Digital cameras

John Smith continues our round up of the latest Atari compatible peripherals...

 
 

A full page advert for Casio's digital camera range with built-in LCD screens - the QV-10A, through to the QV-300 with telephoto lens first sparked my interest in digital cameras. Although aimed at PC/Mac users the Casio CAM format files can be viewed in Parx's Piccolo on a Falcon using the Parx M&E RIM modules (refer to AC#5 p15 for more details).

I haven't got a Falcon so this wasn't an option, however the SONY Mavica provides an ideal alternative for Atarians. Instead of storing the images internally in memory the Mavica saves them as JPEG images straight onto standard high density (HD) floppy disks.

The exact number of images which can stored on a floppy depends on the complexity of subject matter - the actual file sizes vary. On Standard setting expect somewhere between 30 to 40 images compared with Fine setting which stores between 15 to 20.

The resolution is 640x480x32-bit and the files can be read directly on any PC/Mac or Atari machine equipped with an HD floppy disk drive.

I didn't have an HD floppy drive but in Atari World issue 3 (RIP) there's an article about a HD drive kit sold by The Upgrade Shop (TUS) and the good news is the kit is still available. I bought the kit from the Birmingham 97 Atari show and, to my amazement, successfully managed to modify my 1040STe.

Having crossed that hurdle I needed to check the TUS HD formatting software would be PC compatible and was wondering whether 4Mb memory would be enough to display images.

To find out I borrowed a couple of picture files on a DSHD disk from a friend at work and to my delight I was able to load images (one at a time) into Imagecopy and print them out in greyscale on my black and white Canon BJ10e printer - although I had to free up as much memory to do so.

Eventually I acquired a Sony Mavica MVC-FD7 and excitedly took a few snapshots before removing the disk and shoving it into my modified HD floppy drive. Full of trepidation, I boot up with fingers crossed, hardly daring to breath, as a window opens to drive A containing three files, MVC-001S, MVC-002S and MVC-003S (S denotes standard quality and F is used for fine quality. After, what seemed like an eternity loading the first file into Imagecopy the image finally appeared, yippee, it really works!

There it was - a picture of our dog Sam's head which I had zoomed in to fill the entire frame with his head and shoulders relying on available room lighting - three table lamps. On my mono monitor the image looked quite poor and very dark but I decided to print it and was pleasantly surprised to see a recognisable greyscale of Sam.


 


The Sony Mavica MVC-FD7 lens focal length is 4.2 - 42mm (Wide angle to 10x telephoto zoom) equivalent to 40mm to 400mm for a 35mm camera!
Aperture range F1.8 to 2.9 auto exposure and focus with the option of switched wheel manual focus when required.

Now I'm saving for a colour printer and a colour monitor would be useful as well! Hopefully my experiences will encourage other Atarians to push the limits of their machines. Now, where did I put that copy of Positive Image!
 

Sony Mavica MVC range
URL: http://www.sel.sony.com/SEL/consumer/mavica/
Typical street prices
Models:
MVC-FD5 between £449 and £300
MVC-FD7 between £600 and £550
The FD5 is a fixed focus camera with a switched macro facility only. It doesn't have the added zoom, additional exposure programs, and so on more complex FD7 model.
Pros
Universal storage media and good in-camera processor with excellent screen, ARCSOFT Photo Studio software bundled for PC/Mac users.
Cons
FD5 has fixed focus lens, both models quite bulky with no viewfinder.
 

 
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