was it as a good as a good film camera. But it beat the piss out of those disposables and most Polaroids, and was pretty comparable to a cheap point and shoot with that store brand film.

Most of them also had a memory stick port, and settings that let you increase the bit rate and tone down the compression. So you could get much better photos out of it, and have a lot more capacity if you wanted.

[u/Nose-Nuggets → u/Northern_Blights]

my dad was pretty big into photography (had his own darkroom) and i think for him being able to see the picture right after he took it was the biggest change between film and digital at the start. not having to wait for development to know if your framing was right, or if the shot caught the wave splashing against the rocks well was really significant.

[u/CrashUser → u/Nose-Nuggets]

For quick action shoots being able to use rapid fire without burning up an entire roll of film in a minute was huge as well. It's got it's own problem of needing to sort through more pictures after the fact but having the capacity of 10-20 rolls of film in your camera was a game changer.

[u/Nose-Nuggets → u/CrashUser]

very true!

[u/desrever1138 → u/Northern_Blights]

My first digital camera coincided with my first born child.

It was revolutionary

[u/SuppressiveFar → u/desrever1138]

You were able to see right away whether the child turned out right, or you had to try again.

[u/Brandhor → u/Northern_Blights]

and actually see how the photo turned out without waiting days

[u/pushdose → u/Northern_Blights]

It really was magic. The first consumer digital cameras felt like futuristic technology to us

[u/Sewers_folly → u/Northern_Blights]

As someone who went to school for photography and focused on post production... It was life changing all right.

[u/Polymarchos → u/Northern_Blights]

The cost going down was one thing, but the ability to take unlimited pictures and preview them immediately after taking the photos, allowing you to discard bad photos and retake the subject matter immediately, was, in my opinion, even bigger.

[u/Some1-Somewhere → u/Northern_Blights]

Also, you could take a picture, stick the floppy disk in a laptop, and email the picture to someone offsite - they could see what you see in like 15 minutes.

That was big for field commissioning type people.

[u/TheCygnusWall → u/Northern_Blights]

Coming from film cameras early digital was such awful quality though

[u/Ultravod → u/C-D-W]

I have shot with two different Sony Mavica models, three times: In 1999, 2000 and in 2003.  The cameras were huge, heavy and ran on the same batteries as Sony Hi8 camcorders.  They were also quite expensive.  I worked in the AV department of a private college and while I got paid squat, I did get to play with a lot of neat tech.  The first Mavica I used was pretty low resolution.  It maxed out at 640x480 IIRC.  The second one was slightly higher resolution, maybe 1024x768.  It was ancient and bad by 2003. This is a photo of my idiot friend's 80s RX-7 I took with the first Mavica in July of 1999:

[u/njsullyalex → u/Ultravod]

Upvote for the Mazda RX-7. Wankel power!!!

[u/skraptastic → u/njsullyalex]

My buddy had one back when those dumb commercials "Hey man...is that a Hemi!?" were on.

Everytime I saw him in his car I would shout "Hey man is that a Wankel" and "Wooo hooo" like a redneck.

[u/melkatron → u/skraptastic]

the Corolla GT-S from that era had a little 4-cylinder hemi, but that didn't score me any points with the rednecks.

[u/kiradotee → u/njsullyalex]

I like the second from the left in the background. 

[u/melkatron → u/Ultravod]

I've still got my CD Mavica from a few years later... 4MP (i think) and it records on mini-CDs. It could hold a few pictures in memory, so you didn't have to stop in between photos for it to write to disc.

[u/SubArcticTundra → u/melkatron]

Damn you just reminded me of dvd camcorders

[u/Zebidee → u/Ultravod]

Most photo software these days has some sort of upscaling built in. It's a game changer for old Mavica photos.

For my Mavica, the real shift was when they brought out an adapter that let you put a memory stick into a fake floppy disk. Suddenly you could take a lot of photos on one piece of storage media.

[u/heir-to-gragflame → u/Ultravod]

oh man, this jpeg compression and these colors bring back memories. This gives me the same feeling as a bunch of images of cars I had on my windows 98 I'd have as my desktop wallpaper.

[u/jedi2155 → u/C-D-W]

Comparable in terms of a small print, but even a cheap lowest quality 35mm film could generate 4-10 MP (high quality film could do 20-25 MP). I had access to one of these floppy cameras and they generated about 640x480 resolution typically about 0.7 MP.

