The Printer With a Floppy Drive! Sony Mavica Printer from 1999

[@stevethepocket]

Making you hook up a TV to see its interface is like a '90s version of making you pair it with your phone and install an app.

[@LGR]

Ha! True.

[@founderio]

But somehow needing a TV is still the better of the two options...

[@LGR]

@@founderio Aye, it is at least future proof from the perspective of not relying on servers and credentials

[@AmEv7fam]

Although trying to find a new TV with composite in is getting frustratingly difficult. I know, there's plenty of TVs with composite at thrift stores, but not always consistently.

[@PhAyzoN]

@@AmEv7fam There's endless ways to convert composite video into HDMI though. Everything from simple $10 garbage on Amazon to the expensive converters and scalers popular among the retro gaming community.

[@JoshuaPaulKing]

Even for today's standards, I could see people enjoying those print photographs. I can't imagine enjoying that quality and immediacy back in the '90s!

[@LGR]

Thermal photo printers truly blew my mind as a youngin back then. I was utterly enamored with those Kodak Picture Kiosks which used very similar printers!

[@matthewjbauer1990]

@@LGR As someone who used one of those Mavica when they were new, I think a 1.3 mp, printing 4x6 or 3x5 photos would hold up today.

[@tschuuuls486]

You can buy battery powered dye sub printers. For example Kodak Mini 2 retro.

[@Psythik]

Look into zInk printers. They're pretty much the same thing except portable and modern!

[@MichaelEilers]

I had a 90s dye sublimation printer called a Techtronix Phaser, that used 4 (CYMK) blocks of wax "dye" to do AMAZING prints, that had the continuous tone and photo quality of the photos that Clint showed in the video. It was the size of desktop copier and smelled like burning crayons, but man did it print great looking stuff that I believe would still look decent today. It was also nearly $9000 :) but I didn't pay for it, I got it from a bankruptcy sale of a print shop for free, in exchange for making their web site (too late to save them). I did not keep it for long due to the burned crayon smell and the wax blocks and paper was killing me in supply costs.

[@SirBlix]

Being able to get clean screenshots from consoles is to me the coolest part.

[@nsf001-3]

I'm pretty sure this is how gaming magazines did it in the 90s/00s. Or at least one of the ways they did it

[@himbourbanist]

I was thinking the exact same thing, they probably did this or had a pro grade device@@nsf001-3

[@tomyyoung2624]

Yeshing to see without TV!

[@1leggeddog]

One of my first jobs in the game industry was to test games. This is what we used to take screenshots if you were lucky. Otherwise, it was a digicam on a tripod aimed at the TV

[@LGR]

That's awesome.

[@electron8262]

That must have been such a fun job!

[@JohnFekoloid]

PC didn't have Prnt Screen?

[@BuckeyeStormsProductions]

[gentle floppy disk noises, gentler jazz music] I love your captions!

[@LGR]

Thanks 😁

[@32BitChronicles]

I'm so happy that you don't do youtube shorts

[@ChairmanMeow1]

Me too. Give me the long form LGR always!!

[@seijiamasawa2320]

yes!

[@jakematic]

Shorts are for those who just want entertainment, not knowledge

[@SC_3]

@@jakematic I wouldn't say that, necessarily. Vsauce has done really well with short-form content, all neat and educational!

[@jollygrapefruit786]

I think he should at least clip his videos and upload them as shorts. They're good for growing your channel and I want him to have as much success as possible.

[@sandrinowitschM]

I remember thinking 640*480 was a good enough resolution for digital cameras because pictures of that size looked decent on my 1024*768 monitor and appeared as roughly the size of a normal photograph.

[@sandrinowitschM]

@@franky9928 I've recently learned that the design resolution for macOS ICONS is 1024*1024. I'm imagining my old Riva TNT struggling to display more than two freaking buttons.

[@PhAyzoN]

I remember gaming magazines and demo discs back in the day boasting about "high resolution screenshots" of upcoming games. They were all 640x480!

[@Psythik]

​@@PhAyzoNTo be fair, very few games ran at 640x480 in the 90s. Most console games ran at much lower resolution - with very few games actually running at a native 480i - so 640x480 was enough to capture just about any game footage.

