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Back to Full Sony MVC-FD95 Review
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	*	2.1 megapixel CCD, up to 1600x1200 images
	*	10x optical , 2x digital zoom
	*	Records movies with sound
	*	JPEG, GIF, TIFF, and MPEG file formats
	*	Floppy or Mem Stick w/adapter for easy computer interface

Manufacturer Overview
More than any other single company, Sony has dominated the digital camera market the last few years, thanks in large part to the easy computer interfacing offered by their Mavica(tm) line of floppy-disk based cameras. They've also been active at the high end of the market, with products like the DSC-D770 and DSC-F505, which caught the eye of many pros and advanced amateurs for their excellent optics and exposure control.

This spring (February, 2000), Sony stunned the digicam world by announcing no fewer than six new models. Part of this was a significant extension of their Mavica line, bringing the higher end up to the 2 megapixel resolution range, while incorporating a number of enhancements in the basic camera electronics and signal processing as well. To accommodate the larger image sizes that come with the new 2.1 megapixel resolution, they cleverly used a special version of the "FlashPath" floppy disk memory card adapter in conjunction with their Memory Stick technology to deliver "floppy disk" cameras with potential storage capacities as high as 64 megabytes. On the signal-processing front, they incorporated 12-bit digitization, which results in exceptional tonal range, excellent preservation of detail in strong highlights, and excellent low-light capability. This review covers the new high end of the floppy-based Mavicas, the MVC-FD95.


Highlights

• 1/3 inch CCD delivering up to 1600 x 1200 resolution images.
• 2.5 inch, color, TFT LCD monitor.
• Smaller, LCD optical viewfinder with data display.
• 10x, 6 to 60mm lens (equivalent to a 39 to 390mm(!) lens on a 35mm camera.
• 2x digital telephoto.
• Steady Shot option to decrease camera shake.
• Program AE, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, Twilight, Twilight Plus, Landscape and Panfocus capture modes.
• Shutter speeds from 8 to 1/500 seconds.
• Automatic, Outdoor, Indoor and "One-Push" manual white balance settings.
• Built-in, popup flash with Automatic, Red-Eye Reduction, Forced and Suppressed modes and manually adjustable intensity settings.
• Spot metering option.
• 10 second self-timer.
• MPEG movie record mode.
• Voice Memo record mode.
• E-Mail and Text (GIF) still image record modes.
• Manual focus option.
• Image storage on 3.5 inch floppy disks or Sony MemorySticks with adapters.
• InfoLITHIUM battery system.

Design
As the most recent addition to Sony's Mavica series, the FD95 reflects the line's tendency toward larger body styles, dictated by the physical dimensions of the included floppy drive. Despite first-guess estimates based on its hefty size, the camera feels lighter than you'd think. Weighing in at 34 ounces (970 g), including the battery pack, the FD95 is just one ounce heavier than the previous top-of-the-line FD91 model. Although that's a great deal more weight than many smaller digicams carry, it's still lighter than what your first assumption might be, mostly due to the tough plastic body. The camera's overall size is 5 x 5 x 7.25 inches (126 x 124 x 184 mm). While the FD95 won't easily slip into your coat pocket, (the size must accommodate the required floppy disks and the very long-ratio zoom lens), the accompanying neck strap makes it easy to tote.

The top of the FD95 is fairly plain, holding the shutter button, pop-up flash, external flash mount and external flash sync connection. You can also see the ridged manual focusing ring on the front of the lens in this view.

The rather large lens dominates the front of the camera, with a squared off rest to keep the lens from banging when the camera is set down. (This "rest" also houses the Steady-Shot system.) Also on the front of the camera is the zoom control lever and microphone.

We liked the bulky hand grip on the side of the camera, which gives you a nice, solid hold. Conveniently, the floppy disk slot is also on this side, making it simple to change disks in and out when the camera is mounted on a tripod.

The majority of the camera's controls are on the left side of the camera (when viewed from the back), which we're more accustomed to after working with other Mavica models. Zoom, focus, Steady Shot, white balance, Program AE, spot metering and macro options are all controlled from this side. An audio/video out terminal also resides on this side of the camera (at the bottom), which is protected by a flexible rubber flap that conveniently slides out of the way when opened. There's also a dioptric adjustment dial on the side of the optical viewfinder, to accommodate near and farsighted users.

