Monthly Archives: July 2023

Retrospective: Mavica FD83

Posted on by

My second digital camera was a Sony Mavica FD83—that is, if I recall correctly; googling around, I see that it might have been an FD81. Either way it was a step up from the Mavica FD5 it replaced. At least, I thought it was.

Sony Mavica FD83

Like the FD5, it saved JPEGs to an internal 3.5” floppy drive; but the FD83 had two big improvements.

  • It had a 10x zoom, which was amazing.
  • It took 1-megapixel images! Three times as many pixels!

Alas, it was the increase in resolution that was its undoing. The FD5 could get 24 or 30 shots on a single 3.5” floppy disk; at its best quality setting, the FD83 could get maybe 7 shots.

To put it another away, I could pack up the FD5 for a day of shooting, bring 10 floppies (I had a little belt pouch for them) and bring home up to 300 or so pictures. Shooting with the FD83, I could only bring home 70.

For vacation shooting, that was a real come down…so of course I turned the quality to its lower setting so I could get maybe 20 images per disk.

This, alas, was a huge mistake. I first noticed how bad a mistake it was at Bryce Canyon in Utah, when I took this beautifully composed shot.

You notice those wavy lines around the branches? The ones that look almost like heat haze? Those are JPEG compression artifacts. JPEG is a lossy format, and if you compress the image too far it looks lousy.

Or maybe you can’t see them; current software is making the picture look far better than than it has any right to. It didn’t look nearly that good back in the day. But here’s a close up.

I discovered this standing on the rim of Bryce Canyon, where I looked at the captured image on the back of the camera and tried to figure out what was wrong with my beautiful new camera.

Sigh.

Grommit McCormick, Fire Dog

Image

Grommit McCormick, Fire Dog — OM-1, 14-42mm

“I’m a sort of watchdog, really. Fire watch is a job that takes dedication, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Not every dog can do it.

“Most watchdogs, they think it’s all about the barking, but they are very wrong. It’s about the watching and the waiting, and about being ready. If I barked every time a jogger went by, I’d lose my job.

“And then the moment comes. The smoke rises, the siren rings out, and then, as we say, the hose nose what to do next. Saving lives and homes, that’s what it’s all about.

“Boring? I suppose so, but I’ve got friends, you know. They come by with their owners and say hello on a pretty regular basis.

“It’s a good life, all in all. Steady work, very fulfilling; and, you know, emptying yourself in service to others is good for the soul.”