[@Kumimono]

I've noticed that a 640x480 is still plenty enough for your Instagram feed and such. Have few Mavica shots on mine, can't really tell they're 20 plus years old. (Well, technically. New old stock?)

[@nsf001-3]

I remember when I thought 3.5" floppies could hold 3 Megabytes because the ones I had said "3M" on them

[@xliquidflames]

My mom was a professional photographer in the late 90s. She had something similar to this. She used an expensive medium format camera for the serious photos at weddings and for portraits. But she also carried an early digital camera and a portable printer that she could use at the reception to grab photos of guests and whatnot. She could then print photos right there on the spot for people to take home. Her printer was a lot smaller than this one. I am pretty sure it was ink jet and only printed wallets and 4x6 or 5x7s.

[@MicrophonicFool]

The Polaroid Instant cameras used to fulfill that role, but your mom was ahead of the trend which is now wedding parties handing out a dozen Fuji Instax which every one passes around. All the material becoming people taking, leaving, trading or gifting some of the pics to the couple.

[@MrDuncl]

We went to EuroDisney in 1996. On the Thunder Mountain Roller Coater they had cameras capturing each pair of seats at the top of the loop. When you got off the ride you could see all the pictures on screens and if you liked yours buy a decent sized dye sub printout. Very impressive stuff for the time.

[@Markimark151]

My middle school teacher had that printer for science fair projects, I used to borrow the Mavica camera for photos of growing vegetables, insert the floppy disk and printed the photo for progress reports! That saved so many students time and effort for school projects!

[@LGR]

That's a great use case!

[@Markimark151]

@@LGR saved lot of students time and from buying more film!

[@tomyyoung2624]

DO YOU WANT ME TO SAY YES? OR WHAT

[@ruadeil_zabelin]

I'm so happy you make proper videos and not shorts. Theyre a true blight.

[@tomyyoung2624]

Yes computer required

[@keirthomas-bryant6116]

In the late 1990s I was working as a computer magazine journalist. I undertook a group test review of lots of colour inkjet printers, and one test was photo print quality. The ideal of saving money and time on getting "professional photo prints" was very alluring for many. In my testing I learned that, to match 35mm photo print quality, you usually had to match the manufacturer's own brand of premium photo printer paper to their own printer, and then select to print at high quality (so, usually, very slow - it could take several minutes to output). And then your print had a limited life span because, ultimately, it was just ink on paper. They were very prone to UV light damage meaning that, if you pinned one to a refrigerator (for example), light coming in from the window would slowly bleach out all the colour over the space of a year or two. Only cyan would stick around, if I recall correctly. I'm actually not sure if things are better right now. Back then, we all considered dye sublimation printing technology to be the best for photos - but it was many times the cost of the cheap inkjets that were flooding the market.

[@IgnatSolovey]

Dye sublimation technology (it's Mitsubishi ALPS originally, everyone else licensed it, including Sony and Canon) is still really good, it's the only printing technology that allows to reproduce full sRGB range in print - and considering that some, if not all, implementations include the “fifth dye”, which is an anti-UV protection layer, they are probably the longest lasting form of color photographs, apart from plasticized prints that are sandwiched between a sheet of Alubond and a sheet of UV-stable acrylic (and that costs... no... T.H.A.T. C.O.S.T.S.). That puts properly processed Kodachromes that are stored in national archives like the LOC or BNA to a third place, because plastic sheets with UV protection layer are much more stable medium than a celluloid film or even an offset paper and ink (those discolored 1960s...2000s magazines, aha). There are two problems with dye-sub prints. First, the largest format of DSPs ever available was and is 21×30 cm (only Mitsubishi and Sony did that, not Canon). Second, they are quite sensitive to dust before and during printing, Canon in particular.

[@hey_imriver]

As someone who enjoys papercrafting and tried printing a model using photo paper a few months back, they are not... I spent quite a while building the damn thing and the result looked awesome, until I noticed how the browns became greens and reds became oranges some weeks later. Tossed all of the models built with photo paper in the trash

[@NinjaSushi2]

Cool.

[@ericpullen524]

@@IgnatSolovey The largest DSP for consumer use was 21x30cm, but there were commercial ones that printed 120cm wide. They were massive, company I worked for had 2 of them at one point.

