Editorial Review:Product Description:Get into digital photography the easy way with the Sony Mavica. This digital darling eliminates drivers, cables and adapters. The 350k pixel image sensor produces razor-sharp pictures you can see immediately on the built-in 2.5 inch color monitor.Just shoot, store and show with the Sony Cyber-Shot Mavica digital camera. View dazzling 24-bit color images on a 2.5' LCD color display viewfinder and store up to 40 images per 3.5' floppy disk in a universal JPEG format. View and manage your images on a PC or Macintosh system and use with virtually all current software applications to enhance your multimedia presentations. The Mavica also features 1/60 to 1/4000 second shutter speeds, built-in flash and PhotoStudio software from ArcSoft.
Amazon.com Review:Sony deserves much of the credit for bringing digital photography to the masses. Americans have purchased more Mavicas than any other line of digital camera--and with good reason. The Mavicas feature high-quality optics and excellent battery life in an easy-to-use package. Yet the camera's biggest asset--floppy-disk image storage--is also its biggest liability.
In some ways, floppy disks are great: they're inexpensive and available virtually everywhere, and transferring images to your computer is a snap--just pop the disk into your PC's floppy drive. Floppies act as both 'film' (for recording the image) and 'negatives' (for archiving your shots), saving the expense of the CD recorder most digital camera owners eventually purchase for long-term image storage.
On the other hand, floppies and floppy drives are big, making Mavicas some of the bulkiest of digital cameras. In addition, disks have moving parts and tend to be more prone to failure than solid-state memory. But the biggest problem with floppy disks is that they hold only 1.44 MB of information--a fraction the capacity of the solid-state cards most cameras use.
To compensate for this shortcoming in storage capacity (and to keep prices low), Sony uses a lower-resolution image sensor (640 x 480 pixels, or 0.3 megapixels) and higher levels of compression than you'll find on other similarly priced cameras. The resulting images look great as e-mailed attachments or on a Web site but lack the detail to produce quality prints at sizes beyond 3 by 5 inches.
With the exception of the low resolution, the MVC-FD73 Mavica is a great digital camera. Its 10x optical zoom lens is more powerful than that of any other camera in its price range. Compared to most other digital cameras, its battery life is fantastic, and the InfoLithium system even displays an estimate of remaining battery charge (in minutes). Sony includes a battery and charger (many manufacturers don't). The big 2.5-inch LCD screen is bright and clear, though we'd love to see an optical viewfinder on the camera, too. For ease of use, it's hard to beat--even digital photography neophytes will be able to use this camera in a matter of minutes.
Bottom line? If you're taking pictures to share with friends via e-mail or are posting your photos online, the MVC-FD73 is an excellent choice. It's well made, easy to use, and the battery life and zoom lens are both excellent. However, if you want the ability to make prints from your images, we'd recommend either a higher-resolution Mavica or a non floppy-based camera.
--John Frederick Moore Pros: - Floppy discs make image transfer and storage simple
- Extremely easy to use
- Superb battery life
- Powerful 10x optical zoom lens
- Big, bright 2.5-inch LCD
Cons: - Low-resolution images lack detail for prints
- No optical viewfinder
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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
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Terrible camera
This camera worked only for a short time. The battery would never hold a charge. Went in the trash.
Rating: -
Good camera for fast performance, low resolution results
I have used this camera since the late 1990s for mostly professional purposes. I write and edit a newsletter for a state agency and am often asked to take photos at award programs and/or to accompany job announcements, often with almost no prior notice.
Of all the cameras I looked at in the 1990s, this was the one that best suited my needs. The reasons for that follow:
1. Shooting photos on a diskette was easier than engaging software and changing documentation from the camera to a file on my PC.
2. The 10X zoom is very accurate and allowed me to do adequate work even when I could not get close to my subject.
3. The camera is flat out easy to use and has a large viewfinder, a large left hand grip, and big button to press when shooting pictures.
Before I bought this camera, I worked for three decades for newspapers and in communications offices of governmental and nonprofit agencies doing the same kind of work I do now. In all those years I never used a camera that was as easy to use as this one, nor did I use one where transmitting the product from the equipment to e-file was easier.
Having said that, this is a low resolution camera that will not always give good results. It is adequate for head shots and has always come through for me in events.
But I've taken photos of my cats at home where their eyes look more like diamonds than eyes, and I took some pictures of the Christmas tree where the lights looked more like the stars or snowflakes than lights on a tree.
So don't buy this to create award-winning photography. For all the same reasons, it doesn't produce very good hardcopy photos.
But this is a great camera for someone that needs to take pictures right now and get an adequate product online fast. That's my mission at work and this camera has always helped me achieve it.
In addition, the battery charger works fast and I've never had to pay a dime to get anything fixed in more than a half-decade of use. I don't know how this stacks up in the camera industry but it's a lot better than most of the electronic equipment I use in the office or at home.
Rating: 
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If you like hard copies...this camera isn't for you
Given camera as a gift, and as a novice is incredibly easy to use. However...I quickly discovered (after spending nearly $100 on prints) that obtaining quality 4x6 prints is not an option. In order to get decent resolution I am limited to wallet sized pictures. Bottom line??? If you prefer to thumb through a photo album years later, strongly consider a different camera with higher mega pixels.
Rating: -
Nice pics!
If you are looking for easy storage of pictures without the hassle of uploading them to your PC, this is the camera for you. It is big and bulky. Pictures are terrific, cam is easy to use.
Best: Easy to use.
Worst: Big & Bulky.
Rating: -
FD 73 - Best Camera I've Had
I have had the FD 73 for three years now. When it was brand new, my wife got hit by a wave at the tip of Cabo San Lucas with the camera around her neck. The camera was in a case but the wave was so strong, water and sand actually got in the camera. We dried it out and it didn't affect camera function at all. That was a huge relief because three years ago this camera sold for $500. I use it at work a lot to take pictures at office functions. Everyone is amazed I can pop the disc in any computer and email or print the pictures instantly. I have used it on vacations outside the US in Internet Cafe's to email pictures home. It's best features are it's so easy to use and you can view the pictures on any computer anywhere in the world simply by inserting the floppy disc. The only problem I have had with the camera is getting consistent picture quality in very light or very dark settings. That may be operator error but after three years it still happens. I have looked at upgrading to a MVC with more megapixels but I have learned for each feature you add you lose some of the simplicity of the FD73.
