Digital Camera - Sony FD-7 Mavica

Personally I've used both the FD-5 (non-zoom) and the FD-7 Sony cameras and
the added features of the zoom and some other nice features make the price
difference well worth it.  I noticed that there is a newer version of each
camera that is supposed to take pictures and d/l to disk at twice the
speed.  That's a real plus, because there have been a few times I've been
stuck taking action shots and waiting for the disk.  

Overall the battery drain issue is almost a mute point with a decent
battery (lithium-ion), a spare battery, and a quick charger.   I love
taking a box of diskettes on vacation and then retrieving/archiving at my
leisure at home.  I still take the 35mm point/shoot type of camera and the
SLR for memorable family trip photos, but overall you can do a lot with
these newer versatile cameras.  I've noticed a few new(er) cameras are
coming out with memory cards that slide into diskette subcarriers.  That's
a great concept and that, but you still have memory and are somewhat tied
to a PC.   A diskette can go anywhere.   We have suppliers send in Sony
pics all the time -- it's quite a handy unit.

This discussion is ignoring the needs of the print media -- you'll need
mega-pixel cameras into much higher resolutions.   You can usually tell the
folks in the newspaper that got a new toy and quickly learned of the
shortcomings (640x480/72ppi) .   If you are doing some printing you'll
definitely need a little better camera, and those are seeing huge price
drops too.   

Six of one, half a dozen of the other -- I'd recommend the Sony camera in
the interim.  Ours has already paid for itself many times over.

Bradley Miller
Web manager - Accesszone.com

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