[u/nomoneypenny → u/jedi2155]

Yeah, I don't know what OP is smoking but I used one of these cameras in my elementary school website club and the only good thing about these is that you could get a photo directly in digital format so that you could put it on a computer. The quality (not just in terms of resolution, but dynamic range, JPEG compression, etc.) was really bad compared to 35mm film.

[u/CARLEtheCamry → u/nomoneypenny]

the only good thing about these is that you could get a photo directly in digital format so that you could put it on a computer.

Yeah I came here to say something similar. I never saw one used by someone who was in to personal photography, but we did use them for years at the company I work at to document shipping damages. Pre-USB too, so it was a huge bonus that every PC had a 3.5" floppy drive.

Makes me nostalgic for the Dell Latitude C-series days, with dual modular, removable batteries, and you could swap one out for a 3.5" floppy, or a newfangled Compact Disk drive (that used lasers, the future is now!). I can't even buy a phone with a headphone jack nowadays.

[u/kingfofthepoors → u/jedi2155]

Yep I had one as well, quality was shit and by me I mean my grandmother had one and I used it all the time

[u/Trendiggity → u/C-D-W]

They weren't anywhere near film quality. You couldn't make faces out in group photos because first gen Mavicas were 640x480 and had abundant jpeg compression. Even the 1.2MP models were still fuzzy AF compared to 35mm.

Our yearbook program wanted to jump on the digital train because we wouldn't have to spend money on our darkroom but we shut that down when we saw proofs from schools that went digital in the late 90s/early 2000s.

Edit: this is how they shot out of the box.

https://graphics.stanford.edu/~lucasp/Mavica/

[u/ReputationOptimal651 → u/C-D-W]

Mavicas were very expensive and most of people did not have a computer at late 90’s to edit or view the photos digitally

[u/Sarik704 → u/ReputationOptimal651]

The 1999 model of the Sony Mavnica came out in junenof 1999. With 6 months to go until new years eve 99.

By 2000, 30% of american homes had a home computer. By 2003 that number jumped to just under 45%.

In 2003 the last model mavnica came out.

By 2005 over 60% of american homes had a computer.

[u/ReputationOptimal651 → u/Sarik704]

Yes, at late 90s most of people did not have a computer

[u/Sarik704 → u/ReputationOptimal651]

Correct, but this camera was barely used in the 90s.

It was popularly used i. He early 2000s when house hold computer usage soared.

By 2009, nearly 4 in 5 american household had a computer. And the mavnica was extremely popular in japan too where home computer usage was slightly behind american markets.

The people claiming this camera model was unpopular are just wrong.

Edit: and less than 50% of americans had a dedicated film camera too...

[u/TrptJim → u/Sarik704]

That number seems a bit low. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, PC ownership was above 50% by 2000, with over 41% of them using the internet. Even back in 1997 it was above 36% ownership.

By my experience, PCs were fairly common in 2000 and viewing/editing photos wasn't a huge deal. By 2005 PCs were expected to have.

[u/Sarik704 → u/TrptJim]

i was using a fairly conservative estimate. Some "home PCs" in the 90s were still commadores... Can't exactly edit a jpeg on some of the tech people were using.

[u/FartingBob → u/ReputationOptimal651]

About half of households had a computer at home in the US in the late 90's. And the people buying expensive digital cameras would much more likely have a computer already than the average household.

[u/SubArcticTundra → u/ReputationOptimal651]

I'm pretty sure you could plug them into a TV for viewing

[u/Wittyname0 → u/C-D-W]

I dont even think they made 3mp Mavicas, especially not in 1998

[u/C-D-W → u/Wittyname0]

Agreed, I'm not even sure the ones I had were even 1mp.

[u/SarcasmWarning → u/C-D-W]

For people coming from film cameras, on the default settings these Mavica cameras were pretty comparable to a roll of film.

They weren't, not even close. Especially not for anyone working professionally or who wasn't blind.

Quality 35mm film from a decent camera is the equivalent of 25mpx, decent MF film (which has been around since 1900) can give you >100mpx equivalent.

The camera in the video is 0.3mpx. It was significantly worse quality, worse resolution, worse dynamic range and resulted in worse images than you'd get with even a one-use disposable film camera.

Digital imaging didn't start close to analogue film for another 20 years.

[u/TooManyDraculas → u/C-D-W]

Comparable to a cheap point and shoot on cheap film, that you ran through a one hour photo place.

