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Summary: The best digital with the best features.
Review: I studied every camera out there and found this camera has the best features for me. This camera has a built in cd burner which allows you to store a ton of pictures and movies. The CD's are inexpensive to buy and easy to share, save and store. The quality is excellent.
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Summary: Man what a camera!
Review: I've used this camera over the past seven months and I become more impressed with it the more I use it. The expanse of capabilities and options with the camera allows for taking excellent pictures under nearly any conditions. The manual as well as the shutter and aperature priority imaging modes allow you complete control over the imaging process. I've taken pictures of everything including northern lights at 2 a.m., my cats in near complete darkness, portrait shots of subjects in dark rooms standing in front of bright windows, and they've all turned out wonderfully. For printing, I've used both my home printer, and a professional photo store, and prints up to 10x12 have turned out perfectly with no degredation at all. Several recommendations if you buy this camera. Don't waste your money on Sony's cd-r disks. I've used verbatim, memorex and k-hypermedia cd-r with no problem. They're certainly much cheaper, and they all hold 185 MB while the Sony's only hold 156 MB. I would also suggest that you buy the Sony external flash for the camera. While the hot shoe will accept other brands of flash, I've been very impressed with the improvements to my pictures since buying the sony flash. I would also recommend buying a small (3-6") expandable tripod that will fit in any case. This allows you to set up longer exposure shots for dark environments, as well as for using the timer function on less than ideal surfaces. If you're looking for huge storage (and archive) capabilities, excellent images, and complete control over your picture taking (minues the zoom limitations), then this is certainly the camera for you. Everyday I think it is worth the price I've paid, and with a new baby in the house, being able to take several hundred pictures in the first few days and email the "best-of" off to the grandparents is certainly a plus.
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Summary: Got mine 3 days ago!
Review: It is simply a marvel of technology and represents good value for money considering that it comes complete with a superb long-lasting Lithium-ion battery pack, International 110-240V 50/60Hz charger as standard for when you're travelling (you still have to buy adaptors to fit the sockets in other countries), and 156MB+ storage capacity on the CD-R/ CD-RW for about [price]. The camera and its' extensive features are easy to use after only a few hours of ownership. Slip the 3"CD-R or CD-RW into most CD-ROM drives and immediately access your photos in Windows Explorer without the aggravation of cables and card readers. The only blemish is the meagre 3X optical zoom. For anybody in Europe where this camera sells for about [price] before adding 15 to 20% sales taxes to give an average retail price of about [price] , this camera is an especially great buy. But the Sony is BIG! OK, it can't be any smaller than the 3" CDs it uses for storage. But somewhere in Sony's system of R&D, having established that they had a superb product concept, nobody then passed on the design to the Sony boffins who specialize in miniaturizing everything. The result is simply that you have a great camera but which is simply GIGANTIC compared to anything else out there! I should have spent more and bought a Fuji Finepix S602 with a 1GB IBM microdrive. Anybody want to swap?
