Old Digital Camera Vs. Cell Phone: Sony Mavica Edition

Pause for a minute and try to remember 1997. It is very possible that you will not be able to remember everything about 1997 because it was a long time ago, but these things happened, among others: Bill Clinton started his second term as President of the United States, Dharma & Greg premiered on ABC, and everybody's computer came with a floppy disk drive.

Also in 1997, people started wondering if maybe this newfangled digital camera thing had legs. Turns out it did, but there are times in retrospect that you have to wonder how it managed to survive those early years. This is one of those times.

Sony's Mavica series of digital still cameras goes back to the mid-80s, but the MVC-FD5 was the first to record on a commonly-available consumer format.

No, it's not an SD card, or a CF card, or even a SmartMedia card. See that little floppy disk icon on the from of the Mavica? It's there because the Mavica records on these:

Remember?

So this is a camera that makes floppy disk sounds whenever you take a picture, and we're probably only a few years away from that becoming ironically cool. Let's try to get ahead of the curve and see what this Mavica can do.

Sony Mavica MVC-FD5 c. 1997 CAD $700-800 1/4" 0.3 Megapixel CCD sensor 4.8mm f2 fixed-focus lens

Apple iPhone 4 c. 2010 CAD $659 1/3.2" 5 megapixel CMOS sensor 3.8mm f2.8 autofocus lens

Line Art

Cell Phone 

Mavica

Interior

Cell Phone

Mavica

Exterior

Cell Phone

Mavica

Purple.

Cell Phone

Mavica

Generic Cat Photo

Cell Phone

Mavica

The Mavica images were saved as "HI" JPEG images at the camera's "FRAME" setting; the cell phone images are straight out-of-camera JPEGs with the Auto HDR mode turned off.

Conclusion? The Mavica MVC-FD5 is awful. Just super bad.

Winner: Cell Phone