As many of you know, I have used the Sony Mavica 71 with wild enthusiasm for

the past 6 weeks or so.   You can see the results at www.sover.net\~jbondy

if you have not done so already.



I just received Sony's latest, the Mavica 91, and it is packed with new

and better features.  This is a real camera, not just a digital

point-and-shoot (although you can use it fully automatically if you wish),

and many of the new features were never even mentioned in the promotional

materials, which is a shame.



The 91 is larger and heavier than the 71 (950g vs 600g), but it still is

lighter than a serious 35mm camera, such as a Nikon.  It has a lens much

like a CamCorder, not tiny like a toy (i.e., the 71). The lens goes from

F2.8 at telephoto to F2.4 at wide angle, which is quite fast.



The 71 produces 640x480 pictures, while the 91 produces both 640x480 and

1024x768 pixel images: with the larger picture format, you only get about 10

pictures per diskette; with the smaller format, you can get up to 22 or so.

The 91 also can record sound and video (which is not that important to me).

My brief tests of the video capabilities left me unimpressed.



The 71 just has an LCD display panel on the back which you use both to

compose pictures and to view them after you have taken them.  Composing

pictures in this way can be quite awkward until you get used to it.  The 91

adds a regular camera viewfinder, which makes taking some pictures (like 

sports photographs) much easier.  The rubber around the eyepiece is slightly

uncomfortable.



The display panel on the 71 is fixed in place; on the 91, the panel can

swivel so that you can hold the camera at waist level, aim the camera

horizontally, and still see the image you are about to shoot from above.  It

will even flip all the way over so that you can shoot yourself while seeing

the image which the camera is taking.  Since the 91 can shoot video (only 1

minute per diskette) this would allow one to shoot small segments while

controlling composition from in front of the camera.  Very flexible.  Easy

way to take a picture of your nose, should the need arise.



The zoom on the 71 is 10X; on the 91 it is 14X.  To allow pictures to be

taken without camera shake at this high magnification, the camera includes

an optional image stabilization feature, which works very well.



The exposure modes on the 71 were very consumer oriented: Portrait, Sports,

Sun, Panorama, etc: all functional, but no detailed control.  Sometimes it

was not clear precisely what a given mode actually did.  The 91 gives

you either full frame or spot metering, optional control of either aperture

or shutter (but not both), and display of shutter speed and aperture on the

screen as  you shoot. The exposure modes combined with the spot meter allow

you to control exposure quickly and easily.  Both focus and exposure are

locked with partial pressure on the shutter button, allowing you to use the

spot meter on one spot and then re-compose the photo without changing the

exposure (or focus).  Very nice indeed: enough for a serious photographer to

know what s/he is doing.



Apertures range from F2.8 to F11; shutter speeds range from 1/60 to 1/4000.

These facilities should be enough for me to do sports photographs, which is

quite a challenge.



The 71 had no provisions for color balance: as a result, many of my tank

photos are either yellow or blue (depending on which light I was using at

the time).  The 91 includes a color balance feature which works quickly and

easily.  The lens cap is translucent and thus can function as an incident

light meter.  You can change the color balance with the push of a button.  A

much needed and appreciated feature.



The 71 has both manual and automatic focus, and so does the 91. The manual

focus ring on the 91 is much larger and easier to hold, however.







OK, so is there anything wrong with the 91, you ask?







Well, the position of the zoom control (on the left side of the lens) is not

optimal: it is right in the palm of your left hand, rather than under your

finger tips.  It will take some getting used to.



And the carrying strap interferes with inserting and retrieving diskettes.







Oh, yeah.  And it takes inferior pictures.  Sigh.  I wrote most of the above

out of sheer exuberance as I discovered feature after feature.  Then I took

some pictures.



Sadly, the 1024x768 pictures are noticeably more grainy (show more JPG

compression artifacts) than the 71 pictures ever were.  I never noticed any

of this with the 71.  When I switched the 91 down to 640x480 mode, it is a

bit better, but I think the 71 still takes better pictures in situations in

which the extra features of the 91 are unimportant (color balance, extra

zoom, exposure control).  Sigh.  Drat.



Although the camera is billed as being a 1024x768 camera, when you ask for

an uncompressed (BMP) image, the resulting image is 640x480.  This leads one

to wonder whether the camera really has a 1024x768 sensor.  It feels to me

as if there is the same old 640x480 sensor with some software to try to "boost"

the output to 1024x768.  This may explain the lousy performance at that

resolution.



It would be fair to say that NONE of the high-resolution images have been of

good quality, although the anomalies vary depending on subject matter

(textured

vs smooth, light vs dark, etc).



All in all, I think Sony outdid itself.  It solved every problem I had with

the 71 and even some I didn't know I had.  Too bad they didn't test it as a

camera before they sold it.



:)



Jon