Wanting to start to study filmmaking as a hobby, I was deperately looking for a digital camera that would not cost me an arm and a leg. Two months I have been looking.
This
camera actually came as a big surprise! For the price of a low-spec
DV camera, you actually get this top-spec one for the same price ! I got mine for £399. Including delivery :-)
The main reason why this camera is cheaper is that it doesn't use the mini-DV (or DV) tapes, but Digital-8 instead. That's right, it uses regular, cheap, 8mm tapes but records in Digital Video format on it. The actually mechanism is a lot more widespread, therefore cheaper, and the cost difference is reflected in the price of the camcorder ! Many thanks to Sony for that !
Quick word about
digital 8, it uses regular 8mm tapes, but at 4/3 the speed of a regular
8mm camcorder, enabling the picture to be saved in Digital video with two stereo audio tracks. Basically, a 90 minutes tape will last you 60 minutes in DV. There's also a Long Play mode that enables you to fit 120 minutes on a 90 minutes tape, but the difference of quality is quite noticeable. The camcorder's great at it enables you to record in Single Play, Long Play and Analog on a same tape, the system
switches automatically from on to the other. Again : Digital 8 and Analog 8 tapes ARE the same. It's just the camera changing the speed of the actual tape to store more information per frame.
Another advantage of digital 8 is that it is compatible with your regular analog 8mm tapes. That's right, you can play your old tapes back in this camcorder, and the quality's great too ! In summary, you can use 8mm and digital 8 in the same camcorder, using the same tapes. Digital-8 is not backwards compatible however (does not work in regular 8mm camcorders), thought you might want to be aware of that.
Feature wise, the camera comes will all features you would expect from a top spec camera : autofocus/manual focus,
25x optical zoom/70x-500x digital (although "
digital zoom" could be anything really), backlight compensation, white balance, supercolor mode, optical shutter speed.
In addition to that, great extra features :
Nighshot (
Infra-red like vision that works in 0 lux)
Super nightshot (very low obturation speed to make night shots look like day)
Digital stabiliser that works by "scanning" a bigger image in memory than the one you've got on the screen so you don't lose in resolution. This stabiliser actually WORKS, believe me
Crispy color
LCD screen, that you can rotate by 270 C.. You can rotate in such a way, that you can show the video feed forward, to whoever you're shooting.
Another basic LCD in the back of the LCD screen is there to review battery charge and TC when the camera is closed. It's silly, but I love this blue LCD tint, it's just plain cool.
The "
optical" viewfinder is actually another black and
white LCD with a lense to correct your vision if you're short/longsighted. Small feature but REALLY useful.
There are many other features, but I never got round understanding them all.
There is a super color mode that enables you to get perfect photographic colors, but then you only get 15 images per second... The advantage is that you can then reuse the video feed to extract photographs.
That's for the "optical" features. On a
digital point of view, this camera does pretty much anything that has been programmed into it : realtime color correction (6 presets like portrait, landscape, people, etc enable you to get the most out the colors.
You also get a "progressive" effect that enables you to get rid of the fields, however this is a digital effect and therefore isn't as good as a real progressive "and expensive" camera.
You can apply effects during playback as well, therefore you can record your "natural" and interlaced image, and then improve it later during playback.
Other less useful features include realtime digital effects like mosaic, negative, still image, flash, titling and other funny effects that you can use while filming your holidays, although I think it would be crime to film your holidays with this camera ... well if you do, you'll probably be able to sell your holidays on DVD as the quality is REALLY close to that, if not better. (we're talking DV quality here)
You can plug a vcr deck onto the camera using the audio/
video cable to create you own montages, as the camera has a
build in virtual editing deck hidden somewhere in the menus. I didn't get round to play with it, but apparently if you add a
memory card to the camera, it can reorganise your clips on the tape, or something like that. I'm not certain to know how it works, but it's probably something you want to look into. You don't need a
computer to do your editing anymore. Most editing on the camera is done using the provided
remote control, so all you have to do is plug your camera on a TV (or not) and edit playing with your remote... Great stuff.
