A great prosumer HD Camcorder (Sony Handycam HDR-SR7E)

Member Name: 6heads

Product:	Sony Handycam HDR-SR7E
Date:	10/01/08 (519 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Quality, HDD rather than tape, zoom

Disadvantages: cost, fiddly touch screen

A high end HD camcorder that provides stunning quality HD to a 60gb HDD so it is easy to transfer all the captured videos to a pc.
The camcorder is in a glossy black casing covered with all the buttons you might expect on a camcorder, zoom, record, pause and so on. A beautifully designed camcorder with easy to use bright lcd screen.

The camcorder uses the latest HD media format AVCHD which is a compressed media format to make file sizes smaller. This is great as it means you can use HDD's rather than tape. On the downside however very little Video Editing PC software supports the format, but since the format is becoming popular this should change soon.
As I have come to expect from the countless HD camcorders I have come to own over the years the build quality is superb. Very ergonomic and easy to use, although the touch screen LCD may take some getting used to for someone who hasn't used sony touch screens before.

Another great feature is the option to switch between 16:9 and 4:3 as although no HD tvs are 4:3 it can add great effect if you are making a movie.

Connections:
- 2.5mm minijack
- Mini HDMI 1.3
- Also the camera is supplied with a dock that provides USB connectivity.

The camera can capture 8 hours at full resolution so should be plenty for a weekend away although for a two week holiday you might need to take a laptop and external HDD.

The camera also incorporates 10x optical zoom which will not lower the quality of image and allow the full 1080i resolution to capture images a long way away.
Overall a great camera for capturing those family moments although the touch screen might be hard to use for someone new to sonys.

Summary: Worth investing in over SD camcorders

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