When digital cameras first edged their way into the affordable market a few years ago, they made quite a splash. Imagine - being able to print out photos without sending your film to be processed. Better yet, zap them to others via e-mail, or even help sell your products by uploading images onto your Web site.

Now that's old news. It takes a bit more for us to sit up and take notice these days - something like the MVC-CD1000, the latest offering in Sony's Mavica family. Introduced last September at list price of $1,299, it's the first digital camera to have a built-in recordable CD (CD-R) drive.

The CD1000 records onto 156-megabyte CDs that are only three inches wide, but work like regular CDs and can be read by any PC (though Mac owners must use the included software kit to help read the photos).

The special CDs cost about $4 each (five come with the camera) and can hold 160 high-quality 1600x1200 images at a time, at a cost equal to that of four rolls of 36-exposure film, according to Sony. You can store up to 1,800 images in low-resolution mode (640x480).

On-the-job use

Tom Redhead, owner of Tom Redhead Enterprises Inc., Fort St. John, British Columbia, Canada, bought his new Mavica in September 2000 to replace his original Mavica (the MVC-FD7), on which he had logged some 8,000 photos.

Redhead, who uses the camera to log phases of construction jobs for his third-party inspection company for pipeline construction sites, says he appreciates the freedom of being able to have essentially unlimited storage. "I have a minimum of 10 discs with me when I leave for a job site," he says.

The pictures give the engineers he works with - "in most cases they're 800-900 miles from the [job] location" - a better idea of what they are dealing with.

He also uses his Mavica to help record the site contractor's safety-related due diligence. "Many times, when [an incident] happens, it's hard for the contractor to prove he was working hard at his safety program," Redhead says. "Pictures will generally help him out." He cites a recent example of how his pictures were able to prove that the crew had been wearing safety glasses when concern had been raised that they had not.

As Redhead and other new CD1000 owners have noted, though, the camera does have some limitations. For one thing, it uses CD-R technology, not CD-RW. That means, once you burn photos onto the CD, you can't record over that particular CD again.

And at just over 2 pounds, "It's definitely not pocket-sized," says Steve Sanders, founder of camera-enthusiast site Steve's Digicams (www.steves-digicams.com).

So far, other digital camera manufacturers have remained quiet on the subject of adding CD-R capabilities to their models, according to Michelle Lampmann, market research analyst with InfoTrends Research Group, Inc. Because of this, Lampmann doesn't expect the CD1000 prices to drop any time soon, adding that Sony isn't really known for slashing its computer hardware prices.