Some controls do remain on the back panel though, namely power, capture mode, flash, volume, the menu button, LCD on/off button and the display button. The optical viewfinder and LCD panel also live back here (this time the LCD display is stationary, unlike some Mavica models where the LCD panel actually flips upward or has swiveling capability). We liked the idea of having an information display in the optical viewfinder, but ultimately still found it a little awkward navigating through menus with our face pressed against the back of the camera.

We greatly appreciated the placement of the tripod mount and the battery compartment. They're just barely far enough away from each other to allow battery changes while mounted. The metal threads of the tripod mount also gave us a bit more security that we wouldn't strip them when we tightened down the tripod screw. Our only complaint with the tripod mount was that the socket doesn't have a lot of flat area around it, particularly toward the front of the camera. This made it more prone to front-to-back rocking when mounted on the tripod.

Viewfinder
The MVC-FD95 offers both a rear LCD panel and optical viewfinder (which seems to be a smaller version of the LCD). The "optical" viewfinder actually uses a tiny (and lower-power) LCD screen to show you what the camera's seeing. Sort of an "electronic SLR" (single-lens reflex), similar to the design of the MVC-FD91 model. What makes the optical viewfinder interesting is the internal information display, which is identical to that of the LCD monitor (complete with navigable menus). The idea of being able to see the exposure settings in the viewfinder is a good one, but navigating the menus through the optical viewfinder is a bit of a trick (one we weren't able to easily do). We found it much easier to simply switch on the LCD monitor when we needed to change menu options. The optical viewfinder does feature a dioptric adjustment dial for eyeglass wearers, which is always a nice bonus. The 2.5 inch LCD monitor is turned on and off by the LCD On/Off button directly to its left, and the information display is controlled by the Display button just beneath the monitor.

The advantage of an eye-level viewfinder, as provided by the "optical" viewfinder is that it both promotes a more secure camera grip (arms clamped to your sides, camera body braced against your face) that helps with long telephoto and low-light shots. It also provides a more natural "look & shoot" operation than when you're forced to rely on a rear-panel LCD display. The downside of having the "optical" viewfinder be electronically drive though, is that you're left with no usable viewfinder option when the light levels get really low: The FD95 has excellent low-light capability, and in fact can shoot in conditions about as dark as you're likely to be able to see in. The electronic viewfinder system needs much more light to operate though, meaning that you'll have to either look at the finished shot and readjust the framing as needed, or just shoot at a wider-angle setting than otherwise, and hope to get all of the subject in the frame. We'd really like to see at least some option for optical alignment of the camera, even if only a "gunsight" sort of device that could attach to the accessory shoe. (Are any of you third-party manufacturers out there listening? - This could be a nifty add-on gadget for FD-95 owners!)

As you'd expect, the "optical" and LCD viewfinders on the FD95 are in exact agreement with each other, no surprise given that they both display the same image. We found about 92 percent accuracy in both the wide angle and telephoto modes.

Optics
The MVC-FD95 is equipped with a 10x, 6 to 60 mm lens (equivalent to a 39 to 390mm lens on a 35mm camera). The FD95 also boasts the surprisingly effective "Steady Shot" anti-vibration system, which increases your chances of being able to hand-hold exposures with such a long telephoto. (The rule of thumb in the film-camera world has always been that you should use a shutter speed of one divided by the focal length of your lens in millimeters, to avoid blur from camera shake. Thus, for a 400 mm lens, you should use a shutter speed of at least 1/400 of a second.) As we discovered with the FD91, the Steady Shot system does an excellent job of steadying the image in the viewfinder when working at the maximum telephoto setting. While we don't have any objective way to measure how effective the Steady Shot system is, our distinct impression was that the FD95's Steady Shot system is significantly improved over that of the earlier FD91: It really does provide an amazing reduction in the amount of camera shake that makes it through to the CCD!

With a maximum aperture of f/2.8, the FD95's lens is quite "fast," great for sports and other action shots (the larger aperture letting in more light, and permitting a shorter shutter speed), as well as providing an option for isolating your subjects with shallower depth of field. The lens has 52mm filter threads, which allows you to attach specialty filters and auxiliary lenses. The 2x digital telephoto can be turned on and off through the record menu, and effectively extends the camera's zoom range to 20x. However, quality is always an issue with digital telephoto, as the camera is simply enlarging the center portion of the image and thereby decreasing the image quality (which shows up as higher noise levels or softer resolution). Focus ranges from 9.8 inches (25 cm) to infinity in normal mode and from 0.8 to 9.8 inches (2.0 to 25 cm) in macro mode. Macro mode is controlled by the Macro button on the left side of the camera (when looking at the back). The MVC-FD95 does an excellent job in the macro category, capturing a minimum area of 1.42 x 1.06 inches (35.96 x 26.97mm) at its closest setting (there appears to be a "sweet spot," where the lens lets you zoom in just a little in Macro mode).

