I used to have to use one at my job. It was SO MUCH easier to transfer photos to the computer. We also used to let our regular customers take photos of items they were interested in, and then take the disk with them. It was a workhorse. That thing got dropped, and knocked around like crazy, and kept on going.
Out of curiosity what kind of resolution would the pictures come out in? If I recall correctly the max size of a 3.5” floppy was 1.3 MB? So maybe on average the pictures were 200-400KB in size?
Looking through the video, this was the later version that also took memory stick, it says 1.6 megapixel on the front 1440x1080. The first ones in 97 were ntsc, 0.3 megapixel
There were several compression settings, from 3 photos to a disk, to about a dozen which was the most usable decent quality, to dozens in a postage stamp mode. Coming from film, a dozen shots wasn't bad
Yep, I worked in a fairly high end retailer that sold these. At the same time they also sold several Sony laptops, that would later be classed as Netbooks, including one with a neat webcam that swivelled.
This was the height of genius. Especially pre-USB when plugging something in to your computer was a huge pain that involved proprietary software and turning the computer off etc…
I got a woman jailtime because of one of these. I had one at a previous job in a school. Someone walked into my office and stole it during holidays, then sold it at a local pawn shop. She sold it "on commission" so no up-front cash and she left her contact details. Local plod gets involved and she's pinged. All because of a distinctive blue cable tie on the strap which was loose, and I had the serial number.
The “spy”version or the regular sized ones… I had the super small version that was a little bigger than the film itself… bought it broken from a used camera store in Canal Street in NYC $5 (around 1982) and refurbished it to working condition… was a regular James Bond with it.
I have two of those. Still. The first one I got new when it came out a very long time ago. The second one I got (decades) later because I needed a replacement battery, and the guy I got it from just gave me the whole other camera too.
I was thinking something approximately the same. Like.. these were a thing for such a brief period too. Once USB sticks became a thing it was all over.
What we now call flash memory was very expensive at one time. Some of the stop-gap technology like Zip drives weren't really around long enough to gain market saturation. They never stood a chance. I used to own a videocamera that transfered video from RAM then burned it directly to a mini DVD. Kind of a pain in the ass with all the disc swapping but it was a lossless digital video format. Even video recorded on smartphones are still compressed for space. Granted the video quality is much higher
Yes. They were both expensive and kind of a weird storage format to find. They are still relatively pricy for the amount of storage you get, especially for older tech. Adapters are still well over $100 and good luck finding a modern PC with a serial port.
Remember the PSP used those, I had one that you could plug 2 microSD cards into, it made it a single volume. I had 64 gigs in my PSP because of it, so many games.
Correct me if wrong, but I think psp used memory stick pro, which was smaller. Adapters can make them reg size, which work in the floppy adapter as long as they are 128mb or smaller
What do you think the purple SD stick is? It was something like this don't quote me on the exact, we're talking PSP fat, and 1st gen slim, but this was the card type that let me have 64gigs on my psp back in around 2010-ish
There is a sort of push whit gramophone/record player comming back and as tech have advanced the original player would end up whit a lot of empty space (because part of the Vinyl revival is a bit about its size so cram in new tech to fill out some of the space while we are at it.
I love that adapters exist. I have a 3.5mm male aux adapter that can turn anything with a female aux port into either a Bluetooth transmitter or receiver. I use it for my Zune ^_^
I call bullshit on the results. That’s a 1.6 megapixel camera, the photo should be potato quality at best. For comparison, iPhone 14 has 12 megapixels for the main camera.
1080p video is 2 megapixels. It's plenty resolution for good results. Especially when shooting outdoors in daylight.
Quality is determined more by the sensor and image processing/compression - which was a lot worse back then than we have today. But those photos don't seem unreasonable for the camera.
About 2 megapixels is plenty for screen display not zoomed in. The big problem with older sensors was terrible low light performance. But the examples were in full sunlight. I think it's probably real.
I used to sell these cameras, ages ago. The rated resolution may be low by today's standards, but that particular camera has a large aperture to let in more light than a typical smartphone. I'm no photographer, but if you took the 12 megapixels from your iThingy and had them in an actual digital camera with a large lense, you would be amazed at how much better your pictures would look. Most of us use smartphone cameras and are pleased with the results, so we don't bother looking any deeper.
Unless I’m remembering wrong the max resolution for the early ones was .3 megapixels… 640x480(?)… I’ve got tons of early digital photos that size… they look okay if you don’t zoom in.