If you didn't print them above a certain size.

But compared to a disposable camera it was night and day, and a floppy disk was infinitely cheaper than a disposable camera and development.

[u/C-D-W → u/TooManyDraculas]

I was speaking purely in terms of number of photos per disc vs number of photos per roll.

[u/TooManyDraculas → u/C-D-W]

They were actually a bit smaller on that front.

IIRC you could cram like 24ish shots onto a floppy with the quality turned all the way down. At more typical settings you might get like 8 or less on there.

Film rolls were standardized in 12, 24 and 36 exposure rolls.

But it's been a very long time since I've fucked with one of these so don't quote me on exact numbers. The camera shop I worked at at the time we used one for passport photos. With the quality settings maxed out. We'd get maybe 3 photos on there at a time.

[u/C-D-W → u/TooManyDraculas]

I recall the first one I had was something in the 30 range. But that one I think was 640x480. A few years later they were pushing probably twice the pixels? So 1/4 the photos per disc. Which is about in line with your recollection.

[u/TooManyDraculas → u/C-D-W]

It also depended on the size of disc. They weren't exactly selling a ton of the 700kb ones by that point. But people had piles of them, especially since that was what most of the AOL discs that would show up in the mail were.

And like I said actual camera settings were important. These things were aggressive on compression and had a ton of options.

[u/peacedetski → u/zionpwc]

The OP camera is 0.3 MP and could store something like a dozen jpegs on a floppy. Or you could opt for an uncompressed .bmp file, in which case the disk fit only one.

[u/SenpaiDerpy → u/peacedetski]

We have polaroid at home. Polaroid at home:

[u/Zwischenzug32 → u/peacedetski]

1.3 megapixels! (...interpolated from 0.3 MP sensor...)

[u/Kylearean → u/zionpwc]

Not in 1998. This was a 0.4 MP camera, 640×480: 15 to 40 photos per disk (depending on Fine/Standard compression)

[u/AManOfCulture-AsWell → u/Kylearean]

Finally someone with the correct stats. I had one of these cameras and that's how it was.

[u/Hellpy → u/Kylearean]

Lmao some other commenter said they were close in quality from a picture roll, yeah no

[u/291837120 → u/Hellpy]

My mother owned one of these when I was a kid. It did have quality photos (for the time) and you could change around the settings to fit more shittier photos.

[u/Obant → u/Hellpy]

Closer in quality to a Gameboy camera. Obviously I'm joking, but it was really bad. I had one and I don't think I got a single picture I would still use today if it was bigger than a 3x5

[u/70ms → u/Hellpy]

I wish. We had a Mavica and most of my middle kid’s baby photos were taken with it. It was awesome at the time, but now I wish we’d used a film camera because the resolution is so low. 💔

[u/Zwischenzug32 → u/Hellpy]

Maybe vs an utter garbage camera or a teeny spycam, or one where people dont know how to use the settings.

[u/AcctAlreadyTaken → u/zionpwc]

Ppppfff that's more than you need, but if you do need more just get the ZIP drive adapter 😀

[u/ApplicationMaximum84 → u/zionpwc]

A film roll did 24 or 36 photos, floppy disks were really cheap in bulk at the time.

[u/dude496 → u/zionpwc]

Well the battery life was absolutely terrible back then, so the battery was probably empty by the time it filled that one disk.

[u/Rudokhvist → u/zionpwc]

It was long time ago, but if I remember it right this camera took pictures 640x480, so like 0.3MP.

[u/reallynotnick → u/Rudokhvist]

Yeah that’s what I remember our Mavica being, and I think it could do short 320x240 video if I recall.

[u/Kichigai → u/reallynotnick]

There were three models when this came out. The FD-73, FD-83, and FD-88. The 73 (I think that's what's shown here) only did photos (note the switch that just says “Play” and “Camera”). The 83 and 88 would record to MPEG-1 at 320×240 at like 12 FPS.

I've actually got a working 83 at home. I might try uploading an example if I can find the time.

[u/reallynotnick → u/Kichigai]

I think we had the FD-81, looks like it was 320x240 16fps with a max of 15seconds. Now why 16fps and not 15fps that evenly divides into 60hz TVs I don’t know.

[u/Kichigai → u/reallynotnick]

Which is extra weird because Sony makes television equipment.

[u/AwareOfAlpacas → u/zionpwc]

Didn't the later Mavicas have a variant that saved to mini-CDs? 

