Digital Photography Nostalgia – Sony Mavica FD-91 Photos

What is this about digital photography nostalgia. Are we not supposed to be nostalgic about film photography rather than digital photography. But early digital cameras were not the market dominaters today’s are. Indeed at that time there was debate over whether they would ever produce images of sufficient quality to replace film for professional use. Now of course it’s only hobbyists and fine art photographers that use film cameras.

I got my first digital camera in 1999, and I went for the big zoom. The Sony Mavica FD-91 was one impressive looking camera for it's time. The 14X zoom on the Mavica was huge, a 35 MM equivalent of 37-518 MM and with Sony's Steady Shot image stabilization system it could be hand held at the full zoom. The camera was unique in that it used 3.5 inch floppy disks for image storage and though it was under a megapixel (1024X768 pixels) it produced decent 8X10 prints, even though the experts claimed that was not possible. It was a large camera but I was used to the size and feel of an SLR and preferred it over smaller digital cameras.

It really was a fun camera to use, even if I had to carry a box of floppy discs with me and change them after every 10 shots, and the telephoto was great with a zoom over double my 200 MM Konica zoom lens. And it was a lot lighter than my Konica and its bag full of interchangeable lenses. Of course the quality of images was nowhere near that of my Konica SLR or my current Panasonic FZ300, but it was good enough for me as an amateur.

Here indeed are some examples of what the camera could do, a slideshow of Mavica photos chosen and edited for my Desktop PC wallpaper that I change weekly.