Sony MavicaCD400 Provides Versatility, Savings, and Great Pictures for Regular Folk and Professional Users

The Sony Mavica MVC-CD400 Digital Camera is the right choice in digital cameras for us for many reasons. I'll try to list as many as I can without verging on the length of War and Peace or the MVC-CD400 user manual . . .

In a nutshell, use the Sony Mavica MVC-CD400 Digital Camera as a point-and-shoot or choose from the manual functions available. This is a camera that offers the best of both worlds plus CD (CD-R or CD-R/W) storage and an amazing amount of bells and whistles to delight, amaze and intrigue you . . . as well as make for excellent pictures.


The Sony Mavica MVC-CD400 Digital Camera "Standard Features" from a Non-Technical User's View Finder

The Sony Mavica MVC-CD400 Digital Camera offers, for me, ease of use, easy to understand/use functions, both automatic and manual operation (point-and-shoot or full-spectrum manual exposure), ability to record MPEG movies (low resolution/choppy, and only 30-45 second bursts, but available in a pinch) and a list of functions I'll find useful and fun for a long, long time.

Having owned and operated 35 mm SLR cameras (both Pentax and Canon models) for more than 15 years and more recently gone the route of a pocket-size 35 mm point-and-shoot with a decent zoom, I find the Sony Mavica MVC-CD400 Digital Camera an excellent replacement for any and all of these.

Being the size of a standard 35mm SLR camera, the Sony Mavica MVC-CD400 Digital Camera is surprisingly light weight and offers an optional "Intelligent Flash", adequate for our needs. This flash is an adjustable 3-Mode Intelligent Pop-up Flash w/TTL Pre-flash metering (as noted on the website), and with optional use of red-eye reduction. With flash settings of "normal", "low" and "high", I have not found the need to change from "normal" mode for any reason. With a quick press of a toggle disk on the back of the camera, I can choose to shut of the flash when I know I can capture my shot with the available light and not have blinding glares in windows or mirrors resulting in a ruined picture.

I have used the flash to enhance subjects at a distance of more than 50 feet with pleasing results. I never could do that with any of my 35mm cameras at such a distance and even at closer range without producing a darkened background and a bright foreground that often did not include all of the desired subject.

If the "on-board" flash isn't enough, the Sony Mavica MVC-CD400 Digital Camera can be paired with a separate flash available from Sony with the familiar hot shoe external flash mount. Don't bother with the additional expense unless you know you'll use it. Flashes by other makers will work, too, as noted in the user manual.

We have had great results with the Sony Mavica MVC-CD400 Digital Camera in taking "flash-free" pictures that we never could have taken without a flash using an SLR camera, as it seems to make better use of available light. In a well-lit room we usually turn off the flash and get a very natural, clear picture in return.


A Little More Detail

The Sony Mavica MVC-CD400 Digital Camera operates wonderfully in "automatic" mode -- a favorite of mothers everywhere, in my experience. Forget that I met my husband in the dark room during photography class in college . . . with small children growing quickly and life passing by at light speed, I don't have as much time for things like shutter speed or the aperture I need/want or many of the other manual functions available on the Sony Mavica MVC-CD400 Digital Camera. ***BUT, when I return to the art of photography again one of these days, the features are there for me. Directly from the manual, some of these features are:

• Multi-pattern metering independently evaluates 49 segments for optimum exposure, selectable Spot Meter mode
• 40-step Shutter Priority (8 sec ~ 1/1000 sec), 13-stepAperture Priority (f2.0 ~ f 8.0), Full Manual Exposure
• Twilight, Twilight Portrait (Slow shutter with Flash) and Landscape Scene Modes, 5 Mode White Balance
• Slow Shutter dark-frame subtractive NR w/1/2 sec and longer shutter speeds, Clear Color & Luminance NR

In the meantime, the user manual makes for interesting reading, giving me much food for thought, and by the time I'm ready to use these features my knowledge of them should be enough to make application fairly simple.


