Sony Mavica FD-91 Review: 4. Operation: Digital Photography Review

Playback controls / Menu

In playback mode the display and switching of images is limited only by the speed of a floppy disk drive (in this case it's a 2 x speed drive - about 5 seconds between images), if you're accessing the last image you took, it appears instantly.

You can also view an "index" of images which appears quite quickly and can show six thumbnails at a time.

Playback menu	Sub menu
Clock Set	Y/M/D M/D/Y D/M/Y dd mm yyyy hh : mm Enter Cancel
Beep	On Off
Disk Tool	Format Diskcopy Cancel
Delete	Ok Cancel
Copy	Ok (then asks for new disk) Cancel
Protect	All Select Cancel

Record Controls / Menu

Initial selection of record mode is either Still or Movie, Still mode is traditional digicam capture, MPEG allows the capture of an MPEG movie for as long as you hold down the shutter release (and there's spare disk capacitiy).

Image size, quality, record mode and EV adjustment are all selectable from the on screen LCD menu (see below). Spot metering can be activated by pressing a butting just below the viewfinder on the back.

The remaining record controls are on the left hand side of the barrel:

Control	Function
White Balance	Manual adjust (by first putting the camera in manual white balance mode, then pressing the \o/ white balance button it then automatically adjusts the white balance of the composition) Daylight Incandescent Auto
Program	Aperture priority (adjust with +/- buttons): F1.8, F2, F2.8, F3.4, F4, F4.8, F5.6, F6.7, F8, F9.5, F11 Shutter priority (adjust with +/- buttons): 1/60s, 1/80s, 1/100s, 1/125s, 1/180s, 1/250s, 1/350s, 1/500s, 1/750s, 1/1000s, 1/1500s, 1/2000s, 1/3000s, 1/4000s Night time mode Auto
Steady Shot	On Off
Focus	Auto Manual

The other controls available through the record menu are:

Record menu	Sub menu
Clock Set	Y/M/D M/D/Y D/M/Y dd mm yyyy hh : mm Enter Cancel
Beep	On Off
Disk Tool	Format Diskcopy Cancel
File Number	Series (running number) Normal (start at 1 for each disk)
Flash Level	High Normal Low
Image Size	1024 x 768 640 x 480
Quality	Fine Standard
Rec Mode	Bitmap (uncompressed 640 x 480) Voice E-Mail Normal

Movie Mode

Movie mode allows you to record MPEG format movies (including sound) directly to the floppy disk. At 160 x 112 you can get 60 seconds of MPEG on a floppy, at 320 x 240 you can get about 15 seconds.

Controls available from the movie mode menu are:

Movie menu	Sub menu
Clock Set	Y/M/D M/D/Y D/M/Y dd mm yyyy hh : mm Enter Cancel
Beep	On Off
Disk Tool	Format Diskcopy Cancel
File Number	Series (running number) Normal (start at 1 for each disk)
Image Size	320 x 240 160 x 112

Timing / File Sizes

Switching the camera on from cold it's ready to take a photograph in only 3 seconds, switching from OFF to play mode takes about 5 seconds and moving between images (using the + / - buttons) takes around 5 seconds (in FINE mode), thumbnail mode is very quick.

Pre-focusing the camera takes between 1 and 5 seconds depending on how hard it is to focus, shutter lag is below 0.2 seconds and cycle time until it's ready to take another shot depends on the selected image quality (see table below).

Once nice feature of this camera is that it keeps the still of the last image you took on the LCD as long as you hold down the shutter release button, very useful for post-shot examination.

Timing Criteria	Avg. time
OFF to Record	3s
Pre-focus	1s - 5s
Shutter lag	< 0.2s
Lag without pre-focus	1 s -2.2s
Store 1024 x 768 FINE image	5s
Store 1024 x 768 STANDARD image	4s
Store 640 x 480 FINE image	4s
Store 640 x 480 STANDARD image	3s
Store 640 x 480 BITMAP (uncompressed) image	14s
OFF to Playback (first image visible)	5s
Playback image to image (+ / -)	5s

File sizes for different image formats are shown in the table below:

Image type	File size	No. on a 1.44MB disk
1024 x 768 FINE JPEG	95-160Kb	7-9
1024 x 768 STANDARD JPEG	40-95Kb	9-15
640 x 480 FINE JPEG	35-71Kb	15-20
640 x 480 STANDARD JPEG	13-37Kb	22-40
640 x 480 BITMAP uncompressed	1.3Mb	1

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