The photos are suspect, but pixelcount in phones doesn't count for that much because of the teeny weeny sensor size. 18mp APS-C macro shots on a regular DSLR blow flagship phones out of the water, it's a shame because DSLRs are bricks, but it just doesn't compare.
Yes but back then (1997) a 1.6 megapixel camera was a competitive quality level without going up to DSLRs, I assume you're young or just forgot that in 1997 that was actually pretty astonishing for a consumer grade digital camera, I think my quite expensive 2002 digital camera was only 4mp, most webcams at the time were 0.3mp
Oh, the images were grainy AF if you didn't use the highest quality setting for sure, but I usually did. Here's one I took of one of my Frillback pigeons as an example. I used my Mavica daily. Life changing. Digital photography freed us from expense of film processing.
Kind of surprised that we didn't have people endlessly whining that "digital photography is killing the film industry". Nope, we just accepted that the new was replacing the old and didn't try to hang on to stuff that was now obsolete.
The irony is that a lot of people have gone back to film, as it's still better than digital in some ways. It was never obsolete, less convenient. You'd need something like 100 megapixels to compete with film resolution, and there's a look film has which many prefer.
A lot of movies shot on early digital look *much worse* than older movies shot on film, now that we have 4K displays.
We did though? I remember people claiming digital photography wasn't real art. I mean, yeah, those people shut up pretty quick, but it was into the early 2000s that I still had friends who insisted nothing would ever replace film.
Yeah, I remember in photo class my teacher saying actual film was gonna be lost/only smart form. But even she admitted that many people are photographers for the experience and the end result.
First that’s a great shot. Even your pic has more grain than the images in the video. They feel way too clean. I have no problem with touching up photos I just feel like this video isn’t mentioning some sort of upscaling that they’re doing. I came into photography into photography near the tail end of film cameras for consumers, so my dark room experience is very limited but man was I so happy to get my first digital camera 😂
Light conditions were a huge factor in how grainy an image on an old digital camera looked, outdoors during the daytime would look substantially better than even a good shot indoors normally.
Yeah, I have a Google pixel for my phone, some of the photos I've taken were nearly 5mb, my phone's photos can't even fit on a floppy and those pics in the video look almost as clear
Good glass, clean sensor, good light. I had a DCS (original, KAF-1300) for a while and the pictures are clean and sharp. Sure, low rez but about what you'd get if you took a current high end DSLR and downsampled to 1.3mpix. The DCS-420 was a lot easier to handle and the 1.5 mpix images I took with that are quite nice. 1995, unretouched, no resolution enhancement.
Spidey209
My Aunty had one similar but it used proprietary star wheel discs. I think they could be erased and reused.
cuprohastes
I used one, back when this was a big deal
Come2Japan
thatsnotmydog
I still have this in my office on a shelf, next to a Brownie
penguinbutts
I used to have to use one at my job. It was SO MUCH easier to transfer photos to the computer. We also used to let our regular customers take photos of items they were interested in, and then take the disk with them. It was a workhorse. That thing got dropped, and knocked around like crazy, and kept on going.
Blueb3
Our high-school photography class had a handful of these (god I'm old) and they were nigh indestructible! They were like the Nokia of digital cameras.
OmnibusLatinName
We had one for setups in my shop! Photo, save, print, and in the job folder it went. Fuck it was handy.
rockmanx853000
Out of curiosity what kind of resolution would the pictures come out in? If I recall correctly the max size of a 3.5” floppy was 1.3 MB? So maybe on average the pictures were 200-400KB in size?
munkis
Looking through the video, this was the later version that also took memory stick, it says 1.6 megapixel on the front 1440x1080. The first ones in 97 were ntsc, 0.3 megapixel
munkis
There were several compression settings, from 3 photos to a disk, to about a dozen which was the most usable decent quality, to dozens in a postage stamp mode. Coming from film, a dozen shots wasn't bad
butterda
my dad has that same camera. used it well into floppy obsolescence
CheetoDustedMalcontent
Aren't floppies 1.44 megs? How many photos are you getting per floppy?
RaxianTheta
these had super floppy drives, 120mb
mrputter
If you're saving as RAW, then: one. If 100% JPeg, then: about 4?
https://toolstud.io/photo/megapixel.php?width=1460&height=1095&calculate=compressed
thatwoodguy
You could get 2.88 MB ones but they were very rare
Itsritinfruntuvu
I have one of these. I remember getting up to about 3 pics per disc. It also took video but we used the SD card for most of our storage.
