The Sony Mavica CD1000
by Fistman



The Sony Mavica CD1000 was easier to use than I expected. Its a very user
friendly machine. It has a computerized digital interface on a nicely sized
LCD screen on the back that allows you to adjust effects, set specifications
and manipulate the flash all while seeing what the camera sees and/or looking
at the your previous snapshots.

Now somebody with not much computer experience might struggle a bit with
it...like my mother (who is scared to press buttons on computers) wouldn't
fare well with the computerized menu drop down format..but as long as you are
used to those kinds of interfaces, its like candy.

The most important thing when using the Mavica is to understand what you can
do with it. Believe it or not, the instruction booklet is fairly concise and
very helpful in this regard. One or two hours reading through the booklet and
playing around with the camera and I was ready to go out and do my first
photoshoot without much difficulty.

The Mavica is a camera that was built with the understanding that it can cost
more than it helps to provide 8000 different ways to shoot a picture. A simple
and effective machine, the Mavica does most of the work for you and you are
left with a small number of variables to play around with in order to tailor
your photos to your liking. I'm really impressed not only by its performance,
but by the concept behind it.

Let me also say what it is not. It is probably not a camera that you will get
photo lab quality prints off of your printer with. The CD1000 is for those of
us who prefer to see our pics on computers with managable file sizes while
maintaining a high level of pic quality. Setting the Mavica on 1028x764
accomplishes both. And then compressing the files with a graphics program will
make that all the more effective. The Mavica allows you to record all your
pictures directly on a 3 inch CD in Jpg format and it fits nicely into your
CD-Rom drive. While the discs costs about 4 dollars each and aren't
rewritable, they will hold 3-400 pictures of the quality above described.
That's the equivalent of 15 rolls of 24 exposure film which obviously would be
much more expensive. Combine that with the time and cost savings of not having
to develop any film, scan any pictures or deal with USB ports of any kind and
you have an economic and time efficient process for those of us who spend a
lot of our time in cyberspace.

The camera can be found on sites linked off of http://www.pricewatch.com for
under $800 currently. Each battery lasted me a solid two hours with the lcd
screen turned on. The camera comes with one FF550 battery, but I bought two
more for about 60 dollars each. I still haven't gotten the external flash i
purchased to work, but the interanl flash is actually very very effective.

The Mavica performed better with too much light then with not enough, but the
flash was able to cure that problem. The pictures that turned out too dark
were ones where i had mistakenly turned the flash off or was standing too far
away (20 feet or so) for it to perform well. One trick is that is turns itself
off after being inactive for a few minutes and when it comes back on, you have
to reset the flash to the specifications that you want.

Overall, I felt less limited by the camera than I had felt in past shoots with
a 35 mm. And it was a great help to be able to look back at the picture I had
just taken and be confident that I was doing it right or be able to make some
kind of adjustment when it wasn't doing something right. One thing I'll do
differently next weekend is that I'm going to adjust the brightness on the lcd
screen. It was brighter than the pictures turned out to be.

It's a great camera in my opinion; simple and easy to use. I'd say don't
bother getting the external flash. But do get an outside AC/charger, but make
sure its the one that works with the type of battery the camera uses. Also,
I'd get the UV lens to protect the Mavica's.