Save Time, Film, and Prints

One of the major drawbacks to our 35mm SLR cameras, and one of our main reasons for purchasing the Sony Mavica MVC-CD400 Digital Camera is the amount of film we used, the number of pictures we ended up tossing into the trash can and the number of pictures we should have avoided taking in the first place.

Usually, upon getting a package of pictures back from the developer, we'd find that we had taken three or four shots of a single event -- so close together that they could almost have been duplicates/triplicates/quadruples of the same shot. That's fine if you're a freelance photographer and want to bracket your shot, but not when your goal is to get a picture of your 3-year old looking cute while eating an ice cream cone.

The Sony Mavica MVC-CD400 Digital Camera allows you to take all of those shots, but determine later whether or not you actually develop them into prints. We find that rather than taking four to six rolls of film per month in for developing, we're taking in one disk of only our chosen shots in when we are ready to have them developed. At about a quarter a print it's cheaper and has eliminated the waste.

Another feature of the Sony Mavica MVC-CD400 Digital Camera the "Confirm Before Write" mode that lets you save or delete an image before it's written to your disc. This is a nice choice when using non-rewriteable discs, but does not allow for taking shots in succession, as you have to make your choice before taking a new shot. Being parents of a toddler and a pre-schooler, events happen at too great a rate to decide if a shot is good enough before moving to the next one, but it's an option we'll use later.



MORE Features

The Sony Mavica MVC-CD400 Digital Camera offers so many features and options . . . this camera amazes me. Aside from what I've already detailed, the Sony Mavica MVC-CD400 Digital Camera acts as a spur of the moment video camera, not quite the quality/resolution and clarity of sound you'll get from a standard camcorder or digital video recorder, but it'll do for sending a quick clip via e-mail or for grabbing a moment from time when you don't have the video camera. You can record in only 30 - 45 second segments (short bursts), and can get about 3 minutes worth of video on one CD.

The Sony Mavica MVC-CD400 Digital Camera offers the following, as listed on the website: 3 MPEG Movie modes (w/audio) - Video mail (160x112), Presentation (320x240) and HQX (320x240) with 16fps full screen playback. EX (EXtended) clip length limited only by capacity of media (90 min in Video Mail mode).

We have used the MPEG movie modes to record our 21-month old son demonstrating a new word he learned to e-mail to grandparents as well as to make "short video" diaries that we save to a CD, rather than on standard VHS tapes. Husband can carry around a CD with his laptop and anyone who wants to adore our young 'uns can do so in 3 minutes or less.

Also available are modes that allow for capturing photographs in black and white, sepia tones, "negative" images and also "solarize" a shot to make it appear like an illustration. We enjoy both the b&w and sepia options from time to time, as they add a stark or old-fashioned look to prints.


Storage -- No Memory Sticks, Please!

The one thing we did not want in a digital camera was the added expense of memory sticks. Sure, cameras that require memory sticks are smaller, and they do come with a memory stick or two at purchase. Many of the cameras are cheaper at the outset, also.

But, if you take a reasonable amount of pictures daily/weekly/monthly, the uploading and archiving of the data on a memory stick can be time-consuming. Everyone we know with this type of camera has invested in at least one or two more sticks with larger memory. Larger memory = higher price.

We find the Sony Mavica MVC-CD400 Digital Camera to our liking, as we can choose to purchase either CD-R discs (record only, and once full it's not reusable), or CD-RW (re-writable -- meaning you can record an image and choose to record over or delete it). The CD-RW is roughly twice the price of a CD-R disc, but are a nice option, and a 50-pack is still cheaper than a memory stick.

I prefer the ability to just slip in a clean disc and keep taking shots rather than think, "Do I have enough space to take all the pictures I want?"


Like Booting up Your Computer

When you flick the "on" switch of the Sony Mavica MVC-CD400 Digital Camera you get the feel you've just wakened a computer from sleep mode. It takes several seconds for the camera to come to life and find its place in order to start storing shots for you.

The time involved here is roughly 6 seconds.

If you leave on the lens cap (this cap stays on well and has not fallen off "accidentally" for us as has occurred with other cameras) the camera will beep at you until you have removed it.