Vkiwi2
yes i saw these.. yes i sold these.. yes im old...
CarlBassett
Yep, I worked in a fairly high end retailer that sold these. At the same time they also sold several Sony laptops, that would later be classed as Netbooks, including one with a neat webcam that swivelled.
Vkiwi2
i remember the ad for those viao's, guy in a meeting and hot wife jumps him.. lol
WigglezWagz
Also, it’s not called a floppy disk. The floppy disk was larger , thinner, and floppy! That one is a 3.5.
cbale2000
whoatherebigfella
I would have been blown away had they put that disc into the 3.5 slot on their computer hard drive
SheriffJackCarter
Somebody 3D printed the same icon?
mikeatike
8-Bit Guy. https://youtu.be/4J0Aw2Z-8">">https://youtu.be/4J0Aw2Z-8-k
LGR. https://youtu.be/3Nu6C-Ci7_Q
wetqueef
This was the height of genius. Especially pre-USB when plugging something in to your computer was a huge pain that involved proprietary software and turning the computer off etc…
EricPisch
Seen one? I owned one lol
dudeinjapan
Used it for work!
Yamdip
15 photos per disk.
cosonfused
I see your camera , and I'll raise you a Hifi-Tower that uses floppy discs
https://youtu.be/5ks3ucumilUa> techmoan
https://youtu.be/qkMFF-TarwQ
MrShipwreck
I had one of the first ones of these. I remember it well
criggie
I got a woman jailtime because of one of these.
I had one at a previous job in a school. Someone walked into my office and stole it during holidays, then sold it at a local pawn shop. She sold it "on commission" so no up-front cash and she left her contact details. Local plod gets involved and she's pinged.
All because of a distinctive blue cable tie on the strap which was loose, and I had the serial number.
YouAlreadyMutedMe
Wait until I tell you about my Kodak 110!
steelundecided
I have a Kodak disc
Syko73
Got me right in the youth with this one
CallMeMcGyver
The “spy”version or the regular sized ones… I had the super small version that was a little bigger than the film itself… bought it broken from a used camera store in Canal Street in NYC $5 (around 1982) and refurbished it to working condition… was a regular James Bond with it.
Mortbise
SomaChild
Don’t you mean the save icon?
levelor
I have two of those. Still. The first one I got new when it came out a very long time ago. The second one I got (decades) later because I needed a replacement battery, and the guy I got it from just gave me the whole other camera too.
Nognom
My youth is approaching hipster entertainment…
Selfawerewolf
"Ever seen a-" "I WAS THERE, GANDALF."
CallMeMcGyver
Your youth… my youth involved the Kodak disk camera… (early 80s compact film camera) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_film
QuickAndFun
I was already 40+ when my employer bought one of those cameras.
RevRagnarok
It's a DIGITAL CAMERA not a frikken horse buggy whip.
Ironblitz
God, that thing. 20 low res photos and that clicking when it wrote to the disk.
OverpricedCrayon
What makes it “hipster”? I thought that term died 10 years ago.
ZShippoZ
Indeed... I too had an fd95 and an fd97... The bubblegum memory adapter was a game changer at the time... Now I feel old.
euphoricopportunity
Yeah, but I remember the resolution being absolutely terrible when they were popular.
Atridentata
I was thinking something approximately the same. Like.. these were a thing for such a brief period too. Once USB sticks became a thing it was all over.
ChloeRed
USB sticks didn't do a thing to the Mavica/etc. they would go on to use mini CD-R/RW. Compact flash and SD cards are what ended them
WiiShaker
What we now call flash memory was very expensive at one time. Some of the stop-gap technology like Zip drives weren't really around long enough to gain market saturation. They never stood a chance. I used to own a videocamera that transfered video from RAM then burned it directly to a mini DVD. Kind of a pain in the ass with all the disc swapping but it was a lossless digital video format. Even video recorded on smartphones are still compressed for space. Granted the video quality is much higher
ChloeRed
My first digital camera was a canon that took PCMCIA cards, you think the flash cards were expensive? The IBM hard drive for it was "ouch!"
WiiShaker
Yes. They were both expensive and kind of a weird storage format to find. They are still relatively pricy for the amount of storage you get, especially for older tech. Adapters are still well over $100 and good luck finding a modern PC with a serial port.
ByThePowerOfSCIENCE
Hell, even my point and shoot pocket camera is a relic now.
