Subject:
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Floppies are cool! (was: Re: Finding a useful digital camera)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.publish
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Date:
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Mon, 17 Apr 2000 05:25:43 GMT
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In lugnet.publish, Matthew Miller writes:
> [...]
> The ones that use floppies are bad --
I use a camera that uses floppies (Sony Mavica FD-91), and I'm quite happy
with it! Its resolution is only 1024x768, but that's already twice the
vertical and horizontal resolution that I really need for almost anything
web-related I've done so far.
All of the photos on these pages were taken with a floppy-based Mavica:
http://www.baseplate.com/mavica/
(various sizes, scaled down from 1024x768 & 640x480)
http://www.lugnet.com/temp/boo-boo/
(640x480 & 1024x768, with clickable thumbnails)
http://www.fibblesnork.com/lego/dinotron/
(various sizes, scaled down from 1024x768)
YMMV, but I think it's pretty awesome that floppies can go into just about
any PC or Mac and "just work." I've even taken pictures of people and given
them the "film" (i.e., the floppy) to take home and view on their own home
computer, knowing it will "just work." :)
I would never recommend a floppy-disk-based digital camera for professional
work, but I think it's a bit misleading to say that they're "bad." The
compression isn't mandatory either -- there's a native uncompressed mode which
fits one 640x480x24-bit photo per floppy. Plus it can take a one minute(!)
long 160x100 MPEG with sound and store that on a floppy. In a way, it's
really incredible technology.
My advice (not that it was asked for, but someone pressed a hot button :)
is to bring LEGO with you to the camera store and try it out before you buy
it. Better yet, find a friend who had a digital camera they really like and
see if you can borrow it for a few hours on a sunny day.
> floppies don't hold much, so they have to use really severe compression.
If you're publishing for the web, you'll probably end up converting the images
to JPEGs anyway. (Something to consider.)
But IMHO, far more important than compression or resolution is the quality of
the lighting situation when the photo is taken -- good lighting makes all the
difference in the world in digital photography! The proof is in the pudding,
as they say! Try before you buy! :-)
--Todd
p.s. I think floppy-based cameras will be a total nuisance 2 years from now,
but if they can make a super-disk or Zip-disk camera, then heck -- I'd be
thrilled to be able to store 111 uncompressed 1024x768x24-bit images on an
inexpensive 250 MB Zip disk that would be readable almost anywhere without
special software or cables.
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Message has 2 Replies:
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Finding a useful digital camera
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| (...) I really like the Nikon Coolpix 950, but that's a bit out of that price range. Some important features are: a good macro mode for taking close-ups, a good lcd screen for composing setups without having to peer through a viewfinder, and perhaps (...) (25 years ago, 16-Apr-00, to lugnet.publish)
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