Updated July 7, 2024

Sony Cybershot Photo Dump

Old digital cameras are fun

Photography

March 4, 2024

This is my Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P72 that I bought for $5 from a goodwill. It's a 3.2 megapixel digital camera, for those of you who know what a megapixel is. I sure as hell don't. I'm not going to pretend to be a photography buff because I'm not, but I do like old cameras and I like taking pictures of stuff.

I'll be talking about the camera itself and how to operate it for a sizeable segment, but if you want to skip past that shit and just see the pictures, click here.

The DSC-P72 is designed to write photos to Sony's proprietary "memory stick" format, which is a bit annoying. I'd rather that it took SD cards, but whatever. Luckilly it's standard enough for readers to be somewhat common, and it wasn't hard for me to find a memory-stick to duo adapter online. I preferred to go with the Pro-duo variant of the format (Same type used in the Playstation Portable), because I feel that they're easier to find than those crusty-old original memory sticks.

I use a 1GB Pro-Duo stick in the adapter, which is plenty of space for this camera to work with as most photos are less than 2MB in size. Videos will take up more space, but they're pretty compressed and aren't typically large storage-wise. The longest video that I've recorded with it so far is 25 seconds long, 8.86MB in size. Speaking of video, I've uploaded a crappy video of the beach that I cybershot-ed to bitview for your viewing pleasure.

Here's what the view is when the camera is in use. There is a traditional viewfinder as well as a shitty LCD screen that you would expect from 2003. You can zoom in and out with a button that rocks back and forth. You turn the dial to choose between viewing images, shooting images, shooting video, and changing the camera's settings. The directional pad is used to navigate menus with the button in the center selecting things.

To be honest, I've just now realized as of writing that the directional buttons are also used for stuff like the photo timer and some kind of lighting option. I wish I knew that earlier. I haven't messed with the menu button and the one below it until now either, which seem to be for more shooting options and for focus control respectively. The bottom button is for deleting images and for changing image size. I'll have to play around with these options more in the future, as they seem pretty powerful.

On the software side of things, I find that the menus are pretty easy and straight-forward to navigate.

I haven't messed around with these ports yet, as I haven't really felt the need to. The yellow A/V-out jack is for viewing the camera's contents on a TV screen. The mini-USB port is for transferring images to a PC, but you need to install a USB driver and some software called "ImageMixer" so I've just been transferring the memory stick's contents to my PC. There's also some weird looking power jack for a cable that I've never seen before.

I'm so grateful that Sony decided to power this thing with AA batteries instead of some stupid battery that isn't manufactured anymore. I want to put out there that you should 100% be using good batteries like duracell or energizer or something. I tried using cheap-ass dollar tree batteries in this thing and it refused to work. This seems to be the norm with digital cameras. I could change the camera settings but the camera would shut off if I tried to take any pictures or video. I thought there was something wrong with the camera so I took the whole damn thing apart trying to figure out what the issue was. I was pissed to find out that my stingy ass was the only thing preventing me from taking pictures.

Alright, I've been talking about the camera itself for too long. Let's see what this thing is capable of.

These were some of my initial test pictures, which I started excitedly taking around my house once I had the camera working.

This is my cousin's dog, Morf, who is named after that pink blob thing from Treasure Planet. I've already shown this exact picture off in a weekly feature (Feb 26, 2024). Morf is the best dog around and nobody can convince me otherwise. He's a 1-year old golden doodle, and he is beyond chill. He also loves receiving pets. He's pretty unkept in that photo, but he has since had a haircut and looks fly as hell these days.

You may have also noticed that he's a bit transparent. Don't know why exactly, but I think it's funny and kinda neat that it happened.

The following images below this text are from my most recent trip with the boys to the Oregon coast. Coming from someone who has lived in Alaska, the weather got pretty wild this weekend. Probably not the best time to travel there, but we still had a pretty damn good time. At one point we drove through a very windy thunderstorm, and there were "snakes" of mist slithering across the road. I've seen snow do that in the wind before, but I don't think I've seen rain do that. These pictures were taken during the few times that Poseidon wasn't angered by our presence.

God, I love the beach. Rain or shine, it's always a vibe. We were staying pretty close to the beach, so we were able to make our way down there pretty often. Nothing quite like getting pelted by rain and hail on the beach during a stormy evening with the lads.

While the pictures that I take with this camera probably aren't on par with the ones I shoot on my phone, I still think they can look pretty damn decent at times. A lot of outdoor photos that I've taken on sunny days can be pretty washed out, but that could also be user-error on my part since I haven't really delved into the shooting options. I also kinda like it for aesthetic reasons. I've read some bits from the manual on Sony's website, and I have much to learn about this camera's full potential. It seems that there's some sort of photo editing and still-image-with-sound mode for me to mess around with.

You'll definitely be seeing more from this camera on the blog. My definition of fun is a bit strange, but I think it's fun to carry this little gadget around and take pictures like it's 2003. I've also gotten my hands on a Sony Digital Mavica (MVC-FD83) from 1999 that writes photos to 1.44MB floppy disks. I'm excited to start shooting with that thing and I will definitely post some pictures from it once I have a solid photo album to share.