[ rummages through junk for Zip drive ]
lamontcranston
there were also models that burned onto cd and dvd
Schnauz
Surprised it didn’t require some kind of bullshit proprietary Sony media.
dshiznt
It does require a proprietary smart battery though!
HPCmonkey
There is a memory stick to floppy adapter for that. Each floppy only holds one picture.
RevRagnarok
Somebody posted that /gallery/EdFGbDN/comment/2425522035
markm0101
Sony had all the best crap.
womblemessiah
DontTazeMeBrah
Sony proprietary drives so expensive
[deleted]
[deleted]
womblemessiah
Regular discs were 1.5mb, squeezing 10 on at .15mb each was like grainy mosaics.
LeggoMyEggoJudas
It could also shoot 5 seconds of really bad video
d1d1t4t3hlulz0hl4wdy
Remember the PSP used those, I had one that you could plug 2 microSD cards into, it made it a single volume. I had 64 gigs in my PSP because of it, so many games.
rbudrick
Correct me if wrong, but I think psp used memory stick pro, which was smaller. Adapters can make them reg size, which work in the floppy adapter as long as they are 128mb or smaller
d1d1t4t3hlulz0hl4wdy
What do you think the purple SD stick is? It was something like this
don't quote me on the exact, we're talking PSP fat, and 1st gen slim, but this was the card type that let me have 64gigs on my psp back in around 2010-ish
rbudrick
I saw them in all colors, so I dunno what purple one you mean. But yeah, yours says pro right on it.
Odincdaj522004
That is a thoroughly amusing adapter
YouMayFindThisMildlyInteresting
There's something about adapters that skip generations of tech
meltedfaceguy
We sell a very cool Gemini turntable at my store retails about 160 and the damn thing has Bluetooth which I think is both awesome and hilarious
ZackWester
There is a sort of push whit gramophone/record player comming back and as tech have advanced the original player would end up whit a lot of empty space (because part of the Vinyl revival is a bit about its size so cram in new tech to fill out some of the space while we are at it.
MapleSyrupMafia
I had one in my Geo Metro, not bluetooth tho, plugged in my mini disc mp3 player!
doppelfisch
I love that adapters exist. I have a 3.5mm male aux adapter that can turn anything with a female aux port into either a Bluetooth transmitter or receiver. I use it for my Zune ^_^
Boxingjedi
IMakeLotsOfReferencesAndRemakes
You want to see my Bluetooth to FM radio adapter?
Boxingjedi
....do I want to see your Bluetooth adapter????
ScourgeOfAges
So you can play music from your phone on your car system that only has a tape deck
Boxingjedi
must admit I thought it was a type-o and they meant Blu Ray...
CJAW
How is it powered?
Swordbian
There's a cord that plugs into it and into the cigarette lighter/power port of a car
CJAW
Damn, I was hoping it was able to generate electricity via the spindles turning. That'd be rad as hell.
ThatGuyInTheMountains
I can see a USB port on the front. I imagine it has a cord to power it.
mrputter
*blink* *blink* *blink*
lozeldatkm
One of those is how I get pandora in my van. We don't all have modern vehicles, you know.
rbudrick
Looks like it needed drivers installed, but worked on win 95 to 2000. 128mb max. Interesting tech. $40 on eBay right now.
somnif
I think that's about what I paid for mine back when it was new
TippleFipps
I call bullshit on the results. That’s a 1.6 megapixel camera, the photo should be potato quality at best. For comparison, iPhone 14 has 12 megapixels for the main camera.
YouMayFindThisMildlyInteresting
Check out this comparison of iPhone 14 pics vs. an earlier 1.3MP version of this Sony (from 6:08) https://youtu.be/bGCtIsM01Gc?t=368
CredibleTalent
1080p video is 2 megapixels. It's plenty resolution for good results. Especially when shooting outdoors in daylight.
Quality is determined more by the sensor and image processing/compression - which was a lot worse back then than we have today. But those photos don't seem unreasonable for the camera.
jridley
About 2 megapixels is plenty for screen display not zoomed in. The big problem with older sensors was terrible low light performance. But the examples were in full sunlight. I think it's probably real.
GlowstickJedi
As an old fart who actually had one of these cameras, I also call shenanigans on those pictures.
YouMayFindThisMildlyInteresting
Why? That image in the video is exactly 480x360 - that's 0.17 megapixels. And this has far bigger optics and sensor than an iPhone.
YouMayFindThisMildlyInteresting
The portrait pic is bigger (presumably a crop) — that one does show some softness, noise and digital crud
ByThePowerOfSCIENCE
Pixel area, not pixel count, makes image quality. The whole video is 480×854 = 410 KILOpixels.