Focus can be manually or automatically controlled, simply by sliding the Focus switch on the same side of the camera (next to the Macro button). Once in manual focus, you control focus by turning the ridged focus ring at the end of the lens. When you do so, the LCD viewfinder immediately switches to a 2x enlarged view, which helps you determine whether you've achieved proper focus or not. When in autofocus mode, the camera continuously sets the focus. The camera lets you know when images are in focus and when the exposure is locked through indicators on the display. When the green circle is solid, the camera is ready to snap the picture.

In the time between our first testing of the FD95 and writing this review, we've heard from a number of early purchasers of the camera. A complaint many have voiced is the cameras tendency to "freeze" the viewfinder display whenever the shutter button is pressed, or when the manual focus bezel is moved. This is in fact a significant issue when shooting action subjects, as a lot can happen while the display is either frozen or transitioning between modes. Without special handling, this makes the camera of decidedly less value in shooting sports action and other fast-changing subjects. We did find a bit of a workaround to this problem though: It turns out if you just hold the shutter button half-pressed in manual focus mode, the display will revert to normal size, yet you can continue to operate the focus ring manually to follow the action. The on-screen distance display continues to show the distance in real-time, which can help you get the right focus in spite of the smaller screen display. This is still a trifle inconvenient (you have to keep your finger gently pressing the shutter button), but it does seem workable. In a note to the Sony engineers, it'd be nice to have a setup menu option to disable the jump to 2x size when you twiddle the manual focus adjustment. Likewise, why must the display freeze when you push the shutter button? - It sure would be nice if it could stay "live"...

The camera's Aperture Priority mode allows you to manually select the lens aperture from f/2.8 to f/11 in 1/2-stop increments, while the camera selects the appropriate corresponding shutter speed. Two quick focus modes, Landscape and Panfocus, allow you to preset specific focal distances for fast shooting situations. Landscape sets focus at infinity for far away subjects and Panfocus allows you to change focus quickly from close-up to far away subjects. We can see how these modes would be helpful at kids' soccer games and other sporting events, when the fast paced action doesn't give you much time to fool with focus.

In our testing, we found optical distortion a little high at the wide angle end of the lens range, as we measured about 0.9 percent barrel distortion. However, we found virtually no pincushion distortion at the telephoto end (at least none that we could effectively measure). Chromatic aberration was moderate, showing about two pixels of coloration on each side of the black resolution target corner elements. (This distortion is visible as a very slight colored fringe around the objects at the edges of the field of view on the resolution target). There is also some lens flare in the corners of the image in telephoto mode. Overall, a very good performance for a lens with such a wide zoom ratio.

Shutter Lag / Cycle Times
When you press the shutter release on a camera, there's usually a lag time before the shutter actually fires. This time is to allow the autofocus and autoexposure mechanisms time to do their work, and can amount to a fairly long delay in some situations. Since this number is almost never reported on, and can significantly affect the picture taking experience, we now routinely measure it with an electronic test setup. Likewise, we measure and report on how quickly the camera can take sequential exposures in various capture modes. The table below summarizes our measurements of the FD95:

Overall, the FD95 is fairly typical of digicams we've tested, slightly slower than average in its shutter lag timing in full autofocus mode (0.9 vs roughly 0.8 on average), and about average when prefocused or manually focused. As noted in the "Exposure" section earlier, the FD95 does have an annoying characteristic in that the viewfinder display freezes momentarily whenever the shutter button is half-pressed. We did find though, that holding the shutter half-pressed (possibly in conjunction with manual focus operation) provided a potential workaround.

From shot to shot, the FD95 is slower than some digicams, but surprisingly quick, given that it depends on a floppy drive to store its data. The drive in the FD95 is no ordinary floppy though, as it reads and writes four times faster than the drive in your computer. The net result is a slow but manageable 8 second cycle time for maximum-resolution images saved to floppy. Minimum-resolution images can be captured as fast as every 5.5 seconds. We were surprised though, to find that the Memory Stick/Floppy Adapter storage combination actually took nearly twice as long to save images as did floppies. With this memory device, cycle time for maximum-resolution images was a leisurely 15.4 seconds, rather slow by current digicam standards.