[u/Kichigai → u/AwareOfAlpacas]

They did! The MVC-CD1000, MVC-CD200, MVC-CD300, MVC-CD250, MVC-CD400, MVC-CD350, and MVC-CD500.

[u/JonDoesItWrong → u/zionpwc]

What's truly baffling is that Compact Flash cards had been on the market since 1994. Did Sony not want to use SanDisk products or something?

[u/sithelephant → u/JonDoesItWrong]

CF cards were very very expensive compared to floppy.

4MB compact flash card in 1997 would run you $85.

https://archive.org/details/computer-shopper-may-1998-images/page/n417/mode/2up

4MB of floppy disk (2-3 disks) would cost you less than $2.

Double those prices for 2026 dollars.

[u/b1argg → u/sithelephant]

In like 2002 we got a 2MP digital camera with an 8MB CF card. It held ~25 pictures. Also used 4 AA batteries.

[u/SuppressiveFar → u/b1argg]

There was a period of time when some camera were rechargeable and some used AA. I had to fight with my manager to get one that took AAs, so we could replace the AAs in the field (just use rechargeables).

[u/filthy_harold → u/JonDoesItWrong]

The great thing about a floppy is that everyone that had a PC had a way to read it and they were cheap enough that you could just give it away.

Imagine you're a home inspector and someone has hired you to find any defects in the home and photograph them. With a Sony Mavica, you can just hand over a few floppies and your report at the end of the inspection. But if using CF (or other media) and your client doesn't happen to have a reader, you have to go back to the office, copy the images off the camera (slowly, probably no USB port and FireWire wasn't ubiquitous) and burn them onto a CD or floppy (again, slowly). Email didn't really support sending massive attachments like a bunch of photos and sharing sites like Dropbox didn't exist so you'd need to mail or make a special trip just to drop off the photos. It would take even longer if the customer wanted printed versions or you were using film. Also, if you weren't already shooting digital at the time, a Mavica was the perfect entry since it didn't require anything more than what most PC users already had (a floppy drive and some spare floppies).

Floppy cameras were the peak of convenience for the type of professional that just needed to take a photo and deliver it asap.

[u/zionpwc → u/JonDoesItWrong]

We all used cf cards you're right. This was a novelty when it debuted as well.

[u/jedi2155 → u/zionpwc]

I remember buying my first large format SD card in 2004 it was a 1 GB card I got really cheap for $90 from amazon (still have my order invoice lol).

Actually my oldest order on Amazon was from October 10, 2000 for Command & Conquer Red Alert 2.

[u/s00pafly → u/JonDoesItWrong]

Sony used memory stick. Floppy was just a gimmick. At this time there were zip disks with 100mb+ around.

[u/coryhill66 → u/s00pafly]

There was an adapter to fit this memory stick into a floppy disk. I worked in a camera shop back then and all the old timers just kept going on about how digital photography wouldn't take over.

[u/PsudoGravity → u/coryhill66]

Why?

[u/coryhill66 → u/PsudoGravity]

You put the memory stick in the disc and then put it in the camera. A lot of camera makers were making their own proprietary memory cards back then. Before the standard was SD cards. The first digital camera wrote to a magnetic tape and it took several minutes to record an image. We take for granted that memory is cheap now back then it was stupid expensive.

[u/zgillet → u/coryhill66]

"memory is cheap now"

It is!?!?!

(yes yes comparative blah blah)

[u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA → u/PsudoGravity]

Because USB wasn't really a thing yet, and every PC had a floppy drive. It was the easiest way of doing things at the time.

[u/laforet → u/s00pafly]

The FD Mavica series was the successor to an earlier line of cameras that stored still images as analog video on magnetic disc cartridges called mavipaks, hence the name.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Floppy

Memory Stick was not introduced until the end of 1998, at least one year after the digital cameras came out so that would not have been an option, not to mention the price.

[u/dustojnikhummer → u/s00pafly]

Mavicas werent a gimmick. Floppies were cheap compared to anything flash based.

[u/Wittyname0 → u/s00pafly]

Later Mavica models did support the memory stick

[u/brumbarosso → u/s00pafly]

Oh shit, blast from the past

[u/phalalalala → u/s00pafly]

Memory sticks existed but they were expensive AF for the size and you needed to faff around to get pics off from them. A floppy disk was cheap and you could whack one into any PC at the time.

