Many of the original photographs in this section of this site were taken with a Sony Mavica MVC-FD71 digital camera. While only providing a resolution of 640x480, other features of this camera have made it the camera of choice for me.
The Mavica 71 has a 10x optical zoom lens, allowing the following two pictures to be taken without moving the camera's position:
The following picture is a maximally zoomed closeup of the spherically shaped coral in the upper right of the above picture:
In addition, this Mavica can take extreme closeups (macro capability). Here is a snail eating algae: the snail is less than 1 inch across. Notice the detail in the mouth, including some "teeth".
The Mavica stores the photographs on a diskette. This limits you to about 20 pictures per diskette, but you can carry around as many diskettes as you wish.
Battery power is sufficient to take hundreds of photographs without recharging.
Focusing is normally automatic, but manual focusing is possible, and I have used that often when trying to photograph a particular speciman in the Reef Tank.
High shutter speeds allow for stop action sports photography under some circumstances (bright light, stationary athlete).
Pictures are previewed and reviewed on a small (2x3 inch) active matrix LCD display.
The Mavica has a flash.
Note that a few of the images on this site were manipulated to correct for color balance. The two kinds of lights which are used in my Reef Tank are fluorescent and metal halide. The former provide a warm (red/orange/brown) glow, while the latter provides a bright and cold (blue) light. In some cases, I adjusted the color balance on my computer before forwarding the images to the Web.