And they were all incredibly bad! I've never seen such expensive toys in my life! I read some good stuff about Sony cameras (and saw some pretty good examples) on dpreview.com, so I went to my local photo shop and asked if I could test some. Told them I wanted to buy the mavica fd-85 if it's as good as I've seen. Well, just meant as a sort of subsitute for polaroid shooting/as backup to normal stuff. Well, my dissapointment is just beyond belief. The camera goes at $600 (normal price is $800). Let me just make a small list of things that have amazed me sofar: - No way to shoot in low light conditions. It's either incredibly underexposed or it turns out to be a blurred picture with lots of noise. - LCD display is far too unsharp to check the focussing - Battery (pack) only lasts around one or two hours. Not even an hour in heavy shooting. - The shutter sucks. You need to press it so hard that there's NO way too hold the camera still - The camera is far too light, which makes it shake as much as your hand or the wind or as hard as you push the shutter. So no stability. - There IS no focussing. Well, there is, but it's so slow that when you move your camera it never has enough time to focus at all. - The IS no sharpness. Period. A $800 camera that can't make one sharp photo. - Exposure compensation is crap. Doesn't work...doesn't have any effect. - Zooming is crap too. It's not real zooming. Fake....not optical anyway. - Lens is crap. It's not 2.8, like it says. A 2.8 is fast, and a 2.8 can see something in the dark. It's something like f8. - Metering is a joke. It's as good as my $40 webcam. It can't handle bright objects in dark areas, etc. - Flash is a bloody flood light. Everything turns white and looses color. No way to use flash in a good way. - Features are a waste of time and money. Shooting in B&W, Speia, Negative and Solarized is just really sad.... White balance is crap, Sharpness is crap, - It's very poorly constructed. I can buy a Nikon F60 including two Nikkor lenses for $800. Plastics aren't a solid base to make a camera body. - Lens is featured at the (if you're looking at the camera) right side of the camera. So that's not very good....even twin lens medium format cameras with parrallax work better. I just shot some test photos, but they are so bad that I'm ashamed to actually post them here. Now, I only took this one home (only tested the others in town), so I hope they do refund me, lol ;) Well, here they are...

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You have the best list of negatives that I have read. Many of your comments are very true, some are camera specific. Keep testing a few more units. Since I use a Nikon 880 and have for a year. I have gotten some very good photos and have learned a lot about the genre. I have controls to modify many of your objections. They are there but hard to learn and use. I believe the crossover to digital is a few models in the future. When the engineers go talk to the real photographers about using a camera they will give us some decent units to choose from.

I've seen some beautiful results from digitals on this forum, so I know it can be done. Beautiful enough to cause me to start to think about shopping for one. Thank you for your list. I think I'll save my money at least for a while yet. [bill- Please do not blame the engineers entirely. At my place of work, by the time customer needs get discovered by the Marketing kids just out of school, translated into a laundry list of features (that must be longer than the competition's), and negotiated by Management into a totally unrealistic schedule, engineers have very little ability to focus on what may be really important. And, I haven't even mentioned the industrial design and manual writers. Yes, there is poor engineering. But in modern product development the blame has to be shared among more folks.]

Rork, did you give any Fuji's a try? (God, Mike's on his Hobby Horse again.....lol) Seriously, I think companies like Sony have tried to add features that Joe Public might want (sepia effects etc) instead of focussing (ngh!) on what a camera SHOULD do. Give a 4900z (or better a 6900z, though they're the same features) and see what you think. Oh, and yes, it will be some time before they are as good as manualy, even I admit it. (God help me when Stynky reads that) (",)

If you want quality, particularly for prints, the best way to go, IMHO, is still analogue with a good quality film scanner. I moved to a digital camera largely because of it's convenience in my current condition.

I put together this comparison in case anyone finds it useful. They are all crops from much larger images, that I will gladly post if anyone wants me to. The leftmost image is digital and is taken from the raw TIFF output from my Nikon 990. The middle one is the same image with Photoshop unsharp mask applied at 100% with a 1 pixel resolution and 0 threshold. The rightmost image is scanned using a Nikon Coolscan 3 from a negative I took about 12 years ago. The only pre and post processing in this is a slight tonal shift to try and improve the comparison in terms of overall brightness. The originals were both taken at about the same time of year with overcast but fairly bright conditions.

Mike

LOL Alpha, very true ... you going to buy the 'Ferarri' for him ? :)

Ok, my comment to this got lost in Neverland! What I said was that some of those problems you've listed are due to that particular camera itself. Sony Mavica's were on my list of possible camera to buy, but I was not impressed with them. One thing I found was the design to be uncomfortable and awkward. I'm very happy with the results I've gotten from my digital and impressed with what I've seen from others digis here on this group. The cameras Alpha mentioned are not toys, they're the real thing. That's why they're $3000+.

Fred, great lovers don't need big cars...... ;-) (",) btw, I drive a SMALL car.......rofl

One more and then I'll shut up :) This record shot was taken for my mother using the Nikon 990. It was taken indoors with natural lighting and the camera in full auto mode. The original was a little 'flat' so I've processed it using Photoshop Auto levels option.

Mike

Hey guys, if I ever fork out $8,000 for a D1x body you can officially declare me insane. Oh, it's an awesome camera, but it just misses some (to me) important things that I can find on my F4. Maybe the body that will follow up to the x will indeed have those things...actually I'm certain it'll have those, but for now I have to spend the most on lenses. I've been looking around at some stuff like the 40-400 ED VR Nikkor and the 80-200 ED Nikkor and the 50-500 Sigma, to have one high quality zoom for certain occasions. The VR is around 2.5 times what the mavica costs, the Sigma and 80-200 Nikkor are only less than twice the cost. That is what strikes me the most. But the little digitals were meant as sort of back up / polaroid subsitute cameras, to check some stuff before making a real shot. But that means that the lcd display has the be good enough to be able to judge some stuff. And they aren't. Btw Alpha, I think the Fuji S1 is very overrated. I had a go with it a few months ago, but it shocked me to see that the only big improvement over a D1(x) is the drive speed. Well, optically speaking it's all fine, but I didn't want to start a discussion about analogue vs digital. I started this because I was amazed to see that you can get $800 cameras that are absolute crap. Shame on you, Sony! But when buying a body that passes the $5,000 I think I'd go for medium format all together with perhaps Bronica or

My comment about "engineers" referes to all those involved in the "requirements" package. Actually involving users or customers in the process is realitively recent. (My BSME is 50 years old) When I get questions about buying digital cameras I always point out that a film scanner would be a good alternative for those who have an investment in equipment and experience with film. Particularly for medium to high end work above 8 x 10.

I've learned to work with my 880 very well.....It is mostly a time and convenience factor that I dont dig out my old camera. For me, I take photographs for skin, I do very well, I would like crisper images, I would like a lot of things......But It is very interesting to get this kind of feedback and see peoples responses. Testing is a great idea however. I used the review site as a guide for buying. At the time we dont have places around here that I know of, maybe Fred does that allows you to go in and physically test stock.

I have been shooting digital exclusively for a couple years now and I am very pleased with my results. I think that the problem is; you have not tested the right camera. I own a Mavica FD88 but I would not use it for finish work, it is good to test shoot with, but does not provide the quality a serious photographer would want. I now shoot with the Nikon D1 and although it has a few drawbacks, I am happy with it's performance. I have also seen excellent results from the Olympus E 10, and E 20.