Sony Japan announce the new 1.3 Megapixel Mavicas: Digital Photography Review

From:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/9904/99042601moremavica.asp

Sony Japan announce the new 1.3 Megapixel Mavicas

Back on the 3rd of March I reported on Sonys new line of floppy-disk-storage Mavicas.

Image courtesy of PC Watch

PC Watch report that they will be on sale on 20th May 1999 in Japan.

The MVC-FD88 features a 1.3 megapixel CCD (1280 x 960) and a 16x (yikes!) optical zoom.

The MVC-FD83 features a 850K pixel CCD which is internally interpolated up to 1216 x 912 and a 3x optical plus 2x digital zoom.

The MVC-FD73K features a 350K pixel CCD (640 x 480) with a 10x optical zoom.

From the original US announcement: The MVC-FD88 and MVC-FD83 will be available in June 1999 for $999 (MSRP) and $799 (MSRP), respectively. The MVC-FD73 will be available in May for $599 (MSRP); the MVC-FD91 is available now for $1099 (MSRP).

Links:

Original article back on March 3rd
Original US PR Newswire article
Sony Japan announcement
PC Watch article

Phils personal comments (the same I made back in March):

I hate to say this (and at the risk of being flamed by Mavicans) but "WHY?", why introduce a 1.3 megapixel CCD into a floppy disk range which has been superceded time after time by other cameras, Sony themselves have "admitted" that floppy is a poor media for digital photography by launching the D700 with PCMCIA (and MemoryStick) and their new 2 Megapixe F55K with MemoryStick... And if you must introduce new "mechanical storage" models why not go for 2.88, MD, Clik! or 120Mb floppy???

We had enough trouble fitting an XGA image of any kind of quality onto a floppy, how are we suppose to get quality 1280 x 960 images on there? Sigh.. enough of my ranting and raving.