Sony Mavica MVC-CD1000

WHAT'S HOT: Sony's new Mavica MVC-CD1000 is the world's first digital camera to use optical discs to record pictures. It's an appealing concept. The MVC kit includes five 3.5-inch CD-Rs, which mount inside the camera; they're much like the standard 5-inch discs you use with your PC. You simply swing open the camera's back to snap in a disc, take your best shots, and then pop the disc into your PC to view the results in any image editing program (MGI PhotoSuite 8.0 comes bundled with the camera).

The economics can't be beat: One MVC-CD1000 disc holds 156MB (about 160 pictures taken at the camera's highest resolution of 1600 by 1200, or more than a thousand saved at 640 by 480) and costs less than a buck. A 160MB CompactFlash card, by comparison, costs around $350. Other notables include a 10X optical lens and an image stabilizer, which seemed to help steady our shots when we used this heavy camera.

WHAT'S NOT: Better sit down before picking up the price tag: The MVC-CD1000 costs just under $1300. As you might expect, this digital camera is huge. At over 2 pounds and measuring 8.2 by 5 by 3.7 inches, it's the size of a small camcorder. It's also agonizingly slow. Recording or playing back one picture takes 3 or 4 seconds; an animated disc icon spins on the LCD while the 4X-write/8X-read mini-CD-R drive inside whirs away. Impatient photographers--or those who simply want to catch a subject before it gets away--will find these waits interminable.

And not everybody with a PC can just pop in a disc and see the contents; only CD-Recordable or CD-Rewritable drives can read the discs straight out of the camera. For use in older DVD-ROM or CD-ROM drives, the discs must first be "finalized," a process that creates a table of contents and allows the images to be read. Finalization is easy to perform but consumes over 13MB of disc space and requires that you leave the camera undisturbed on a flat surface for about a minute. (A third alternative is to install the bundled software and connect the camera by Universal Serial Bus cable to your PC.)

Moreover, because you can write to CD-R discs only once, it's possible to end up with a pile of CDs that have little on them--especially if you like to experiment a lot with high-resolution shots. You can erase pictures you don't want to keep, but you can't reuse the space. Of course, the discs are so cheap it may not bother you to toss used ones.

WHAT ELSE: Its unique storage solution and jumbo size aside, the MVC-CD1000 stacks up fairly well to similarly priced digital cameras. You might think a camera equipped with a CD-R drive would chew up batteries, but the MVC's big lithium pack lasted a respectable 2 hours on one charge. Its picture quality was about average for the higher-end cameras we've looked at. We saw a green tint in some of our still-life photos. Gloria, our test mannequin, was well exposed, but lost some of the color details in her red scarf. The camera suffered the same pattern distortions we've seen in many other digital cameras when reproducing fine lines.

Although you'll need both hands to hold it, the MVC-CD1000 is sensibly designed, with a big right grip and a scattering of easy-to-reach buttons and switches for frequently used features, such as white balance and landscape mode.

The extra-large 2.4-inch LCD screen (nearly twice as big as most cameras') and a rocking button make navigating the simple pop-up menus a pleasure. The feel and sound effects reminded us of the controls on a game console. One of the MVC-CD1000's slickest extras is the motion-detecting viewfinder that activates when raised to your eye; if the LCD turned off simultaneously, this feature would be perfect. We also liked the battery timer, which shows the remaining time in cold, hard minutes, not as an icon. The playback features are pretty good; you can view six thumbnails at once and select specific ones to delete, a feature many competitors lack.

The 2.1-megapixel MVC-CD1000 supports three resolutions, including one that takes pictures in the traditional 3:2 aspect ratio, which yields prints that fit conventional picture frames. You can choose from ten picture-quality settings, two of which save stills and movies in smaller sizes for e-mailing. The MVC-CD1000 even gives you two ways to edit pictures inside the camera: You can resave an entire shot in another resolution, or save a zoomed portion at 640 by 480.

You can't fully control exposure with the MVC-CD1000; it offers only the semimanual aperture- and shutter-priority modes. We found the manual-focus ring (a rare perk even among cameras in the MVC-CD1000's price range) easier to use than the buttons found on most digital cameras.

BEST USE: This is possibly the ultimate digital camera for professionals and serious amateurs who blaze away huge numbers of photos during a photo session. Its recording speed, however, is too slow for most action photography.

SUMMARY

Sony Mavica MVC-CD1000 2.1 megapixels, 1600-by-1200 maximum resolution, 39-390mm focal range, f2.8-f11 aperture range, shutter speed from 8 seconds to 1/500 second, self timer, optical and LCD viewfinders, USB connection, video output, bundled 156MB CD-R media, rechargeable lithium ion battery, 35 ounces with battery, MGI PhotoSuite 8.0, MGI VideoWave SE+, Sony PictureGear 4.1. One-year parts warranty, 90-day labor warranty; toll-free support for 15 hours a day, 7 days a week. $1299 800/222-7669 www.sony.com/di