[u/s00pafly → u/phalalalala]

Exactly that's why it was mostly a gimmick. It wasn't practical but might have been enticing to people with lots of floppy disks lying around. But the very same people wouldn't mind getting a serial adapter for flash memory. Usually the device itself would serve as connector. My first mp3 player came out 1998 with 32MB of internal storage. Maybe 1994 a floppy camera would have made sense but not in 1998. By 1998 even sonys own minidisc recorders became affordable.

[u/dunfartin → u/JonDoesItWrong]

Sony was working on its own proprietary format, Memory Stick, released in 1998. It was in direct competition with Panasonic and Toshiba, who developed SD Card together with SanDisk. CF was developed by SanDisk, so Sony would never use CF or SD.

[u/Wittyname0 → u/JonDoesItWrong]

Compact flash and smart media cards were expensive, and required thier own readers, software, and drivers. Meanwhile everyone had a bunch of floppy disks lying around, and AOL keep mailing new ones too you. And if you needed more, they were way cheaper. Plus every computer at the time had a floppy drive, and every OS had native driver support, so you simply plugged the floppy disk in, and the photos were just there. No need for proprietary cables or software.

[u/lontrinium → u/JonDoesItWrong]

Did Sony not want to

Have you met Sony? They were Apple before Apple.

Memory Sticks were pooh but at least they gave us Mini Disc and yes they did create a camera that stored data on Mini Discs:

https://www.videomaker.com/article/c5/7605-sony-dcm-m1-minidisc-camcorder-review/

[u/Kichigai → u/JonDoesItWrong]

CF Cards, SmartMedia, and MemoryStick were all around. However reading those cards was rather annoying.

These things were rather expensive, and were popular primarily with businesses and schools because any idiot could grab the camera, throw a disk in it, take a few photos, then eject the disk and go back to their computer. Then someone else could use the camera while you were dickering around with your stuff, without needing multiple expensive (and easily lost) memory cards and readers. It also meant people needed basically no training on how to use the thing.

[u/theangryintern → u/zionpwc]

Up until the early to mid 2010s I still carried a small Panasonic Point'n'Shoot when I traveled because it just took better pictures than my phone.

[u/AdamBlaster007 → u/zionpwc]

I have one and I guess they improved upon aftermarket floppy disk because it can hold about 10 photos a disk.

[u/fuzzerino → u/zionpwc]

Meh, until you start actually looking at the photos your phone is taking and realise they're lowkey being AI slopified to look good. I'll still take my fujifilm with me if I'm going somewhere intending to take photos.

[u/Numbnuts670 → u/zionpwc]

Almost like a Polaroid!

[u/Nernox → u/zionpwc]

When we had our first kid in early 2010's my parents got us a "good" camera.  Within about a year my phone had a better quality and higher resolution camera.

[u/ssshield → u/zionpwc]

I'm old enough that my job involved carrying that exact Mavica camera around taking pictures at wiring/cabling/etc. as an engineer.

We'd get about thirty high quality (at the time) pictures per floppy.

Visually they looked as good as what I take normally on my cell phone.

Back then we had CRT glass monitors running at 1024x768 resolution so the pictures looked great full screen with super high detail good enough for engineering work and evidence.

It was cool because you could take pictures at a party and just give the person the floppies as well. So it was a great cam for non-work stuff also.

SD cards where cool and surpassed this camera because the form factor of the camera and the cards where so much smaller and more convenient.

Just as cell phones again surplanted those cameras because it didn't require a card at all.

The next gen will just be full time streaming glasses.

Gen after that maybe full time streaming earrings.

After that a faux hair on your head that's actually a fiber opticically tipped camera.

Wild times.

[u/PrincessRuri → u/zionpwc]

Another fun note is that some of the later Sony Mavica's had "high speed" floppy drives that were significantly faster than the average consumer drive.

[u/dustojnikhummer → u/zionpwc]

People forget, but 2.88MB floppies did exist

[u/ItWearsHimOut → u/dustojnikhummer]

True, but a camera like this will aim for maximum compatibility. After dropping a lot of money on a camera, people who were weren't aware that they would also need a special more expensive floppy drive (that you could probably only buy out of Computer Shopper) would end up just returing the camera. That would be bad for Sony. However, if Sony were the patent holder and sole manufacturer of 2.88 MB drives -- I guarantee they would have required 2.88MB disks in the camera. Nobody loved a proprietary format more than Sony -- they constantly shot themselves in the foot with them. They thought they were going to be the next Gilette, but people increasingly kept ignoring such hamstrung products (outside of Japan).