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Summary: Great Camera to travel with
Review: Let me first start of by saying that this camera is probably not for everyone. I'll start of by describing its short coming, all of which I think is something that is expected. Firstly, its bulky. Not big, maybe the size of a 35MM not as heavy though, but definitely much bigger than your average Digital camera. This of course is due to the fact that it uses CD as storage device. Sony did a nice job of putting a hand grip on the right side of the Camera that fit nicely in my hand. But I think that perhaps left-handers and people with smaller hand might not feel as comfortable with this camera. I would recommend going to a local store and try it out before buying it online. Secondly, since it uses CD as storage, there will be lag time in disc access. Reading from disc or reviewing images are slow (very slow). And definitely for me the worst part of this camera. Taking pictures at regular interval (2-3 sec between shot) is ok since the camera stores the pictures into a memory buffer first before writing onto the disc. But you will have problem if you want to take lots of shots on fast moving object. The camera provides a mode for 3 burst shot or a multi burst mode for up to 16 shots (stored in 1 picture) but its not very good, you are probably better off with another camera. But again, this is something I was expecting from this camera. Now to the good part. Of course the CD storage is great. The main reason I brought this camera is because I went on a 2 weeks vacation and didn't want to carry lab top around to off load my pictures. The CD storage are cheap, and allows me to take highest quality pictures at all times. I recomend using Memorex 210MB pocket CD-R for this (stores about 96 pic on highest quality). Much better than sony mavica standard CDR, and cheaper too. Furthermore, the CDR makes filing away pictures much easier. You don't have to store it onto a harddrive or burn the image afterward onto CDRs. Its probably would be convinence to be able to come back and look at the pictures 2-3 years from now. Another important thing is that the camera just simply takes great pictures. The pictures come out real nice, and with its autofocus feature its almost impossible to shot out of focus pictures, unless of course you use the manual setting. You can add effect to the pictures (solarize, BW, Sepia, Negative Art) and also adjust the white balance...the usual stuff. And the Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar lens works real well. Sony probably realizes that the Camera is bulky and thus they actually put alot of features into the device (at least the 4 megapixels version) comparing to their other 4 megapixels camera DSC-P9. You can adjust the camera to Manual that allow you to adjust various stuff like Shutter speed, Aperture, exposure shift. Overall this, and the image quality, is the biggest different between the 2 megapixel and the 4 megapixel Mavica. The camera has a movie mode which record the movie (with voice)onto the disc in mpg format. On an empty disc this its about 5 min recording time on best quality and 90 min on lowest quality. Its no substitution for camcorder though because zoom doesn't work under this mode. But its a nice little feature nontheless. Note that lots of Digital camera has this feature, but not all of them allow you to record movie up to the maximum capacity of the media. Many digital camera limits you to a certain fixed time (usually less than 1 min) of recording time. Battery life is decent. The camera display the exact battery life remaining in minutes. It definitely is enough for normal operation for 1 day, before its nightly recharged. The recharging doesn't take too long, 1-2 hours. You can buy a backup battery/charger if you takes lots of pictures. Overall I really recommend this camera for people who like to take pictures. Its not your typical digital camera so it definitely is not for everyone and you should be cautious when buying it. Go to a store try it out first. But I do tell you this, if you are thinking about buying the MVC-CD250 vs. MVC-CD400...go with the 400. Its more expensive, but its a much bigger bang for the buck.
Rating:
Summary: Great for making Movie Maker Videos
Review: Not only does it take awesome photos but this camera is great for short MPEG movies. I copy them right off the CD to my hard drive and then import into Windows Movie Maker for editing. The movies have better quality than my TRV27 Sony Camcorder.
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Summary: Finally, a good way to save my pictures.
Review: One of my greatest problems with digital cameras was that I wasn't good about saving copies on removable media. This camera starts by burning my picture to a mini-cd and I love it. It is as feature rich and quick as my other Sony camera. It's buffer is large enough that I've never felt a slow down in my picture speed. Just a great camera.
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Summary: MVC-CD400: How to take a darn good idea and make it better!
