Ok, so I may have caught the vintage digicam bug for a bit. After playing with the Mavica, I was really impressed with its simple user interface and the quality of its photos (in terms of color, not resolution).
I wanted a camera that would give similar results, but without the resolution limitations. Despite the Mavica being the most popular camera of the time, Sony was making more professional grade compact cameras around the same time. I wanted something with at least a few megapixels so it would still be usable on modern screens, and ended up with the DSC-S85.
The S85 is a pretty nice little CCD sensor, 4.0MP camera. It has auto modes, but also has a fully manual mode, including focus, aperture, ISO, and shutter speed. I'm not a professional by any means - but I do enjoy having a little bit of room to mess with settings, so I'm glad the manual mode is there. Aside from photos, it also takes videos - but these are . . . potato quality. Here, I'll show you what I mean.
Despite this, I'm still pleasantly surprised with the quality for a camera from 2001. Funnily, the autofocus motor is always audible in the audio with the video. I guess you could still use this, but not for YouTube...
On the other hand, it can take some wonderful photos. I've only taken around a hundred with it so far, but it's quickly becoming my favorite camera. The colors can be really nice, the excellent Zeiss lens means it has great background seperation and a pretty decent macro mode, and the 3x optical zoom is surprisingly useful.
Sure, it misses focus sometimes, and sometimes the white balance turns all the colors into drab mush - but sometimes, it turns out something really pleasing.
