[July 2022] I recently found one of these old Sony Mavica cameras on ebay, an MVC-FD88. I was intrigued because it records (both still images and short video clips) directly onto floppy disks and I'd never come across one of these before.

The MVC-FD88 was sold as "untested", but fortunately, after buying a battery for it and a charger, it seems to be more or less working. I am having a problem with reliability though which I think (and hope) it due (only) to the old floppy disks I'm using but perhaps the floppy drive needs servicing. Occasionally the camera will encounter a problem with a disk but it is always hit or miss as to whether my computer will successfully read the files. I make a point of first formatting each disk in the camera. The reliability provides a similar experience to using a film camera where you don't know the success until you have the film developed.

Resolutions:
JPG up to 1280x960 (1.3MP)
MPG up to 15 seconds at 160x112 or 320x240, 25fps.

All photos on this page are unedited unless otherwise stated (click for full view).

UPDATE: I have since found another Mavica going cheap on ebay, again "untested" but it includes a Mavica bag. This model is the MVC-FD87 which appears to be more basic, lacking the video option. It seems that the floppy drive in this one is functioning more reliably so I'm wondering if I can either service the other one, or swap them.

One thing I did discover while researching this latest camera is there is/was a MSC-FD2M/FD2MA 'dummy floppy' adapter for Memory Stick cards that could be used; I will keep an eye open for one of these, although I am sure they would still rely on the camera to have a fully functioning floppy drive to operate, but I hope it might be a more reliable and practical solution to carrying a box of floppy disks around on a trip!

18/08/22: Here are three pictures of Bangor Cathedral. The first shot I had to edit to make it portrait.
I have come to realise these cameras have quite a narrow field of view, so when taking pictures of buildings it is easy to find yourself too close.
In this case, outside the building I felt too close in the grounds. Outside the fence for the third shot meant the fence was in the shot,
and also there were shops in the background and the colours there were distracting so I edited the picture to make it greyscale.
 

05/08/22: Here are a couple of pictures I took of the moon.
The first one, where the moon is too bright reveals a lot of 'noise' in the dark sky.
The second one is better and you can almost make out details on the moon's surface!
Both of these have been cropped.
 

26-27/07/22: A sheep taken at a distance and a flower in bloom using the macro mode.
 

The above gifs were created from the original MPG files using Free Video to Gif Converter. For some reason the download from Softonic is called 'file' with no extension; you need to add .exe to run.

There are numerous such converters available but I found most to not be free, or are just a trial. This one is basic but the only downside I found for this application is it doesn't have a 25fps option, so there will be a 5fps discrepancy.
 

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