In late 1981, Sony surprised the photographic world with the first electronic still camera – the Mavica. The Mavica (which stood for Magnetic Video Camera) was not a digital camera, but an analog one, which recorded a single frame of a TV picture on a small 2-inch magnetic disk, awkwardly perched atop the camera.
Resolution was roughly 0.28 megapixels, with images being saved in the form of analog scan lines, in the same manner as what we now call a standard resolution television image. These early electronic cameras met with modest success.
In 1988, these early Mavica’s gained a competitor with Canon launching the Q-Pic (Japan), iON (Europe) and Xap Shot (USA) cameras. All three Canon cameras were essentially the same – the different names (and model numbers) designated their markets, due to the different TV broadcast standards (NTSC, PAL & NTSC-J) in each area.
These Canon cameras had a rather sleek, horizontal shape, similar to the later Kodak DC series and Apple Quick-Take digital cameras, but more stylish than either. The Canons were sold in extremely limited numbers and, like the Mavica, recorded a television-grade still on to a special 2" Video Floppy disks.
Of the Mavicas and the Canon stills video cameras, DCW Content Director Chris George remembers that “Both were uttterly awful!“
16 years, on, Sony finally came up with their first, true, digital Mavicas – the FD5 and FD7, both introduced in 1997. While they were not the first consumer-level digital cameras, (there were earlier models, starting in 1994 by Logitec, Apple, Casio and Kodak with the Apple Quick-Take 100 being the first sub-$1000 one) they were the first truly successful digital cameras, quickly capturing 40% of the market.
Sony priced them aggressively, at $599 (£500 in the UK) for the FD-5 with a fixed focal length lens of 4.8mm f/2.0 (equivalent to about 47mm in 35mm terms) and $899 for the FD-7 which came equipped with a 10X optical zoom lens spanning 4.2-42mm f 1.8-2.9 (equivalent to 40-400mm on a 35mm camera).
Curiously, these digital MAVICAs recorded their images on 3.5” floppy diskettes, the most common form of digital storage at the time. Compact flash cards had been introduced in 1994 but their cost was horrifically high. SD cards would not become available until late 2000, and were also expensive. Floppy disks were the lowest cost option, at the time.
Resolution was a mere 640 x 480 pixels or roughly 0.3 megapixels. The images were stored in standard JPEG format, and depending on the complexity of the scene and the amount of compression selected, you can record about 20 photos on a 1.44MB diskette.
Your scribe was recently given an FD-73, a slightly improved FD-7 from 1999 featuring better auto-focus and a brighter LCD screen. It is in near mint condition and it’s been a blast, using this early technology.
My first impressions were the camera is boxy (5.5 x 4 x 2.5 inches or roughly 14 x 10 x 6.4 cm), but rather pleasant to hold, and not too heavy at 570 grams (1 lb, 4 ounces) including the diskette. The fit and finish is up to Sony’s standards, and the camera feels solid in the hand.
The power zoom lens is fairly sharp at most settings, but it seems fairly soft at full telephoto. That could, of course simply be from camera shake, as it was made long before image stabilization was “a thing”. Images take 4 to 5 seconds to be recorded onto the diskette and a similar amount of time is needed to move between images when playing them on the ”large” 2.5 inch [diagonal] colour screen.
The screen is, of course, both the viewfinder and the playback device, but I found that in bright sunlight the camera (or at least the rear screen) became absolutely unusable. Under cloudy skies, it worked OK. Indoors, it was just fine. Transferring the images to a computer was bog simply, with no cords, docks or other paraphernalia common to early digital cameras. At least it was, back at the turn of the century when 3.5 inch floppies were standard on every computer. I had to order an external floppy drive from Amazon ($26)!
Sample images taken with Sony Mavica FD-73
Image credit: David S Young
Image credit: David S Young
Its battery is a Sony NPF-550 lithium-Ion, and battery life is given as 2.5 hours, or 2000 photos; though at 20 per diskette, that number would take 100 diskettes! Your mileage may vary.
It’s a good thing that the cameras were equipped with relatively fast lenses, as the ISO sensitivity of the CCD sensor was fixed at around 100.
Sony's Mavica line transitioned from analog still-video cameras to digital models in the late 1990s. Production spanned from 1981 prototypes to the early 2000s.
The final floppy disk-based Mavica was the FD200, released in 2002 with a 2-megapixel sensor, a Memory Stick slot, and 6x optical zoom.
It is estimated that just over 1 million Mavica cameras were made, in various types and variations. And they were, without a doubt, the most influential of the early digital cameras.
Read more of David Young's ongoing series on classic cameras.
You might also like…
Check out the best Sony cameras you can buy today
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