[@straightpipediesel]

@@IgnatSoloveyTektronix, which sold their printer operation to Xerox, did 12 x 18 inch (366x457 mm) dye-sub. See the Phaser 480X.

[@bjmajor]

Mind blown. Printed picture quality is much better than any Polaroid photo I've ever seen; I've been a fan of the Mavica camera series since 1997 and didn't even know it had a compatible printer!!!! Thanks for the great video.

[@StarLightNow]

I honestly can't get over the quality of those photos for 1999.

[@blunderingfool]

It still astounds me when we look at pictures my Grandma took in the 90s (When I was a wee baby) that you can make out fine details on the film like the covers of books or the shape of flower petals in the background.

[@LGR]

35mm film in particular is awesome. The effective resolution equivalent is larger than 4K: 5,600 x 3,620 pixels!

[@FuzzballRenakitty]

@@LGR The reason "digital remasters" are garbage on non- film media :P

[@blunderingfool]

@@LGR Oh? That explains a lot, thanks!

[@conor3663]

Hey Clint, you inspired me to grab myself a FD-90 and shoot some stuff at a recent blink-182 concert - so much fun to use. Thanks, as always, for your great content!

[@garou1911]

The mini arcades on that vintage camera legit looked like an early 90s arcade lineup on a high end Polaroid. Very cool xD

[@SomeDudeInBaltimore]

"stick em on your Angelfire". LOL Dude, you unlocked a core memory.

[@Brogboolius_Maximus]

You know, you hear "floppy disk photo printer from the 90s" and you think it's going to be cute and antiquated, but damn if that thing doesn't put out some seriously good looking prints, and the ability to screenshot composite video sources like that is amazing. I would have used that to an irresponsible level if I had had that as a kid.

[@sjogosPT]

if i had something tike that, i would used to an irresponsible level too for sure. I would print alots of screenshots of ps1 games and dragon ball prints from tv, thats for sure.

[@orthodox_gentleman]

What making a secret Jack stash from your dad’s vhs p*rn? Lol

[@grecinos2]

I have a Sony Mavica MVC-CD1000 camera that I bought circa 2000. It uses 8cm cd discs to store the images. When you take photos with it, you can hear the CD spinning up and the read/write head activating. The photo quality was exceptional for the time and still looks impressive. Paired with a good inkjet printer, it rivals film camera prints of the day. I have dozens of the 8cm discs with my photos. They are still readable to this day. Truly a nostalgic electronic device to have.

[@spartanwarrior9755]

Just a heads up, I'd move the pictures off those CDs. Recordable CDs have a shelf life, and eventually, you won't be able to read from them.

[@grecinos2]

@@spartanwarrior9755 I have since backed up the photos to a NAS I have at home.

[@Glacier_Nester]

Ooo, being able to capture arbitrary input video frames is SUCH a fun feature to add on there! Neat use of the technology already prepped to print video stills!

[@adammorrison9705]

Engineering Dept: "Stop showing the floppies going in backwards!" Marketing: "NEVER!"

[@nsf001-3]

How else with they know it's a floppy? 😱

[@richkawaiipikachu]

Don't forget, there's also upside-down CD'S.

[@4Wilko]

I wonder if any customers inserted their diskettes wrong because of that.

[@MicrophonicFool]

I was very disturbed by that image.

[@adammorrison9705]

@0x0fffff Yes. I saw that once. It's supposed to be impossible, but a customer managed to force it in. The motherboard was toast afterwards.

[@Vertexnine]

Like others have commented, it's amazing that they were able to achieve that quality in the 90s. It's actually still really cool tech

[@TheSlyMouse]

Those pictures look super good. It's rare to see physical pictures of such things and of that quality. Its like a real good magazine article picture.

[@fridaycaliforniaa236]

I never get bored of this channel. And that's quite a nice achievement, I would say 😂 LGR is the GOAT

[@kirishima638]

I love everything about this. The aesthetic of the unit, the controls. The ASMR. 3.5 inch Floppies will never not be satisfying to use. Clunk!

[@Mrshoujo]

*style *3.5 inch

[@nsf001-3]

I love the style. Tech aesthetics peaked in the late 90s/early 00s, IMO

[@225Perfect]

Man I love the look of older Sony gear. Just looks so clean and advanced. If they still made stuff that looked this cool, I'd be more tempted to go with Sony.