• Automatic Exposure (no icon): Puts the camera in control of both aperture and shutter speed.
• Aperture Priority: Lets you control the aperture while the camera selects the shutter speed.
• Shutter Priority: Lets you control the shutter speed while the camera selects the aperture.
• Twilight: Adjusts the aperture and shutter speed for dark settings like night skylines and fireworks.
• Twilight Plus: Performs similar functions to Twilight mode, but also increases the camera's light sensitivity.
• Landscape: Sets focus for far away subjects.
• Panfocus: Allows for quick focusing of far away or close-up subjects.

Program AE +/- Buttons: Located to the left of the Program AE button, these buttons adjust exposure settings such as the aperture and shutter speed, depending on the exposure mode selected.


Macro Button: Located on the lens barrel side of the camera, this button places the camera in Macro mode.


Focus Switch: Located to the right of the Macro button, this switch shifts between Auto and Manual focus modes.


Steady Shot Switch: Located just beside the Focus Switch, this switch turns the Steady Shot function on and off.


Play/Still/Movie Switch: Located at the top right of the back panel, this switch selects between Playback, Still and Movie capture modes.


LCD On/Off Button: Located on the left side of the LCD panel, this button turns both the LCD monitor and optical viewfinder display on and off.


Volume Buttons : Also located on the left side of the LCD panel, these buttons control the camera's volume level.


Flash Button: Located in the bottom left corner of the back panel, this button controls the flash mode:

• Auto: Puts the camera in control of the flash mode.
• Red-Eye Reduction: Fires a small pre-flash before firing the full flash to reduce the Red-Eye Effect.
• Forced: The flash always fires, regardless of light levels.
• Suppressed: The flash never fires, regardless of lighting conditions.

Power Switch: Located on the back panel of the camera (directly beneath the LCD monitor), this sliding switch turns the camera on and off. The small green pushbutton in the center of the power switch is a safety interlock that insures the switch will only actuate when your finger is on it.


Display Button: Located to the left of the power switch, this button turns the information display on the LCD monitor on or off.


Rocker Toggle Control: Located below the LCD monitor, this control has four arrows that navigate through menu screens in both playback and capture modes. Pressing the center of the button confirms menu selections.


Disk Eject Lever: Located in the center of the right side of the back panel, this sliding lever ejects the diskette or memory stick floppy disk adapter.


Open Batt Switch: Located on the bottom of the camera (on the battery compartment cover), this switch unlocks and opens the battery compartment.

• Self-Timer: Activates the 10 second self-timer mode.
• Effect:
  • Date/Time: Turns the date and time LCD display on and off.
  • Picture Effect: Accesses the Solarize, Black & White, Sepia and Negative Art picture effects.
    
    
• File:
  • Record Mode: Sets the still record mode to Text, Voice, E-Mail or Normal. In Movie mode, allows you to change the minimum record time (in response to a quick press of the shutter button) to five, 10 or 15 seconds.
  • Image Size: Sets the still image sizes to 1600 x 1200, 1600 (3:2), 1600 (ECM), 1024 x 768 or 640 x 480. In Movie mode, sets the image size to 320 x 240 or 160 x 112.
  • File Number: Sets the file numbering to Series or Normal.
  • Disk Tool: Allows you to format the disk, copy the disk or cancel the selection.
    
    
• Camera:
  • Exposure: Sets the exposure compensation from -2.0 to +2.0 in 1/3 EV increments.
  • Flash Level: Sets the flash intensity level to High, Normal or Low.
  • Sharpness: Sets the sharpness level anywhere from -2 to +2.
  • Digital Zoom: Turns the 2x digital telephoto function on and off.
    
    
• Setup:
  • LCD Bright: Adjusts the brightness of the LCD displays.
  • Beep: Turns the camera's beep sound on or off.
  • Clock Set: Changes the camera date and time settings.
  • Language: Sets the menu language to English or Japanese.
  • Video Out: Sets the camera's video out signal to NTSC or PAL formats.
    

• Index: Calls up a nine image index display.
• Delete: Deletes the currently displayed image with an option to cancel.
• File:
  • Protect: Write protects the currently displayed image.
  • Print Mark: Turns the camera's print mark on and off (date and time stamp).
  • Slide Show: Allows you to view captured images in a slide show format, as well as set up time intervals and the number of repeats.
  • Disk Tool: Allows you to format or copy the disk, with an option to cancel.
    
    
    
• Tool:
  • Resize: Allows you to resize captured images.
  • Copy: Copies the currently displayed image.
    
