I am looking for a digicam that uses 3.5 floppies for memory and download to PC. I need something that a minimum resolution of 1280x960. So far the only thing I've found is the Sony MVC-FD88, does anyone else make them??? Wanting to buy right away, please help...

-- Karen Morris (kmorris@payless.cashways.com), November 10, 1999

Answers

nope, no others. If you only want 1280 X 960 and bigger pics, I think you'll regret the choice of floppy storage.

-- benoit (foo@bar.com), November 10, 1999.

Karen,

To my knowledge, Sony is the only manufacturer of floppy disk cameras. My first digicam was a Sony MVC FD7 (yes, one number) which had a max res of only 640x480 stored under JPEG compression.

If the floppy disk storage is for convenience, you may consider the SmartMedia (SM) card digicams which have an available accessory FlashPath floppy drive adaptor. These can hold up to 16-32mB on a SM card which is as thin as a credit card, and the FlashPath adaptor is virtually the same dimensions as a floppy disk. They do require a TWAIN driver be installed for proper file access, I believe.

Bear in mind, the floppy disk Sony digicams cannot hold very many shots at their highest resolution, but are compatible with virtually any PC with a floppy disk drive and software that can open JPEG files.

Most other digicams use Compact Flash cards and can either download their pictures by parallel, serial, USB, CF card reader, or a PC card drive with a CF card adaptor, depending on the manufacturer. On a small note about CF card storage, CF card readers are getting very inexpensive and the throughput is much higher than floppy downloads, also the capacities of common CF cards can be upwards of 80mB and higher capacities. Compare this to the 1.44mB of a floppy disk.

I hope I have been of some help! (if not, I am truly sorry I wasted your time)

Good shopping!

David E. Scott :-) -----------------///--------------------

-- David E. Scott (des-dcompimaging@msn.com), November 10, 1999.

I echo benoit. The resolution from the sony's to floppy is far to low for any sort of serious work.

-- fred deaton (fdeaton@airnet.net), November 10, 1999.

Evidently Panasonic has a pretty cool camera which uses the SuperDisk as its storage media. (120 MB per disk). Sorry I haven't any links to this. Good luck

-- Jody Kind (jody@3rdm.net), November 11, 1999.

I've spoken with people i've seen using the various Sonys. they have been happy. The trade-off as noted often is convenience vs compression to use the floppies. With compression there will be problems printing to larger sizes. Information "lost" in compression can not be restored. Most likely anything over two shots to an 8.5 x 11 inch page size for all practical purposes will not be visually satisfying when critically compared to real photos. If you will be viewing almost exclusively over computer screens then the Sonys could be a very good selection because on screen resolution to look good is really quite low and well within the Sony capability.

-- Craig Gillette (cgillette@thegrid.net), November 12, 1999.

Yeah, floppies are fine for 640 X 480, but when you specify as Karen did "Minimum 1280 X 960", that doesn't mix well with floppies. :) You will get carpel tunnel from ejecting and replacing floppies as they quickly fill up.

-- benoit (foo@bar.com), November 12, 1999.