[@eggbreakerdotexe]

I'd actually really like the look of the PS5 if it weren't so annoyingly huge.

[@JackBandicootsBunker]

@@eggbreakerdotexeI guess now with the Slim on the horizon, that appreciation might be attainable.

[@ferretyluv]

Sony cameras still look small, sleek, and cool.

[@K12machinima]

Chunky, angled, and gunmetal-grey. Classic, 90’s, Sony tech was rad, man, and it felt satisfying to use. :)

[@TechnicolorMammoth]

As always. Us being men of similar age and homeschooled in the US, I always feel that nostalgia of a time I’ve known, but my family never was in a place to get this stuff. You get it and I support you. Thank you, Clint. I genuinely love the heck out of you and you make my day always. Keep it up!

[@jansenart0]

That's literally spectacular. Really nice print quality, and I remember using my school library's Mavica back in the day. It was very cool.

[@vanitymirrorss]

I love how direct video capture has literally never become an obsolete selling point. I remember an ad for a Samsung phone a couple years back that touted the video quality being so good that you could capture photography quality screengrabs with a button in its video player.

[@funstuffelectronic7536]

Amazing, thoroughly done video, of a beautiful product hitting all the right buttons as you said, printing, floppies, graphics, 90's, Mavica... Just very special overall!!

[@dant5464]

Love the tuctuctuctuctuc of the later Mavicas steaming past the tracks compared to the speed of a regular floppy drive.

[@LGR]

Yes, those 4X drives in particular are quite impressive!

[@mac24seven]

had one of those old floppy sony cameras at my job years ago. you including the little writing to disk sound when you were taking pictures made me smile :)

[@gentle285]

I'm so glad you've uploaded and printed a high resolution modern image as well, to check the absolute best quality the printer can manage! Top-notch work, thank you!

[@RemnantCult]

I bet your bro really loves these types of videos from you! Early digital photography is very cool.

[@m4rvelous23]

Hello Mr LGR. I have been enjoying your videos for a few years now and I decided that today was a good day to tell you to keep up this fascinating niche of older computing machines. Best of luck to you!

[@LGR]

Thank you, I appreciate that and hope you continue to enjoy the show!

[@devttyUSB0]

Very impressed by the quality of those prints!

[@nenadarkpaw]

"Stick em on your Angelfire page?" Damn, guilty as charged

[@nuitarik]

I absolutely love this camera and all your videos about it adding the printer just makes makes it perfection

[@caeserromero3013]

I found a boxed complete Mavica in the redundant kit box at work in 2014.. I still have it. Still works.

[@fjp1766]

I love these consumer electronic product showcases. Brings back some memories I had long relegated to the dusty corners of my subconscious and found myself feeling old but somehow happy and satisfied with the nostalgic feeling only these videos can provide. Keep them coming!

[@adamfloyd2152]

I would have loved to have that in the 90s! Even without using the printer part it's still cool just to take screenshots from the TV. That it can print such great images is a bonus.

[@okhouri]

Thank you very much for all the context and all the research that goes along with it. And then there is the process of putting it all together in an entertaining video ...

[@LGR]

My pleasure!

[@WitmerXL]

Hearing Clint's distinct yet accurate duke voice -- I am pretty sure it was him doing the duke voice on duke nukem forever online a while back.

[@IRWPD]

What a cool device. It's all so awesome that it still works.

[@BasVoet]

I actually found out about your channel after you voiced a Did You Know Gaming? episode. And I love your videos, all this retro tech is great!

[@LGR]

Nice, thanks for giving it a shot!

[@MisterZealot]

Back in '99 or '00 I had a gig using that exact Mavica ( the first one you showed) with a couple of nightclubs taking photos of peeps for their very 90s website. I recall the hassle of going around with a bunch of floppy disks. Add alcohol to the mix and you could say that was not my best body of work. LoL

[@Ta1kingDirt]

More than happy to re-watch older vids while you recover from the storm. Stay safe, and I hope things are back to normal (for your sake more than ours) soon! Best wishes.

[@Jones5121]

the fact that I own a good couple of mavicas myself makes this all the more enjoyable to watch, keep up the good work

[@mfbfreak]

That's much better quality than i expected. Would've loved to have that back in the day.

