{"id":571,"date":"2009-06-22T09:31:25","date_gmt":"2009-06-22T14:31:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/?p=571"},"modified":"2009-06-22T16:32:03","modified_gmt":"2009-06-22T21:32:03","slug":"retro-scan-of-the-week-sony-digital-mavica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/571\/retro-scan-of-the-week-sony-digital-mavica","title":{"rendered":"[ Retro Scan of the Week ]<\/span> Sony Digital Mavica FD-7"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sony<\/a>“It’s as easy as a floppy.”<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The Sony Digital Mavica FD-7 seemed so exciting back when it was new<\/a>, and I wanted one. Its attractiveness stemmed from the cheap and familiar media it used for image storage: standard 3.5″ floppy disks. Most digital cameras of the day required expensive, obscure flash cards for storage and proprietary software to extract photos from the camera (through a painfully<\/em> slow serial cable). With the FD-7, one needed only to insert the image disk into one’s computer floppy drive and copy the pictures off. But the technological price of this convenience was high: the camera’s maximum image resolution was 640×480 — anything bigger, and you’d only be able to fit a couple photos on a single 1.4 megabyte disk.<\/p>\n

Funny enough, I recall ghost enthusiasts on the Internet circa 1998 picking the FD-7 as their camera of choice<\/a> for its uncanny ability to capture vast flurries of out-of-focus dust (aka “ghost orbs”<\/a>). That endorsement alone speaks volumes about the camera’s lackluster optical qualities. Also, this new breed of digital ghost hunters didn’t have to feel guilty<\/a> about taking endless rolls of 35mm dust photos, which can get quite expensive to develop.<\/p>\n

[ From Equip, September 1998 ]<\/small><\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

Discussion topic of the week:<\/strong> Tell us about the first digital camera you ever used. What brand was it, and what image resolution could it capture?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“It’s as easy as a floppy.” The Sony Digital Mavica FD-7 seemed so exciting back when it was new, and I wanted one. Its attractiveness stemmed from the cheap and familiar media it used for image storage: standard 3.5″ floppy disks. Most digital cameras of the day required expensive, obscure flash cards for storage and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,27,26,8,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-info-and-history","category-regular_features","category-retro-scan-of-the-week","category-technology-commentary","category-computers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}