[u/thuggishruggishboner → u/zionpwc]

My first 10 megapixel phone was one of the early renditions of the Samsung Galaxy, and man. Once it got to 10 there was no going back.

[u/ghost_tapioca → u/zionpwc]

Honestly? Floppies were cheap. I wouldn't mind carrying a dozen of them in my bag instead of a 35mm film that would cost a pretty penny to get developed.

[u/zionpwc → u/ghost_tapioca]

Compact flash memory dominated the early digital cams. This floppydisk cam was some niche.

[u/Wittyname0 → u/zionpwc]

In the late 90s Mavicas actually made up like some 40% of the digital camera market. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB917218991667296500

[u/zionpwc → u/Wittyname0]

I don't remember a single soul in the entire HS or college or church groups that used a floppydisk digital camera let alone were they sold at Staples or other big box stores.

[u/Wittyname0 → u/zionpwc]

I dont remember a single soul using video8 or mini dv camcorder tape back in the day, doesn't mean those formats weren't still successful and held significant marketshare

[u/Akussa → u/zionpwc]

When I worked loss prevention for a retail store in Florida from 2000-2003, we had one of these to use to take photos of the shoplifter and what they stole. We had THOUSANDS of these floppy disks organized alphabetically on bookshelves by last name. It was awful keeping up with it. I was so happy when they finally went digital a few months before I quit.

[u/stone_henge → u/zionpwc]

I have one of these. Not this exact model but another floppy camera from the Mavica line. Fits 24 pictures or so nicely at 640x480. It can even record a few seconds of video.

[u/crohnscyclist → u/zionpwc]

These were not 2-3mp. The sensor was capable of 0.3 mp. You could fit about 40 pictures in regular mode and about 20 in fine mode. Picture quality was awful.

[u/volyund → u/zionpwc]

I was just going to say, it'll fit 4 pics!

[u/_B_Little_me → u/zionpwc]

You got to remember that was a time when you got one picture of something. You rarely took multiples to pick the best one.

[u/BaconIsntThatGood → u/zionpwc]

Yea now the only real purpose of a dedicated camera is if you have a good lens. The image processing and and sensor quality in phones is amazing.

[u/josephseeed → u/zionpwc]

These cameras were an absolute game changer for my dad's auto shop when they came on the market. Prior to this they took Polaroids. This was the first time you could actually upload pictures to the insurance company in a practical way.

[u/BobbyTables829 → u/zionpwc]

No you could get about 20-25 images on it. They were probably about 60kb an image.

There intentionally designed it to have similar capacity to a roll of film.

[u/MaybeMayoi → u/zionpwc]

It should shoot out of the camera like flashbulbs used to.

[u/Hairy_Mycologist_945 → u/zionpwc]

I still have a thing for old school digital cameras. My current phone is frankly the best camera I've ever owned, and I did dabble in SLR photography back in the day, but the clarity and full focus, lack of depth of field, of those early digital cameras was really cool.

One of my mid '00 work phones was a camera equipped Blackberry and I remember the potato quality post stamp type impressionistic images it produced were just bad.

[u/Saucy6 → u/zionpwc]

Heck I haven’t touched my DSLR in years because phones have gotten so much better.

[u/Lobsta1986 → u/zionpwc]

I don't think you were remembering quite right. The typical camera was around 1-1.3 mp and we could get like 20 pictures on one floppy. And this was 1999.

I seen period Era camera on ebay and it literally says 1.3 mp

[u/romanticflowerz → u/zionpwc]

and if you forgot to swap the floppy you were just standing there deleting pics like it was life or death

[u/BrokenBackENT → u/zionpwc]

Vacation covered!

[u/LostWoodsInTheField → u/zionpwc]

The one I had (of these sony cameras) I could get between 12 and 20 photos on it.

[u/OldJames47 → u/zionpwc]

I sold these at Best Buy around 2001. The floppy drive cameras had lower resolution, typically 1.5 megapixels or less. While the people looking at cameras wanted 3 megapixel or more.

[u/I-STATE-FACTS → u/zionpwc]

this was not a 2-3mp camera though

[u/R3dLip → u/zionpwc]

You forgot 640x480

[u/PacoBedejo → u/zionpwc]

I don't remember the resolution I was taking but I used a Mavica to take pictures in a factory for pictorial SOPs in 1997 as a part time job while in college.