And, similar to your computer, if you don't use the Sony Mavica MVC-CD400 Digital Camera for about 3 minutes (when it's on battery power) it will shut off automatically. Nice feature for saving battery power.


It All Depends on . . .

From battery life to available disc memory (the camera comes with 6 CD-R and 1 CD-RW discs which Sony dubbed "1 GIGA PACK" to let you know you're getting a lot of storage "free"), time and space limitations depend on the size and quality of the images you want to capture. By setting size and quality on the low end, you'll have the advantage of a long-life battery and optimum storage, but this choice isn't best for everyone, nor will it be a setting you may want to use all the time.

The resolution you choose makes a difference depending on whether you are simply going to use the images to set up a slide show on your PC, send pics via e-mail, or print them -- and then, are you going to print standard-size prints or go for enlargements?

For most purposes (4 X 6-inch prints and smaller) low resolution works fine. The lower settings make images more grainy and less "fine-lined", but most shots we've taken while using it look as good or better than what we'd take with our old SLR cameras using 400-speed film. Mid-range resolution is so clear you might question that you're actually viewing a picture. It's that good.

And what about that battery? The Sony Mavica MVC-CD400 Digital Camera includes an NP-FM50 Infolithium battery, which, when fully charged and when not using the flash should offer up to 1,800 shots equivalent to 110 minutes. We have not tested this claim, but find that the battery power allows us to take the pictures we want to take without having to charge the battery more than twice a month. Considering that we averaged 6 rolls of film a month with SLR cameras, this is nice -- plus we use the battery power for deleting shots while using a CD-RW disc and use the flash more often than not.


But Wait! There's More!

The Sony Mavica MVC-CD400 Digital Camera provides 4.0 mega pixels which some people consider "overkill", but we wanted that option for the purposes of enlargement of photos, which we do quite often. You can go with 3.0 or lower in another model and realize a little cost savings, but we went with 4.0 for the flexibility it offers and because we didn't want the buyer's remorse we have experienced when not jumping up a step in other larger purchases.

The lens of the Sony Mavica MVC-CD400 Digital Camera is a Carl Zeiss™ Vario Sonnar 3X Optical zoom lens with 2X Precision Digital zoom and 6X Total zoom, and meets our needs nicely. You won't be spotting birds in distant trees with this, but it brings in our daughter playing 100 feet away close enough to see her eye color. The on-screen display in the viewfinder on the back of the camera shows a scale letting you see at which point you leave normal digital zoom (up to 3X) and move into a digitally processed zoom. The image quality is not as good from 3 to 6X, but that's true with any digitally-processed zoom.


Above and Beyond the Call of Duty

The Sony Mavica MVC-CD400 Digital Camera has so many options/features/bells and whistles it's amazing, but not confusing. Each of us will find and use a handful of options and possibly branch out over months and years of use. Just reading through the user manual is enticing, and gives me something to look forward to in the future. Some features will get a once-over and others will become fast friends.

Check 'em out:

• Macro recording - for shooting close-ups
• Self-timer - for taking a group shot that includes the photographer ;)
• Red-eye reduction - becoming fairly standard
• Hologram illuminator - allows for close-up shots in dark spaces
• Choice of index screens - view one, three or nine images at once
• View images on TV screen - great for "slide shows" and made possible with included A/V hook-ups
• Multi-Burst shooting - allows for 16 shots in rapid succession, as you might use for sports events
• Burst shooting - allows for 3 shots in succession
• E-mail mode - records image acceptable for e-mail use as well as standard-size image
• Enlargement of a portion of an image - right there on the camera, no scanner necessary!
• Resizing images - keep original shot and either reduce or enlarge a copy of it


The Manual

The manual that comes with the Sony Mavica MVC-CD400 Digital Camera hasn't left us guessing on any point during our experience. From detailing the hook-up of AV lines for television playback (slide show viewing) to a complete description of manual metering of the camera, the user manual offers diagrams and illustrations/pictures to complement clear instructions.


Would We Do It Again?

As we look around at the amazing number of digital cameras available now, including those in use at family gatherings, school events, etc., we know we have made the right choice for us. We would make the same choice again without reservation.