The best digital camera for an amateur photographer!!
Pros:
8cm CD recorder, light weight, 4 mp, tons of features, records video, and it's Sony!!
Cons:
The strap does not seem secure & only 2.5 hours battery life.
The Bottom Line:
In the long run, this camera will pay for itself - saving you the cost of films and development.
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
I was doing a lot of research trying to find the best camera for me - that suited my needs and didn't cost a heck of a lot of money.
I like to take pictures and I have had some training in photography (B/W). I've been taking pictures with my father's manual Minolta (which is mine now) and I love the camera but I find it heavy to carry around and the cost for film and developing is burdensome - so much that I put off developing my pictures when I return from my trips. I also scan in my pictures, which is another tedious activity to share with friends.
My criteria for a digital camera were a 4-mega-pixel camera, macro lens capability, B/W and sepia capability, high-resolution images, and most importantly, an alternative to the common storage. The idea of using flash stick, memory sticks, cards, etc is absurd to me. Not to mention they're very costly!! And, I wanted the camera to have a body of my Minolta manual camera, or at least similar to it.
I don't recall how I came about finding the Sony Mavica 400 (I probably went to their website and noticed they made digital cameras as well.) But when I came upon it's existence, I immediately fell in love with it and declared that was my camera to have. It fulfilled all the criteria as listed above and then some more!! It has can record limited video. Storage on a mini CD was exactly what I want as an alternative to the memory stick, etc.
It originally cost $899.99 (Sony), which is a lot of money so I held out to find it else where for less. I returned to Sony after my trip to Morocco and was adamant of purchasing the camera regardless of price. Luckily, when I went to purchase it, it was on sale for $699.99. The camera has been wonder and a dream!!
It's incredibly lightweight for a camera that looks like a manual camera. The mini CD storage allows you to store more than a thousand pictures (at low res.) and if you use the re-writable, you can erase and start all over again. The camera comes with the USB cable for you to download your pics or you can view them off the CD after finalizing it. The camera is very user friendly, and if you have any confusion, the manual is very accessible in obtaining the info you're looking for.
The only problem I have is the battery life, which is only 2.5 hours. At the same time, it may not seem like much, but it does allow you to take tons of pictures before you need to recharge. And the recharge time isn't very long, 2.5 hours. So I bought an additional battery.