Grainy pics result from small pixels and low light where thermal noise overcomes the signal from photons. https://adammullinsphotography.com/blog/2016/8/22/the-megapixel-myth-rj5jj
whyowhyareallgoodusernamestaken
IIRC: the first digital Mavica's had a 640x480 res, or roughly 0.3 megapixels.
NervousAstronaut
I used to sell these cameras, ages ago. The rated resolution may be low by today's standards, but that particular camera has a large aperture to let in more light than a typical smartphone. I'm no photographer, but if you took the 12 megapixels from your iThingy and had them in an actual digital camera with a large lense, you would be amazed at how much better your pictures would look. Most of us use smartphone cameras and are pleased with the results, so we don't bother looking any deeper.
CallMeMcGyver
Unless I’m remembering wrong the max resolution for the early ones was .3 megapixels… 640x480(?)… I’ve got tons of early digital photos that size… they look okay if you don’t zoom in.
corylusavellana
The photos are suspect, but pixelcount in phones doesn't count for that much because of the teeny weeny sensor size. 18mp APS-C macro shots on a regular DSLR blow flagship phones out of the water, it's a shame because DSLRs are bricks, but it just doesn't compare.
songbringer
Additionally, Diskette standard size was 1.44MB. HQ pictures now can be triple that.
SteelKnight
Yes but back then (1997) a 1.6 megapixel camera was a competitive quality level without going up to DSLRs, I assume you're young or just forgot that in 1997 that was actually pretty astonishing for a consumer grade digital camera, I think my quite expensive 2002 digital camera was only 4mp, most webcams at the time were 0.3mp
CarlBassett
This model is the Sony Mavica MVC FD90 from 2000.
SteelKnight
Ok but 1.6mp was still quite high for a digital camera of 2000 too.
OzRockabella
Oh, the images were grainy AF if you didn't use the highest quality setting for sure, but I usually did. Here's one I took of one of my Frillback pigeons as an example. I used my Mavica daily. Life changing. Digital photography freed us from expense of film processing.
Crazywelderguy
Mavica! That is what my family had too! Awesome shot btw
Shaodyn
Kind of surprised that we didn't have people endlessly whining that "digital photography is killing the film industry". Nope, we just accepted that the new was replacing the old and didn't try to hang on to stuff that was now obsolete.
CredibleTalent
The irony is that a lot of people have gone back to film, as it's still better than digital in some ways. It was never obsolete, less convenient.
You'd need something like 100 megapixels to compete with film resolution, and there's a look film has which many prefer.
A lot of movies shot on early digital look *much worse* than older movies shot on film, now that we have 4K displays.
bokodasu
We did though? I remember people claiming digital photography wasn't real art. I mean, yeah, those people shut up pretty quick, but it was into the early 2000s that I still had friends who insisted nothing would ever replace film.
Shaodyn
IDK, I was never much of a photography person.
Crazywelderguy
Yeah, I remember in photo class my teacher saying actual film was gonna be lost/only smart form. But even she admitted that many people are photographers for the experience and the end result.
TippleFipps
First that’s a great shot. Even your pic has more grain than the images in the video. They feel way too clean. I have no problem with touching up photos I just feel like this video isn’t mentioning some sort of upscaling that they’re doing. I came into photography into photography near the tail end of film cameras for consumers, so my dark room experience is very limited but man was I so happy to get my first digital camera 😂
SteelKnight
Light conditions were a huge factor in how grainy an image on an old digital camera looked, outdoors during the daytime would look substantially better than even a good shot indoors normally.
Cinammontoastcrunch
Yeah, I have a Google pixel for my phone, some of the photos I've taken were nearly 5mb, my phone's photos can't even fit on a floppy and those pics in the video look almost as clear
gesel
Good glass, clean sensor, good light. I had a DCS (original, KAF-1300) for a while and the pictures are clean and sharp. Sure, low rez but about what you'd get if you took a current high end DSLR and downsampled to 1.3mpix. The DCS-420 was a lot easier to handle and the 1.5 mpix images I took with that are quite nice. 1995, unretouched, no resolution enhancement.
jridley
The video is in full sunlight, which will pretty much eliminate the graininess.
YouMayFindThisMildlyInteresting
Indeed, check the dog photos in this comparison of an iPhone 14 Pro vs an earlier Mavica (from 6:08) https://youtu.be/bGCtIsM01Gc?t=368