the floppy disk camera !!

it's here!!!




photos are of a non-functioning camera, taken with the identical functioning unit that arrived today

the sony digital mavica model MVC-FD91!

mostly, when you hear about a sony floppy disk camera, they're talking about a much different model that looks mostly flat, as if it were just a floppy drive with a little lens stuck on the front. but this here is a whole different beast! a 14x optical zoom barrel lens and a sort of viewfinder-style body, with both a digital viewfinder and an articulating LCD screen!

its 0.8 megapixel sensor renders file sizes between 58kb-86kb, making it good for ~20 images (assuming 70kb as an average size) on a 1.44mb floppy disk. nowadays, that seems like such a small amount- you'd have to be lugging around a lot of floppies if you want more than a handful of pictures! but you have to remember that just a few years before these cameras released, your best alternative was a single-use roll of 36-frame photo film.

imagine the value proposition there! with this camera and a pack of floppy disks, you could skip the lab development and get your photos straight to the computer, and straight to the internet! not to mention that floppies are infinitely reusable, unlike film!

unfortunately for the digital mavica line, we all know how this story goes. what would have made an amazing product just ten years prior quickly became utterly obsolete with the advent of compact removable flash storage, and the ubiquity of the USB protocol.

now, these cameras are aging, and becoming harder to find in working order.

this unique relic of digital history tells an absolutely fascinating tale, where one product with such a genius concept has become so uniquely obsolete that it's hard to even argue the point in preserving it.

fortunately for it, i love obsolete tech. and that's why i'm going to give this camera the life it deserves: a life of taking photos for as long as it still lives!

BONUS: a picture of the old workstation i'm using for my retro-inspired setup i showed in my last blogpost <3