Rating: 
Summary: What a great camera
Review: The Mavica CD500 was a replacement for a Mavica FD-75. I am very happy I made this purchase. The picture quality is much better. The camera is easy to use, although it has a ton of features my previous Mavica didn't have and its giong to take a little while to figure out how to use them all in different settings. The 3 inch CDs are easy to find, I paid 21 bucks for a 50 pack. The USB cable supplied is excellent, couldnt have been easier to transfer pictures to windows XP. The reviewer that said they couldn't load a driver for windows XP, well if they would read the manual, windows XP doesnt need a driver, just plug it in and go. Also included is a cable to plug into your TV, and you can view your pictures on a TV. I wish I had this camera a few months ago at a wedding, would have been nice to put all the pictures on TV later at a relatives home for everyone to see. overall this camera is excellent, the mini-CDs are easy to find, and inexpensive. And after searching the internet, I decided Amazon had one of the best prices for this camera, and free shipping. I ordered on a thursday and had it the next wednesday. I was taking pictures about 10 minutes after opening the box. You can't go wrong with this camera, especially if you have previous Mavica experience.
Rating: 
Summary: camera
Review: the picture quality is excellent. Focus and view finder options are excellent.
The only thing that is limiting, is a slow recording and disk access time. This is not an action camera and not for shooting pictures of something in a sequence. Great for brochures and gives you the ability to take a picture, crop it on your computer and still have enough quality to blow it up again.
Rating:
Summary: camera
Review: the picture quality is excellent. Focus and view finder options are excellent.
The only thing that is limiting, is a slow recording and disk access time. This is not an action camera and not for shooting pictures of something in a sequence. Great for brochures and gives you the ability to take a picture, crop it on your computer and still have enough quality to blow it up again.
Rating:
Summary: Superb Image Clarity and Convenience
Review: The Sony Mavica CD500 is a fine digital camera. I've enjoyed using it very much. Once you learn the controls, you can almost effortlessly take great photos. On many occasions people have remarked how clear the photos are. The high quality Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar glass lens and 5.0 megapixel resolution see to that! The camera is smart enough to adjust itself for most lighting situations. If you must, you can manually set the camera to get the effect you want. The large, bright, clear color LCD screen on the back of the camera works very well - it seems to be "what you see is what you get". There is no problem viewing the image in bright daylight. Besides the high resolution and fine lens, the BIG selling point for me was the built in 3-inch CD drive. Being able to store approximately 50 snaphots at the highest resolution setting is just fantastic. No more film to buy or have processed. I bought a 5-pack of 210MB CD-RW disks for $10. Compare that to the expensive, low capacity memory sticks that other digital cameras require and it's a no brainer. Once the CD is full, I connect the Mavica to my Macintosh with the USB cable, download the pictures into iPhoto and that's all there is to it. Then I use the format function of the camera to erase the CD-RW and I'm ready to use the same CD thousands of times! I love the feel of the camera as it simply oozes quality. It doesn't fit in your shirt pocket, but since it's packed with so many features that's okay by me. I bought it here at Amazon and got it at a great price. I would like the Mavica CD500 even better if it had a 10X optical zoom rather than just a 3X. But even with a 3X zoom I can get outstanding results. I've had the camera for over a month now and I'm still pleased with this purchase.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Pictures, But Really Slow
Review: This camera is excellent. I use this camera to take pictures for my school's yearbook and it's made my job 10 time easier. The pictures are incredible. It's very easy to use, you can just point and shoot. I've been fiddling with the different focus and lighting settings, and i have snapped some simply amazing shots. The disc makes it easy to tranfer your pictures. All i have to do is pop it in my cdrom drive then copy and paste. The disc gets filled up fast, especially when "deleting" pictures, so buy alot of them. Movie mode shoots in the mpeg format and is pretty good quality, but use a camcorder if movies are all you plan to do.
The only problems I found would be the 3x zoom (it should be 6x at least) and the slow write speed to the disc after taking the pictures. **Also use CD-RWs, because once you finalize that CD-R, your stuck with what's on it.**
Rating:
Summary: Great Camera, Great Media.
Review: This camera is great. This camera is loaded with features that can make even a novice look like they know what they are doing. If you are new to photgraphy, the auto settings make taking quality photos easy. If you are already an expert, the many adjustable settings allow for needed tweaking for special effects and different environmental conditions. The camera uses pocket CD-R/CD-RW's which are the three inch version of a tyical CD. With a little effort one can find these CD's for very low prices at stores that carry computer products. The pocket CD's work in almost every PC with a CD-ROM drive and are handy to pass around between friends. For the cost of other types of digital media it is possible to buy hundreds of pocket CD'S. Overall, this camera spans the gap between novice and expert, new guy to old pro, and makes photography fun again. No waiting for prints and no need to sit around wondering if your shot turned out like you had hoped. Instant gratification, who could ask for more?
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Value; Highly Recommended!
Review: This excellent camera takes terrific photos. With Windows XP & USB 2.0, I was taking photos and viewing them on my PC within minutes of opening the box, although I see that some of the more advanced features will take me a while to master. I chose this particular camera for 3 reasons; my previous experience with a Sony Mavica, the 5MP quality and the mini-CD. I frequently wish to access the images on my PC after taking only a very few photos, so I quickly learned that "finalizing" the CD-RW each time before inserting it into the PC is impractical (I was unaware of this step prior to purchase, but it is necessary for the PC's CD drive to read it). Not to worry! Using the USB cable, (no drivers required for Windows XP/USB 2.0) the images are accessible immediately, so you can wait until the CD is full & finalize just once. Of course, you would want to wait until a CD-R was full before finalizing it anyway. Amazon's product description of the camera's features is excellent, so I don't need to restate them all here. I am pleased with my purchase of this camera and recommend it highly to others.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Mac-friendly, Too Complicated
Review: Very complicated, not a entry level camera. You need to have prior digital photography experience to master this one. The manual is over 125 pages long! The mini-cds, which are a major feature of the camera can't be used in a Macintosh CD drive although you still need to finalize the images to mini-disk before you can download them via USB cable to your computer. There's only OSX support so, if you're still using OS9, you're out of luck.
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