[@SiikPros]

I love that you have used that Sony camera in a few of your vids. That was one of my favorite things to take with me on family road trips. My dad won it at work for a Xmas raffle. My mom probably threw it away by now

[@DarrLaw]

Like you said, it would make a great KZbin short. And yet, definitely deserving of 20+ mins of coverage. The video capture was a "killer feature."

[@thexdriver]

We *still* use Sony thermal printers for medical purposes (usually Ultrasound images.) Printing straight from the printer is actually totally still possible, so it works largely the same (freezing the live image to immediately print it) And it still uses thermal paper! Thanks for another wonderful video!

[@modernvisionscc]

late 90's early 00's I worked at as a Walmart 1hr photo developer. We had got the new frontier digital photo printing system that took the digital content and created photos through the same system as our 35mm. It was and still is the best digital printing you could get. It took high res photos from your digital camera and projected it onto real photo paper that was chemically processed. In high school I was very involved in the technology teams and we had several of the sony mavica cameras because of the easy and cheap floppies that we used to take photos for newsletters, our first school website (that I built), and even to use for our yearbook. If you take my school yearbooks from 99-01 99% of the photos were all taken by that Sony Camera. I carried at least a pack of 50 in my camera bag for every event.

[@parkerdavidson5868]

I love the familiar beeps. I've been really getting into the PS3 lately, and had this video on in the background as I do some forklifting and heard the triple beep- I had to double check I wasn't watching another PS3 video!

[@creativesharts]

Still the best retro channel after all these years!

[@andrewgeorgelang]

As always another great video. Thanks for sharing. Ps If you ever get rid of the lamp, I'm gonna cry

[@HenryKlausEsq.]

Your videos like this are pure gold. I'm reminded why I was so interested in Japanese hardware from the 80's to early 2000's - they'd lovingly make something used by relatively few people and often take a loss because it was over-engineered and niche. For the love of good design...at a price.

[@yelahneb]

Thank you for this! I bought one of these a year or so ago and this gives me the motivation to get it running again

[@krissyboo6148]

i own a mavica fd91 and fd95 and I even have the boxes and manuals for both and even some of the cables too!. I was genuinely surprised by how good the photo quality is on them. theyre such cool little cameras!

[@krissyboo6148]

also anyone else notice the sound when clint presses the print button sounds like the ps3's sound when you try to eject a disk but theres no disk in there? or was it the ps4? anyway, you know what i mean.

[@1sonyzz]

Always a good day when LGR posts video about retro device. Cool stuff indeed

[@webluke]

I got to use a Sony Floppy camera in 2000 while in 8th grade to build the school's website. The computer teacher got me in an independent study class for the website and later hooked me up with the summer tech maintenance guys for my first "real" job. I recently got most of my old ZIP disks copied off with the photos I took, and they were not good, haha.

[@birbzilla]

This is the sort of thing that my high school audio-visual lab would have. Thanks for another great video, Clint!

[@Petertronic]

Wonderful! That dye sublimation process always gives pleasing results. The Sony UP-5000 you briefly showed is an absolute beast, if you get a chance to pick one up, go for it! (I used to repair them)

[@LGR]

Yeah that's a monster that I'd find it hard to say no to! 8 1/4" x 5 3/4" prints is awesome.

[@colombianguy8194]

Amazing! This printer is still very usable today, the picture quality is great. Excellent video as always.

[@Hezy]

Watching from the middle of the San Francisco Bay. LGR is still great at sea!

[@noscope1876]

I’m glad to have another addition to Sony Mavica content on this channel!

[@Ltulrich]

Your glee is contagious.

[@CapnKetchup]

What a great unit for the time! Even with screen captures!!! Thanks for sharing!

[@HairyBaconGamer]

Thank you for including the floppy writing sound as the pictures saved. Nostalgia and all.

[@LGR]

Of course, it's a key part of the Mavica experience :)

[@sterlinsilver]

What a coincidence you showed this! I was just looking over the maual in my mavica (the FD-83 shown at 5:23) and out falls a paper with a list of all the accessories you could get for it and I saw this printer and thought "wow that's so cool, but how many were actually sold?" Well, heres a video on this exact device

[@Jdmsweden96]

This is the coolest thing i have seen on LGR yet!!!

