Camcorder Digital Cameras

This is one of the best camcorders in the market today and I would certainly recommend it to anyone plotting to buy a Mini-DV camcorder

Positive factors:

- Very small and simple to hold with one hand. Can be easily attached even to a mini-tripod with ease.

- Brilliant widescreen video and hi-fi audio. Your videos finally get that “Hollywood” feel when you shoot movies in 16:9 ratio (widescreen format). Even if you don’t have a widescreen TV currently, you will very soon have one as more and more people are buying them. So its better to buy this camcorder and shoot in 16:9 format to delight in your movies later in widescreen format.

- Includes widescreen rotatable LCD so what you see is what you get when you shoot in 16:9 ratio (widescreen format)

- Excellent battery life. One extra battery is enough. You can easily manage a day’s worth of shooting with two batteries before recharging them again

- Includes docking station making it simpler to connect to computer or TV. If you have a excellent computer with a firewire port, please buy a firewire cable to connect the camcorder to your computer. You can download your movie in brilliant clarity in .avi format and edit it as required

- Make sure to change the audio setting to 16 bit (instead of the default 12 bit) for very excellent hi-fi audio

- Touchscreen menu system is fantastic. You don’t have to search for any buttons as they are all available in the touchscreen menu itself.

- 12X optical zoom is more than sufficient for ordinary home videos. Anything more produces more “shaking” and would necessiate the use of a tripod. When you shoot without a tripod, 12X is the best zoom you can achieve without worrying about shaky videos

- 1 MP widescreen still photo. You can use this feature if you forgot to bring your digital camera. The photo clarity is not excellent so please don’t expect fantastic shots. Since the photo is in 16:9 format, you can take panoramic photos and cover more people in group shots

- Nightshot: Cool feature that records using infrared light. Useful for shooting at night as you can record a video even in 100% darkness

- Color widescreen viewfinder – Very useful when you are running down on batteries and need to use the viewfinder. The color widescreen viewfinder gives an brilliant picture and is as excellent as the LCD in clarity

Negative factors:

- Outdoor videos especially in bright sunlight are overexposed. So please adjust the white balance when shooting outdoors. Add the white-balance menu to your shortcuts so that you can easily access it and return to default once you start shooting indoors

- Sensitive microphone may pick up button clicks (best to turn off the button click “beep” sound).

Notes:

- Use a fresh cassette after recording 2 or 3 times on the same cassette. The head tends to get dirty if you re-record on the same cassette more than 3 times

- You can edit movies in Windowx XP using Windows Movie Maker, but beware it does not support 16:9 ratio video. Hence your videos look hideous as you shot them in 16:9 but Movie Maker converted it to 4:3. Invest in Pinnacle Software version 9 or 10 for better movie editing capabilities. Pinnacle is the only software, I am aware of, that preserves teh 16:9 ratio. Even Roxio could not allow 16:9 format.

- You can also invest in wide-angle lens as it gives brilliant coverage
Rating: 5 / 5

The Sony DCR-HC46 is a terrific mid-range digital camcorder. It has a more than adequate 12x optical zoom (any more and even image stabilization won’t remove the jitters). There are quick access buttons on the body of the camera, and a ton of features in the on-screen menus (available only on the swing-out LCD viewfinder). Using your fingers on these menus is much simpler than I thought they would be, and most of those features are for infrequent occasions. In addition to the LCD viewfinder, there is a color traditional viewfinder (missing on many up-scale models like the DCR-SRxx line of hard drive camcorders), which is fantastic when outdoors where the sun can wash out the LCD. We really appreciate the Handycam Station that makes connections to computers and TVs a breeze while charging the battery. Now that really is “handy.”

Technically, the image capturing technology is the same as the hard drive-based DCR-SR80. But, MiniDV recording technology does not compress the digital images where hard disk and Mini DVD technologies do. Therefore when you transfer the data to your computer for editing, you avoid the uncompress process required by the latter two technologies. When you make the resulting DVD, that is the first and only compression to hit your video, meaning you get better image quality.

The cons? Well, the included software is woefully lacking. I’d like to author DVDs, but ImageMixer is a Video CD authoring tool. And VCD is so ten-years-ago. And the built-in 1 megapixel camera is truly a joke.
Rating: 5 / 5

I have been a fan of Sony for a long time. In fact, I bought this camera to replace my Sony Handycam Hi8 that was 11 years ancient and still worked fantastic.

This camera is certainly the right buy. The only reason I did not rate the camera a 5 is for two things:

1. The location of the zoom button is a small awkward under your finger. Probably because the camera is very small, but it probably could have been placed a bit better. It does get a small uncomfortable.

2. The battery life of the standard battery is poor at best. You really need to upgrade the battery if you want and reasonable amount of time.

Other than that, the camera is fantastic. It works very nicely, takes very sharp, accurate pictures, and the color representation is fantastic. I read some other reviews about some sort of “blue cast” on the image, but I really don’t know what they were referring to.

I looked at JVC, Panasonic, and some others, and even though this camera has 1 CCD (instead of 3 like others are touting) I reckon this was a fantastic buy for the price.

Rating: 4 / 5