I am just going to mention this as some ciao readers might reproach it to me if I "forget" about it, but, yes you can take still pictures with the camera, and store them either on a 8mm tape frame by frame, or a sony memory stick. But if you want to take photographs, you'd better off buying a £400 digital camera rather that using a camcorder for this purpose.
The camera supports 16:9 format, although it's a "virtual" 16:9 format like most of the other camcorders. The only trick is.... even though the camera does not have the lense for recording "true" 16:9, it compensates greatly by recording MORE lines in 16:9 mode. As said earlier, the camera actually is "scanning" a larger image than the one saved on tape, and therefore the 16:9 mode is a true 16:9 as far as the ratio and the resolution is respected. Just that you need to move back quite a bit to get a full 16:9 frame as the camera doesn't have an anamorphic lense. In summary, the 16:9 is a lot better than most camera, even though you don't get the (expensive) lense that goes with it.
The eject system of the tape deck is electrical, and that's bril, as you know that the camera won't suffer the wear and tear of changing tapes as much as other cameras.
It's bril to see to camera opening itself when pressing the eject button and doubling in size when the tape comes out.
The camera is fully DV/Firewire compliant, and you get the quality you would expect from a DV camera. The deck is precise up to half a frame, and can be remote-controlled by the computer. The quality is brilliant, no complaints.
You get an audio/video in/out that is SVHS, composite and Scart compatible, therfore, it's easy enough to plug the camera onto the tv. Only one thing to reproach : 16:9 footage looks terrible on a 4:3 TV as the camera does not let you correct the aspect ratio. Well, most recent tvs have this 16:9 letterboxed format but it would have been nice to be able to do the "letter-boxing" in the camera, when you ouput the video to a vcr... Oh well, I had to find at least one bad thing to say about this camera :-)
The internal microphone is great, maybe a bit too sensitive to changes in volume (sometimes the sound *bursts* too loud, but at least you never get those horrible saturation scratches). The microphone is stereo as well, which provides a great spacial sound. Drawback : the microphone cannot cope in windy environments. Oops, another bad thing to say about this camera :-) Well, if you plan to use the camera for holiday movies, it's more than
fine, but if you want to use it for amateur filmmaking, you'll need a separate microphone anyway... so it's not really a problem.
Talking about external microphones... the camera enables you to dub a second soundtrack using an external microphone, and do the mixing between the two tracks later, or on your computer. Quite useful. You also get the classic headphone jack.
The integrated speaker is of good quality and loud enough for you to show everyone the footage you just recorded.
The camera comes with a 180mins SONY INFOLITHIUM battery, which lasts for quite a while really... you can get a battery that lasts up to 10 hours. This camera saves power by using loads of little tricks, such as turning of the viewfinder when you open the LCD, etc. A great thing about this camera is that it doesn't tell you how much of the battery is left to charge (like 59% for example), but instead tells you how long you will be able to shoot on average with the current charge (instead of 59% the camera will read 105 mins for example.). You still get the battery icon showing you, in quarters how much of the battery has been charged, but it's brilliant to actually know that you will be able to shoot for XX minutes with the current charge. Well, at least it means more to me.
In summary this camera is brilliant, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to start doing short films and learn all about filmmaking or if you are really picky about how their holiday videos shall look. The quality is broadcast quality, and Sony really has delivered one of its best products. A top spec, for a widely accepted media (digital 8mm), for a ....
low price!
** ADDITIONS **
I completely forgot to mention the size of the camera and the weight...
I was looking for a camera that was not too small, I really hate these
handycams as they are too light, and the image tends to be shaky..
This camera is about 2/3 more the size of a regular "handycam", and weiths about 1 kilogram. I can't get hold of the manual so can't give you the full specs, just click on the click to sony's website to read them. But basically, the camera fits great in one hand and is not too heavy. Just heavy enough to enable a stable picture, and even if you're not a sure hand you can activate the digital stabiliser to come to the rescue.
The camera is big enough to actually feel like a camera, but small enough to fit in a small bag. I am still impressed by the amount of features this camera has, and the fact they managed to keep the size down !! (the lcd and the tape mechanism actually are actually taking half the width of the camera!!)
Top spec for a low price 
