posted on January 26, 2001 06:07:43 AM
Anyone familiar with the Olympus D-460 ZOOM digital camera? I'm trying to decide between this and a Sony Mavica. Any advice would be appreciated. I would use it mainly for vintage magazine advertisements that are too large for my scanner.
posted on January 26, 2001 07:31:48 AM
I have been using the 460 for over a Year. Other than the time I left it on the fender of my pickup and drove off it has worked perfect and provide some great pictures. I started out with a Sony but had a lot of problems with it. Sony's customer service stinks. The one time that I did call Olympus I received good response. By the way, the camera that fell from my pickup had to be replaced. You can look at my ebay auctions if you want [email protected]
and get an idea of the quailty.
posted on January 28, 2001 07:09:17 PM
Hi Carltonsa,
I'd personally would go with the Mavica if it has the 1.44" floppy drive in it. The Olympus D460 is a nice camera, but you will find having to download pictures from the camera to your computer through the serial (or usb) cable is a hassle. I can plop the disk out of my Mavida and insert it into the computer, drag the pic to my graphics program, crop it and have it in my ad in minutes. Some of my older digital cameras used to take as long to download as it takes me now to get the picture from the Mavica camera to the ebay site. I'm not sure what the download time for the 460 is, so I can't really compare that to the Mavica (or my previous serial cable type digital cameras. I've had four others before the Mavica). The one thing the 460 would have over the Mavica is the memory card. That is what I miss most from my Sanyo Z380 digital camera I had before, I could hold around 122 pictures on that with an 8mb card (which was great for vacation pics) I won't get anywhere near that with the Mavica.
Unlike Applesoranges, I've had to deal with Sony's customer service once, but I had good luck with them.
posted on January 29, 2001 07:12:48 AM
I use the Olympus D-460Z for my auctions too. I love it. Its easy to use and downloads don't take very long. While I was shopping around I was interested in a Sony so that I could use Floppy Disks, but the salesman talked me out of it by pointing out that I can store a lot more pictures on a Memory Card than I could on a Floppy. The Olympus was SO MUCH cheaper too when I was comparing resolution and other features.
posted on January 29, 2001 08:25:15 AM
There are some severe drawbacks to the floppy camera.
1) floppies are prone to sector errors. I wonder how many folks took pictures only to find later than an sector error ruined them
2) a good resolution photo takes almost a meg. A floppy only has 1.4 meg. So Sony has to use heavy compression to get several photos on a floppy. You cant compare the quality of a Mavica with the quality of a good smartmedia or compact flash camera.
The Mavica cameras tend to be pricier than other cameras that offer better resolution.
As for the convenience, you can put a 32 or 64mb card in a smartmedia camera and take many high resolution photos. You can download via USB even faster than a floppy camera.
You are giving up way too much for the "convenience" of a Mavica.
posted on January 29, 2001 10:19:11 AM
yisgood,
You are correct in those points and that is what I miss most of my Sanyo Z380 camera, but I still like the Mavica better for my auction pictures and wouldn't trade it for a serial camera. I'll probably end up buying another camera for those times when I need to take a lot of high quality pics. Hmmm...after thinking about it, I think I do have a Relisys Dimera around here somewhere...like that counts as a high end camera! LOL
posted on January 29, 2001 11:55:44 AM
I have an Olympus D-460Z. I got the floppy disk adaptor: I take the Smartmedia card out of the camera, insert it into the floppy disk adaptor, put the adaptor into the floppy drive, and use Windows Explorer to move the files.