Review: The MVC-CD400 is a new model of Sony's established mini-CD burning cameras, along with the MVC-CD250, replacing the CD200 and CD300 models. So why would Sony need to upgrade anything you ask? I was actually asking myself the same thing at first. I was getting ready to drop down the money for a CD300 model when I heard a new design was coming out, so I started doing some research. I found that Sony has done a nice job of directly addressing many of the failings of the CD300/CD200 units, and added some especially nice touches to boot! The most noticeable change up front is that the built-in flash unit has moved from the upper left side of the unit to right over the barrel. This helps with avoiding shadow effects when taking up-close shots. Additionally, they have addressed the single most commented-upon flaw of the 200/300 series: Viewing the LCD screen in bright sunlit conditions. They have added a clear 'strip' along the top of the LCD panel that allows ambient light to help back-light the LCD screen, and the results are frankly good, making the LCD significant more usable in all lighting conditions without having to buy the 'viewfinder attachment' that Sony sells for the Mavica CD model cameras. The third significant change is the addition of a standard flash adapter, allowing one to use external flash units with this camera for better lighting when needed. It is important to note - apparently it is critical to make sure you use a normal low voltage external flash instead of a studio-quality high-voltage unit, as this may damage the camera! Like it's previous generation brothers, the CD400 includes a Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar lens for high quality (professional?) photography without the distortions you may sometimes find in the 'corners' of shots taken through some lower quality digital cameras. It also upgrades the CCD from 3.3 megapixels to 4.0 or so, which means even more detail can be captured for folks who are interested in capturing everything possible. The other unique addition is Sony's Hologram AF system, which uses a laser emitting diode to put a crosshatch pattern on your target prior to snapping the shot, letting the autofocus get better accuracy when dealing with situations that sometimes confuse traditional autofocus routines. Sony's batteries also are decent, giving a typical user 2+ hours of uninterrupted shooting before needing replacement, and then recharging in ~45 minutes. And of course the mail selling feature for most folks, myself included - the photos are saved on mini-CDs, rather than one of the various memory stick/card units. Mini-CDs are dirt cheap per MB compared to memory sticks, and typically store ~150-200MB worth of photos, depending on make. Sony of course recommends you use only their branded disks, but many folks are reporting no problems using other manufactured brands. Depending on CD used, this translates into ~10 photos at the absolute maximum resolution (2272x1704 in TIFF format) and quality through ~1300+ photos at 640x480 at standard quality (JPG). As an added feature, you can record movies with audio with the camera also, though the image and sound quality are not comparable with a digital video camera so if video is your passion, go look for a video camera, not a digital still camera. Otherwise, this is a nice little bonus. I had resisted the urge to purchase a digital camera for a long time, waiting both for the photo quality to start approaching that which could be found with 35mm cameras, and for the means to get the pictures into a usable format on the PC to become cheaper or easier. Mini-CDs work in nearly all modern CD drives on computers, and I have not run across one yet that failed to work, though I admittedly tend to have relatively modern equipment at home and work. (Nothing older than ~3 years old at least in terms of CD drives.) The MVC-CD400 is an answer to every criticism I've had about digital cameras for the last few years. I'm enjoying mine greatly!
Rating:
Summary: what a great gift
Review: This camera was a gift. I don't know much about digital cameras except that whenever I have used one, the pictures always seem very grainy. I never understood why people would use them over regular cameras, except for the online uses. Having said all that, I must now admit that I love this camera. The picture quality is excellent, and I love being able to see my pictures on the computer and choosing which ones I want on paper. My only complaint (minor) is the view screen. When you are outside, it is difficult to see what you are aiming for.
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Summary: For those who are not computer or camera savy!
Review: This is a great camera. With the CD in the camera all you have to do is take it out and pop it into the computer. No hooking up a docking station, no buying memory sticks that are tiny and easy to loose. I can use this camera and download to our computer with no help from my husband.
I am an avid scrapbooker and I have found that this camera has saved a fortune in developing pictures that I would have never used anyway. I love being able to decide weather or not I like the shot right away. No getting home from a Disney vacation and finding out everyone had their eyes closed in the great shot with Mickey. You can take several shots quickly and delete the ones that you don't like right there, and on to the next attraction. No more spending $16 to get double prints and a CD. You can take well over 100 pictures and decide from the camera what you like. Plus you have everything saved on a CD already. You can then take it to a developer and have what you want printed, or upload to Shutterfly and never have to worry about going back to the store for pick up.
This is the perfect camera for those of us who have wanted an upgraded camera with all the bells and whistles and could not, and didn't want to spend hours learding how to work everything. A quick read through the book and you are ready to go.
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Summary: love this camera
Review: This is the best digital camera I have ever used. I have even bought a spare camera (MVC-CD400 it is sitting quietly in its box) just incase I where to ever break it beyond repair ;) Ya its that Sweet!!! Brandon
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