Editorial Review:Product Description:Never run out of storage space again! Sony's MVC-CD400 Digital Still Camera features massive 4.0 megapixel resolution (4.1 MegaPixel gross) with a Carl Zeiss Vario Sonnar 3X optical zoom lens and the ability to write to inexpensive optical media. Capture exceptional still images and MPEG video clips directly to 156MB CD-R/RW media, measuring only 8 cm in diameter and readable on most CD-ROM equipped PCs. This incredible camera features a broad range of advanced features such as Multi-Point AF, Hologram AF, Multi-Pattern Metering and Pre-Flash Metering for creating the most compelling still images and digital video you've ever seen. The MVC-CD400 puts the power of digital photography in your hands!
Amazon.com Product Description:The unique feature of Sony's CD400 Mavica is a built-in mini-CD recorder, a clever solution that simultaneously provides affordable portable memory and long-term archival storage. The camera also features a 4-megapixel sensor, a 3x optical zoom Carl Zeiss lens, a jumbo 2.5-inch display, and long-life rechargeable lithium-ion battery.
Optics and Resolution The CD400's 4-megapixel sensor captures a tremendous amount of detail, allowing sharp 11-by-14-inch prints with pixels to spare. If you're currently using a high-quality 35mm point-and-shoot, expect to see as much detail in your digital pictures as you currently see in your film photos.
A 3x Carl Zeiss optical zoom lens (34-102mm equivalent) helps you to capture exactly the picture you want, and an additional 2x digital zoom (6x total) further magnifies your image. Remember, however, that digital zoom tends to reduce the sharpness and detail of your image, so it's best used sparingly. In low-light situations (a particular weakness for many digital cameras), a focus-assist lamp sends out a small patterned beam to help the camera accurately determine distance.
To save space, there's no traditional optical viewfinder to look through. Instead, to compose your images or review shots you've already taken, the CD400 uses a 2.5-inch color display. The advantage to using the LCD to frame your shots is that the screen lets you see exactly the picture you'll capture. The disadvantage is that you can't turn off the screen and just use the optical viewfinder to extend battery life. Fortunately, the included rechargeable battery holds a relatively good charge.
More Features The engineers at Sony have gone out of their way to make it as easy as possible to share your images online. For example, the e-mail mode stores a lower-resolution version of your picture on the disc in a separate folder from the full-size version. This compact file lacks the detail of the original, but has a small file size, making it ideal for e-mail attachments. In addition, a video e-mail mode captures highly compressed, less-detailed movie clips that are also small enough to easily e-mail. With the time, expertise, and the right software, owners of any digital camera can create these more compact files on their home computers, but Sony saves you this trouble.
More advanced photographers will appreciate manual focus, a 14-bit A/D processor that captures more gradations in color than most digital cameras, and an uncompressed TIFF mode for recording the highest-quality photos.
Power The CD400 uses Sony's excellent InfoLithium battery system, which not only holds a respectable charge, but also displays on screen how many minutes of power remain. Both the battery and the charger are included. Because the battery is unique to specific Sony models and can be nearly impossible to find when on the road, we strongly recommend getting a spare if you're planning to take the camera on extended outings.
Movie Mode In movie mode, the camera captures video clips with sound at resolutions up to 320 x 240 pixels. Unlike most digital cameras, the length of each video is limited only by the amount of memory left on the CD. The limited resolution of these clips guarantees that this feature won't replace your camcorder, but it's perfect for when you just want to capture a quick movie and e-mail it to a friend or relative.
Storage and Transfer With a traditional digital camera, images are stored on memory cards, then transferred to your computer via a cable or card reader, and ultimately archived by recording on a CD-R or other high-capacity medium. Sony's CD Mavicas simplify this process by recording images directly to CD, using a 3-inch miniature CD recorder integrated into the back of the camera (hence the camera's rounded shape). These discs are substantially smaller than traditional 5-inch CDs, and only hold about one-fourth as much information (156 MB instead of 650 MB), but this is still enough space to store over 60 photos at the camera's highest-quality compressed mode. Each disc costs a couple of dollars. To transfer pictures to your computer, simply remove the disc from the camera and insert it into your computer's CD-ROM drive. Unlike images recorded on memory cards, pictures taken on a CD-R are permanently burned into the disc, instantly providing a digital 'negative' for archiving your photos.
If you prefer to transfer your images in the traditional way, just use an erasable/re-recordable CD-RW disc and connect the camera to your computer with the included USB cable. After transferring the images, you can erase the CD-RW disc to ready it for another batch of photos.
Size At 5.5 by 3.75 by 4 inches, and 23 ounces, you won't slip this one into your shirt pocket, but it's still one of the smallest disc-based cameras available. The CD400 fits nicely into most SLR camera carrying cases.
Contents and Recommended Accessories The package includes the CD400 camera, NP-FM50 battery, AC-L10 cable for in-camera charging, six 3-inch CD-R discs, one 3-inch re-recordable CD-RW, shoulder strap, AV cable, USB cable, and software on CD.
Everything you need to get started is included in the box, but we recommend these accessories to make the most of your camera: a carrying case, additional 3-inch CD-R or CD-RW discs, and a second battery (especially if you're taking the camera on extended trips). Compatible accessories for this camera are listed near the top of this page.
--Shane Burnett Pros: - Integrated CD recorder provides inexpensive storage and image archiving
- Big 2.5-inch screen makes it easy to preview and review photos
- E-mail modes make it easy to share your photos electronically
Cons: - No traditional optical viewfinder
- CD drive makes the camera bigger and heavier than cameras using memory cards
Accessories:
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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
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The convenience is worth it...
