Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony MVCCD350 CD Mavica 3.2MP Digital Camera w/ 3x Optical Zoom

I bought the Sony Mavica MVC-350 camera to compliment my Nikon film cameras. I wanted a camera to build a website and to take photos of things that did not necessarily need to be printed out on photo paper. Most of the digital cameras I found were small and the controls tiny. Or they needed a memory stick with very limited photo storage space an then these memory sticks were expensive. Some cameras are so small you can barely hold them without fear of dropping them and this is not the case for the Sony. Also battery life was also a concern as my first digital camera ate AA batteries for breakfast, lunch and dinner!

Floppy disks were ok, but again, photo capacity was not very large in the higher resolution modes. That's when I found the Sony MVC-CD350. It is a 3.2 megapixel camera with a 3x lens and built-in flash. It has a CD-R/RW drive in it for high capacity storage onto a 8 cm CD-R or 8 cm CD-RW disc. The MVC-CD350 uses a rechargeable Lithium Ion battery and it's life is about 130 minutes. It was exactly what I was looking for! The picture quality and the speed of the drive is very good.

After charging the battery (it comes with one and a charger) I dropped in a CD-RW and turned on the camera. No, I did not read the manual.... I was asked to initialize the CD-RW and after a few seconds I was snapping pictures. I also discovered, on my own and not by reading the manual, that it can take MPEG movies. I will never use this mode but I know it would be a handy feature for some folks.

After filling the disk with a few dozen pictures I finalized the disk (had to read the well laid out manual) and put then it into my computer. It was very simple. The MVC-CD350 also comes with a USB cable (version 2.0 compatible) and, after installing the software on my PC, I downloaded the pictures from the camera. There were about 50 MB (or so) of photos and the transfer process went rather quickly; I'll guess 3 minutes or less.

The controls for the camera are nice size, even for my fat fingers and the layout is fairly logical. The only thing I do not care for is the location of the power button. I think it's too close to the shutter release. A friend owns the same camera and she doesn't think it's a problem, so it has to be me.

The built-in flash does a pretty good job and it has the red-eye reduction mode. You can vary the light output from the flash to from "Low/Normal/High". I call it a "party flash." You can buy a better flash from Sony but, like any powerful flash, it's big. For a party or casual use, the built-in flash seems to work fine.

The display/viewfinder on the back is bright and quite large. It measures 2" wide and 1-1/2" high. The display is of high enough resolution so you can review all pictures you have taken.

Overall I like this camera. The CD drive and rechargeable battery are big selling factors for me. Also, since it is made by Sony I know parts and service are easy enough to find.

What would I improve? The lens. I wish you could change the lens out, like an SLR type camera. The lens is ok, but I would love it if Sony had a interchangeable lens system. Otherwise, no complaints from me!

I love this camera. I don't have to develop film anymore or find a computer to remove the pictures from my camera when I am on a trip. I just need to pop in a new cd and keep on snapping! This camera takes great pictures in all kinds of light--we have beautiful pictures of sunsets and the ocean on a bright sunny day and clear pictures of us around a campfire. I don't have the problem of waiting for the camera between pictures like I had with previous digital cameras. You can also film close to an hour of mpeg movies on one disc. The battery runs practically all day, too. The only drawback I found was it was a little heavy to lug around Disneyland all day. We solved this problem by rotating it among our family members, though (everyone got to take their own pictures then, too). If you are a novice at photography like I am, this camera is for you. It is easy to learn how to use features like the zoom and flash (even without the manual) and takes nearly foolproof pictures, although you still have to remember to keep your thumb out of the way! The cds are great for storage of pictures--no more boxes of pictures that can get ruined over time or big, bulky photo albums. To anyone considering this camera, I say throw away those old rolls of film and buy this camera!

After a couple of years of using a Mavica 73 for web shots and a Canon 35mm for vacation photos (the serious stuff), I decided to upgrade digitally for a much higher resolution with the 350.

After taking some test shots, I realized I could trust this camera with the vacation and family photos that required superior reproduction for prints. The resolution is terrific! This is coming from someone who made money with theatrical, model, and advertising photograpy and even had a photo published in the World Book article on theater.

This is actually a computer that takes pictures and movies, and is easy to operate if you limit your technical requirements. There is very little intuitive about using the buttons & controls through series of menus, so I brought copies of the most important instruction book pages along on our cruise, and did refer to them two or three times.

Just like with the 73, the results appear much better on the LCD screen than on the monitor, so most shots needed photoshop enhancing to increase bot brightness and contrast. Of course, the corner drug store photo processors will also increase brightness, but they ordinarily do not touch contrast.

Also, several shots needed -cyan for better color balance -- just like the early 73 Mavica.

Two of my Sony disks failed in the camera, and my friend, who bought a 350 because she like mine, also lost all her photos when her Sony disk failed in the camera. The Sony tech support guy said "It happens," and sent me a replacement for the first one. But after 30 days, no more replacements. I did buy three costly re-writeable disks at $6 each from Sony on line, one failed with only 12 photos taken, but it was too late to get a replacement from Sony. "Sorry."

Luckily, I came across some software that lets users miraculously recover otherwise "lost" files on CDs and DVDs, and I was able to save nearly all the shots from disks that, when examined with Windows Explorer, showed NO FILES! I recommend non-Sony disks that are five for six dollar at retail, and the first five that I used not only worked flawlessly, but held about 30 more photos than the Sony disks. It's because of the latent possibility of such devastating disk errors that I took one star off the rating.

Also, the file transfer software supplied with the camera does not display any text, so I have to rely on using a magnifying glass to read the tiny screen captures in the instruction manual.

Neither Sony nor the software publisher's tech support could help with this stupidity, and each referred me to the other.

Everyone needs this camera because it's brilliant. My husband and I just bought it, and yes it's very costly on the front end, but we will never have to buy another roll of film, or waste money on processing. We can take tons of pictures now and not even have to think about printing them until we are much more fincially stable. Just last night we went to a Halloween party and took 132 pictures (I kid you not) and it didn't cost us anymore money than if we had taken 2, not so with regular film cameras. You do have to buy the pocket disks but they are dirt cheap, 10 for $6.00 or so and each disk will hold about 145 high quality picutres. I recommend the Memorex cool colors pocket CD-Rs because they are colorfull and therefore easy to keep track of. We haven't had any "technical difficulties" as far as the battery goes or the disks. If you are considering buying a camera you should definitley get this one, even if you have to do a payment plan of some sort. It will end up saving you money in the long run.

I mastered this camera in ten minutues after I opened the box. The best part it uses the 3 inch CD-R and CD-RW's from Sony and so you don't need or worry about memory sticks etc. The CD-RW lets you take 80 images on 640 * 480 size which can be transfered either by playing the CD-R or CR-RW on a PC or transfering the images via USB datalink cable (I took me 2 minutes to transfer all images to the PC via datalink cable). I would recommend this camera to any one shopping for a 3 MP Digital Camera to seriously look into it.