    
• Setup:
  • LCD Bright: Adjusts the brightness of the LCD displays.
  • Beep: Turns the camera's beep sound on or off.
  • Clock Set: Changes the camera date and time settings.
  • Language: Sets the menu language to English or Japanese.
  • Video Out: Sets the camera's video out signal to NTSC or PAL formats.

Image Storage and Interface
The MVC-FD95 records still images and movies to a 3.5 inch, 2HD, DOS formatted diskette. This eliminates a good deal of the hassle of downloading files from the camera to your computer, and is a primary reason for the huge popularity the Mavica line has enjoyed in the marketplace. Instead of messing around with cables and driver software, you just take the disk from the camera and put it in your computer. A small disk icon on the camera's LCD display lets you know how much of the disk is full and how many images have been shot. In addition to the standard write protection of the entire diskette (simply slide the lock button on the diskette itself), the MVC-FD95 allows you to protect individual images on the disk from accidental erasure or alteration. All the standard rules for floppy usage apply here, such as keeping diskettes away from heavy magnetic fields and not getting them wet. This type of image storage is perfect for PC users, who should have a floppy drive readily available on their machine. Newer Mac users, however, will need to utilize an external floppy drive since the camera doesn't have any digital connection jacks and the latest Macs don't come with floppy drives.

The downside of floppy storage though, is the limited capacity offered by the medium: 1.44 megabytes was a lot of space a few years ago, when digicams with 0.3 megapixel sensors were considered high tech, but with the 2.1 megapixel sensor of the FD95, things are definitely a bit cramped, and only 4 high-resolution images can fit on a diskette at a time. This also means that the images stored with a higher level of image compression than is common on other high end digital cameras, resulting in higher levels of compression artifacts in the images. Still, users of earlier Mavicas will find the image quality of the FD95 a dramatic step up from the models they've used in the past.

As a solution to the space limitations of floppies, the MVC-FD95 can also store images on Sony MemorySticks, via an accessory floppy disk adapter. This adapter is the same size and shape of a standard floppy, but has a slot in the side to accept a memory stick. The net result is a "floppy disk" with up to 64 megabytes of capacity, enough for even an extended outing. We felt that this solution worked quite well, but were disappointed to find that the FD95 can only read or write to the Memory Stick/Adapter combination about half as fast as it can to floppies. The adapter also requires driver software to be installed on your PC to interface with it, eliminating some of the elegant simplicity of the floppy disk solution.

You get a nice selection of image sizes with the MVC-FD95, from 1600 x 1200 to 1024 x 768 to 640 x 480. There's also a 1600 3:2 aspect image size which crops the top and bottom of the image slightly and a higher-compression/lower quality1600 ECM image option. ("ECM" apparently stands for "Economy")

Below is the approximate amount of images and compression ratios for a standard 1.44MB diskette:

Video Out

Test Results
In keeping with our standard policy, our comments here are rather condensed, summarizing our key findings. For a full commentary on each of the test images, see the MVC-FD95's "pictures" page.

As with all Imaging Resource camera tests, we encourage you to let your own eyes be the judge of how well the devices performed. Explore the images on the pictures page, to see how well the FD95 performed, and how its images compare to other cameras you may be considering buying.

Overall, the FD95 produced very good images, with excellent color and good detail. Color accuracy was very nice throughout our testing, although the large cyan and yellow blocks on our Davebox target appeared slightly weak in their saturation level. The camera's white balance system seemed to handle most lighting situations well, with the manual (One-Push) adjustment option providing the most accurate results the majority of the time. Still, we were very impressed with the color results.

In the resolution department, the FD95 performed about in the middle of the pack among 2 megapixel cameras we've tested. We "called" the visual resolution at about 800 lines horizontally, 650 vertically. We saw more color moire patterns and artifacts in the vertical axis, but they weren't too severe in either direction. Sharpness is just a bit off the top of the current 2 megapixel pack of cameras though, due largely to the higher levels of JPEG compression the FD95 has to use to fit even four high-resolution images onto a floppy disk. Overall, a good performance though, likely a very welcome upgrade to fans of the earlier 800K pixel FD91. (If you liked the Mavica line before, you should really love the FD95, as it provides a pretty dramatic increase in resolution and picture-taking flexibility.)