I've owned this camera for about 2 years now. I have dropped it, kicked it on the pavement and still, I get great shots. The photos are great and there is lots of flexibility of storage. You can delete photos before you finalize the disk if you like or keep all of them and only upload those you want to manipulate with editing software. Very user friendly, I like the feel of the camera, has a nice grip to it. Opportunties to improve: the lcd screen does not have protection so it is kind of scratched up; also, hard to frame your shot without a view finder in very bright light or with low light at night. Finally, need to account for shutter lag time to get the photo you want. It takes several seconds for start up so you need to account for this as well. Regardless, the pros outweigh the cons, I love the cd fomat for saving the photos -- no need to transfer from memory stick to computer or printer, just pop into your computer and you are there.
Rating: 
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Great Little Camera
I just love this great camera from Sony. The Mavica MVC-CD400 was a great buy for me a couple of years ago, although a 4 megapixel camera doesn't cost quite this much anymore. I spent 600 dollars for the camera at Best Buy, getting a deal because it was an open item.
The MVC-CD400 is extremely user friendly in all modes of operation (still picture, movie, or review). In my two years of taking pictures with this camera, I have only used the fully automatic still picture mode and the simple movie mode. I've yet to have a bad shot. Part of what makes shooting pictures with this camera so easy is the fact that it has the large viewing window to let the user see just about exactly what the picture will look like.
This camera has a fairly quick auto-focus feature that is highly reliable except in extreme low-light conditions, and even then it can usually compensate for the lack of light by using the built-in diamond pattern lamp used for helping the camera focus. Where this tool starts to fail is for objects more than six feet away, depending on lighting.
Although the camera has a note that it displays on power-up any time it detects a non-Sony Mavica CD installed in the storage bay, I've never had any problem using other discs. Typically I use the Memorex 210 MB CD-R's.
With these discs, I can store 95 pictures at the highest JPEG resolution, or 954 pictures at the lowest resolution. For the movie mode, the same disc will yield 8 minutes and 31 seconds at the highest resolution (which isn't that great at 320 HQX) or 100 minutes at 160 by 112 resolution, which is actually pretty crappy video. But if you want a camcorder, this is not the toy for you.
The camera can also store images in TIFF format, but be prepared to wait a while for the images to save to the disc, and to change the discs often. Only 13 images will fit on a 210 MB disc in this format. For anyone who isn't interested in professionally working with their photos, the JPEG format is fine. I've printed out many of those prints at 8x10 with remarkable detail.
Some of the extra features of this camera include the photo effects, such as black and white or negative (can't quite figure out what I might want to do with that one, but it's there nonetheless) and a red-eye reduction flash. The red-eye reduction takes a little bit more work than I would like to turn on and off (rotating the selector knob to "SET UP" and navigating a couple of options then back again), but it isn't that much of a pain and can be done in about 5 seconds. Also the user can select a "confirm before write" option, to avoid wasting space on the disc for those who have a habit of taking a picture with their thumb over the lens or something.
Another feature of the camera is to stamp the image with a date/time stamp. I don't know why anyone would really want to do this, since the time and date are also imbedded in the file (along with other data such as ISO speed, focal length, flash, and exposure time) and can be retrieved by loading the disc into a computer CD-ROM drive.
Battery life is usually quite good. I can typically use mine for an entire event (football game, wedding, etc.) without worrying about the battery, although the internal monitor might be telling me that it's low toward the end if I've been doing a lot of reviewing.
One of the drawbacks I've read in another review of this product is that sometimes using the camera to review the images stored on the disc can be painfully slow. While it is slower than using a memory stick model, it isn't that bad. Add the advantage of accessing all of the images very quickly using a PC (even before the disc is finalized by the camera) and the usefulness of this method becomes clear. Transfers from a CD are substantially faster than transfers via USB or Firewire.
I have a Canon EOS Digital Rebel now which I use most of the time and love, but I'm not getting rid of this great little Sony. Partly because my girlfriend loves it and it's kind of her camera now (she's laid claim to it), but also because it is still so useful and so good that I see no reason to.
Rating: 
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Fragility, portability, durability
As an avid photographer, I wanted a digital camera that had the complicated lense features of a regular SLR without the complications of the various storage disks/cards/drives that plague most other digital cameras. This camera looked like the one. It burns to a mini cd, and therefore the orginal images are available immediately on disc without software or cords. It has mini video functions as well as other high tech possibilities.
Nice idea, but it failed. This camera is still relying on new burning technology, so the camera is still extremely fragile and definately not portable. I've had the camera 10 months and I've had to fix it three times. First the burning lense broke... any slight shake or bump will cause it to go off course, making the entire camera non-usable. As there is no harddrive within the camera, if you cannot burn to cd then you cannot take pictures. Then the photo lense got jammed (over the course of a month--so photos picked up a blur after a little while) and was unable to function, although I was still able to view pictures. After paying to REPLACE both parts (in excess of $150 each) the burning lense broke again after two months.
If you're planning to only take the camera out on special occasions, fine, but if you're planning on doing any sightseeing with it, putting it in a bag and taking it anywhere, it won't hold up.
Rating: -
love this camera
This is the best digital camera I have ever used. I have even bought a spare camera (MVC-CD400 it is sitting quietly in its box) just incase I where to ever break it beyond repair ;)
Ya its that Sweet!!!
Brandon
Rating: -
what a great gift
This camera was a gift. I don't know much about digital cameras except that whenever I have used one, the pictures always seem very grainy. I never understood why people would use them over regular cameras, except for the online uses. Having said all that, I must now admit that I love this camera. The picture quality is excellent, and I love being able to see my pictures on the computer and choosing which ones I want on paper. My only complaint (minor) is the view screen. When you are outside, it is difficult to see what you are aiming for.