[@tommybahama9350]

I like how u don’t beg for patreon followers, solid channel

[@caeserromero3013]

I had a Fuji thermal printer around 2005. No floppy but had USB and SD. Printed to 4x6 sheets in a feeder tray. Used it a few times but it’s sat in a cupboard since.

[@raptorshinryu]

The device itself has such a fantastic aesthetic. Would look right at home on the set of some kind of retro-futurist movie.

[@mwk1]

Zajebisty wynalazek! Wydaje mi się, że daje radę nawet i w dzisiejszych czasach 🍻

[@MichaelEilers]

“Briefly flip through every decade or so” - brutal and true assessment of what family photos are really worth

[@nickwallette6201]

Photo albums are a time capsule. Best opened 30 years or more later. Practically worthless more than 1 week after they're taken, they start to rise in value exponentially every few decades.

[@plan7a]

Interesting to hear the PS 'Beeps' with something before they were used for the PS; and they've stuck with them all these years later!🎵

[@naddydatty]

The colors! Fantastic saturation and contrast. It actually looks better than current budget inkjet printers do; even when using photo paper. I'm not for sure if it says more about the Mavica printer, or the printer racket in general (which is an absolute racket).

[@MrDuncl]

Dye-sub prints are usually good. They are what the instant print kiosks in places like chemists use. I found that out when one ran out of paper when I was printing about 100 photos on it and a store assistant had to load more in. The only major difference to home printers was that the paper was on a roll

[@shibotto]

That's awesome! The colors are awesome, the details are awesome, I want one!

[@tobias_mx]

I still have a cd based mavca cd1000 and i just took it on vacation this summer and shot nearly 200 photos with it and it still works perfectly and the photos it takes are good enough that u cant tell that they were taken on a over 20 years old camera as long as u dont try to zoom in

[@Damaniel3]

Those Mavicas were amazingly good cameras for the time, and that printer does them justice. I would have gladly owned (and used) both of those back in the day.

[@linuxstreamer8910]

love the look of the tv so square so professional

[@NinjaSushi2]

I love this channel because it keeps me rooted to my childhood. I loves the 90s but I was too young to appreciate all the computer stores and stuff. Computers and technology just isn't as fun as it once was. Now it's all the same thing but better; nothing is new, just slightly improved upon itself. Not like the 90s when it was radical every time. Man I miss the 90s.

[@Pellejones]

I love your videos, they really bring a sense of relaxation. Keep doing what you are doing! You are amazing!

[@carloscruz9444]

I love your lo-fi pictures as much as your channel! 🩷

[@boowiebear]

Those prints are excellent. Very cool to see that old tech can still perform.

[@4g1vn]

my 1st professional job in IT was back in 99 and we had the FD mavica. I thought it was amazing back then. We used that camera for site surveys. Never had the printer, but it looks awesome and I would have been blown away.

[@lostevesy]

That would be great for now, let alone 20-25 years ago! Great photos

[@abdelali9279]

8:53 Sony really likes their loud beeps, I thought it was my PlayStation booting up.

[@lornegolman]

Hearing the old Sony shutter sound bought back a core memory

[@quackman]

I never had this printer or the ones you showed, but my ears lit up when I heard "dye sublimation"! I had an Alps printer which did spectacular photo-mode prints, especially since it did full pages. it used tape cartridges, different ones for quality settings or colors, cyan yellow magenta.

[@SammeLagom]

Wow what a beautiful little machine! Very nice video!

[@miaththered]

My aunt had one of these things, cool to see one again.

[@nomadben]

I'm loving the camera videos as always! I have a Mavica FD-90 that my grandpa gave me that I've been wanting to mess with. Just need a new battery and also a floppy drive for my computer haha.

[@Jo30136]

16:51 - I genuinely thought that was LGR's impression for a brief moment; he does it so good!

[@jamesdotson4264]

I used one in high school 2000 in my photography class

[@half_time]

The quality of this printer is actually amazing. Wouldn't expect something as good from the timeframe/technology

[@LGR]

Especially not with using old stock thermal cartridges that are twenty-ish years old!

[@marsrover001]

"Why? Why not it's awesome!" I miss this style of technology.

[@lexxsimf2]

Surprisingly, this device doing things. Nice review.