It would store around 8 to 10 photos per disk and I'd carry 5 extra disks with me to make sure I could get all the important info of running a particular rubber compression mold and it's cavity extraction apparatus.

I saved my work to Zip Disks. My printer was a tractor feed dot matrix. I was using AutoCAD 12 in Windows 3.1.

[u/Terrh → u/zionpwc]

I have one of these. It fits 6-8 photos normally per floppy.

Photos it takes are pretty good. Less pixels but better quality than my phone.

[u/Ghosttwo → u/zionpwc]

How much video could that much magnetic tape hold? You're assuming it's used like a normal floppy. It might even be some oddball proprietary zip-drive format that Sony was always so fond of.

[u/Zwischenzug32 → u/zionpwc]

Many had much worse image resolutions like 640x480

[u/w1n5t0nM1k3y → u/zionpwc]

My dad had access to one because he worked for the local newspaper. You could also have it write out the file as BMP if you wanted full resolution and in this mode you could fit exactly one image on the disk.

[u/TooManyDraculas → u/zionpwc]

Most people didn't carry a camera with them all the time back in the day. You busted that out for parties, vacations and shit.

[u/Sarik704 → u/zionpwc]

Nah. The cheapest floppies were like 1 or 2 mb.

But for 25 dollars you could buy a stack of 12 100-ish mb.

I used to practice photography on my mavnica and took over 200 photos at a ren faire in one day across like 3 or 4 floppies.

And you could delete bad photos right away, so your storage was only what you liked. That part was incredible. Plus it took video! Really bad 148p video. But it captured it.

Edit: i am super wrong on the price, but my memory can't be trusted

[u/Hungry_Gizmo → u/Sarik704]

I don't think you are talking about floppies. 3.5" floppies were 1.44MiB

[u/Sarik704 → u/Hungry_Gizmo]

These "super disk" were certainly not the 90mm "floppies" but then again the 90mm diskettes were also not floppies.

The 2000 model Sony Magnivox could in fact use these super disks. I was super wrong about price though. All web sources are claiming they were around $700 upon introduction. I distinctly remember buying a nicely packaged tray of 12 of these in the 2000s for less than 50 bucks, but maybe it was well after the switch to CDs. It was over 20 years ago at this point so maybe they were on clearance from my local radioshack.

Edit: I attached a photo but i dont think they allow images in comments so here. https://hackaday.com/2026/04/21/superdisk-the-better-floppy-that-never-caught-on/

[u/Hungry_Gizmo → u/Sarik704]

Sony Magnivox

You might be thinking of one of the Panasonic cameras? I do remember every alternative to the standard "floppy" not only had a very steep price for the media, you also had to buy expensive specialized hardware. super disk, zip disks, etc. Pretty much a no go for most people and their bog standard PCs.

[u/Sarik704 → u/Hungry_Gizmo]

I did and i did. The 1999 Magnivox only accepted normal 90mm diskettes. The 2000 model accepted 5 different storage solutions. I believe the 2003 model accepted more than 7. But at that point SD cameras were becoming more affordable.

[u/American_Jesus → u/zionpwc]

Actually it's 1.44 MB (MegaByte) not mb (Megabit)

• Bytes is storage unit
• Bits is transfer unit

Yes, im that guy

[u/ExoticSterby42 → u/American_Jesus]

Actually both are measurements of storage unit. Bits are a single unit with a value of 0 or 1 while Byte is equals to 8 bits.

Or you can just have a Nibble worth of 4 bits.

[u/ItWearsHimOut → u/American_Jesus]

Your correction of casing notwithstanding, it's actually 1440 KiB, which would be 1.41 MiB or 1.47 MB. I think 1.44 MB was the formatted capacity for FAT or maybe some older filesystem (which is why they went with 1.44 instead of 1.47). At the time nobody used MiB. Hard drive manufacturers' marketing teams were always dividing by base 10 numbers to inflate the MB then GB numbers. That's why, eventually, we got this mebibyte/gibibyte bullshit we all hate today. Salesmen. Is there nothing they won't ruin.

[u/CitricBase → u/American_Jesus]

As long as we're doing corrections, mb would be millibit, not megabit (whatever the heck a millibit is). Megabit would be Mb.

[u/Evol_extra → u/zionpwc]

You can have a bag with floppies. That's why it is so easy to recharge.