Optical distortion on the MVC-FD95 is a little high at the wide angle end, showing approximately 0.9 percent barrel distortion. However, we found virtually no pincushion distortion at the telephoto end (at least none that we could effectively measure). Chromatic aberration was moderate, showing about two pixels of coloration on each side of the black resolution target corner elements. (This distortion is visible as a very slight colored fringe around the objects at the edges of the field of view on the resolution target). There is also some lens flare in the corners of the image in telephoto mode. Taken as a whole though, lens performance is very good, particularly in light of the exceptional 10x zoom range. (Long-ratio zooms are very tough to design so as to avoid distortion. Sony's optical engineers seem to have done a fine job.)

The FD95 offers good exposure control, with a variety of Program AE modes that include Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority, Twilight, Twilight Plus, Landscape, Panfocus and Automatic exposure modes (although there's no full manual mode, which is something we like to see on a higher end camera like this one). There's also a choice between spot and matrix metering. We found excellent highlight detail in many of our tests, particularly noticeable in the white cheesecloth section of the Davebox target and the strong highlights of the model's shirt in our outdoor portrait test.

One of the most obvious limitations of the original Mavicas was their low-light performance: You just couldn't take pictures in very dark surroundings. We were therefore surprised to see the excellent results we obtained with the FD95 even in very dark conditions: The FD95 is comfortably in the current (June, 2000) first rank in the low-light arena! In straight Automatic Exposure mode, the MVC-FD95's low light capabilities weren't too impressive (only going down as far as 1 foot-candle, or 11 lux), but in Shutter Priority exposure mode exposure times as long as 8 seconds produced a surprisingly good (although noisy) image at 1/16 of a foot-candle (0.7 lux). (!) We'd rate the FD95 as producing very good images down to light levels of 0.5 foot-candles (5.5 lux), and usable ones to levels of 1/4 of a foot-candle (2.6 lux) and below. (For reference, a city night scene under typical street lighting corresponds to an illumination level of 1 foot-candle.)

We found the MVC-FD95's LCD monitor to be just a little tight, showing about 92 percent of the final image area at both wide angle and telephoto settings. We assume that the optical viewfinder has the same accuracy level, since it's basically a smaller version of the rear LCD panel. Although we generally like to see LCD monitors as close to 100 percent accuracy as possible, the MVC-FD95 is more accurate than most. We generally like to see LCD monitors as close to 100 percent accuracy as possible, so the FD95 falls just a little short in that category. (Although 92% is more accurate than most cameras we've tested.)

The MVC-FD95 performs superbly in the macro category, capturing a minimum area of 2.12 x 1.59 inches (53.95 x 40.46 mm) at the furthest wide angle setting. The lens does seem to have a bit of a "sweet spot" in macro mode, allowing you to partially zoom in and capture an even smaller minimum area of only 1.42 x 1.06 inches (35.96 x 26.97mm). Macro lighting with it is a little tricky though, because the large lens and close working distance blocks some of the light and forces a very shallow lighting angle. Ultra-macro optics usually show some optical imperfections this close, and the FD-95's lens is no exception. Still, the level of distortion seems to be less than we've come to expect, with some barrel distortion, curvature of field and lens flare in the corners all present, but not as severe as we've seen in some other ultra-macro lenses.

Overall, the MVC-FD95 performed very well in our testing, with very good color accuracy, low light and macro results. It's clearly a substantial step forward for the Mavica line in terms of image quality and shooting flexibility.


Conclusion
Despite its somewhat bulky dimensions, we really liked what the MVC-FD95 had to offer, and found it an enjoyable camera to work with. Besides the floppy-disk image storage (somewhat of a mixed blessing, in our judgment, due to the image compression levels it demands), the MVC-FD95's standout feature is clearly its 10x optical zoom lens. Our earlier review of the 14x-equipped 0.8 megapixel FD91 Mavica was subtitled "resolution isn't everything," pointing out how many more pixels that camera could deliver on-subject than even 2 megapixel competitors with typical 3x optical zooms. With its 10x zoom, the 2.1 megapixel FD95 clearly takes the cake for the ultimate telephoto workhorse, at least at the current time in the digicam marketplace (June, 2000). The lens' optical stabilization system is also remarkably effective for hand-holding those super-telephoto shots, producing crisp images at shutter speeds way slower than you'd expect to be usable. With upgraded 12-bit digitization, great tonal range and color reproduction, and excellent low-light performance, the FD95 is a flexible photographic tool that's also easy for novices to master in full-auto mode. We expect large numbers of prior Mavica owners will find the FD95 an excellent upgrade to bring them into the 2.1 megapixel arena, and many more will be sold to new owners as well.

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