Cameras: Sony DCRSR80E HDD Handycam – 54

So you’ve made the excruciatingly difficult decision to immortalise your holiday memories and/or the chaos created by your rebellious toddler on a hard drive-based camcorder. Taking a deep breath, you forgo the bang-for-your-buck of MiniDV and convenience of 8cm DVDs. And why? Because you have achieved a state of consumer electronics nirvana in the knowledge that you’ll never have to buy, lug around or lose any disposable media again. Ever.

Up until fairly recently on the camcorder timeline, a JVC Everio would have been your only choice for an HDD (hard disk drive) cam. But first to market isn’t always best, and Sony will definitely be making JVC pay attention with their HDD offering, the Handycam DCRSR80E.

To the first and most obvious selling point – a massive 60 Gigabytes of storage, giving you 880 minutes of video using the cam’s highest setting and almost three times that using the lowest setting. This is some serious capacity and of course means you can go even longer without having to archive to your PC.

Of course huge storage doesn’t count for much if your image quality isn’t up to scratch but in this department the SR80E does not disappoint. For a camcorder in its price range, the images contained an impressive amount of definition and colour saturation. The ‘noise’ often associated with MPEG-2 image compression was noticeably less than on a similarly priced JVC Everio model. The Handycam’s mega-pixel still images were adequate but for those truly magic moments you should stick to your digital still camera or consider upgrading to the 3-megapixel Handycam DCRSR100E.

The SR80 doesn’t have its own video light, but shooters can connect a light on top of the unit via the ‘Active Interface Shoe’, which will also take a flash or external wireless microphone. The autofocus and autoexposure are very responsive and Sony’s SteadyShot image stabilisation performs well unless you’re zoomed all the way in (don’t forget your tripod). And for those covert missions under cover of darkness there’s always the Nightshot Plus infrared mode.

Something that may sharply divide potential SR80E owners is Sony’s touch-screen interface. Personally I find it a very intuitive way of navigating around the cam’s settings, although the small LCD screen can feel a little confined and will of course end up with your fingerprints all over it. Manual setting enthusiasts will enjoy the SR80E’s features, which include spot focus and six preprogrammed autoexposure modes, but may be frustrated by having to obscure part of the screen to operate them. Obviously, it’s advisable to have a good play with the touch screen before handing over your cash.

So overall, the SR80E is a worthwhile addition to the HDD cam market. ‘Set and forget’ shooters who rely on automatic settings should find it ideal.

JUSTIN REDDING

Sony DCRSR80E HDD Handycam $1799

Contact: sony.co.nz

SPECIFICATIONS

Dimensions: (W x H x D): 69mm x 71mm x 117mm
Lens: F = 3.0 mm to 45 mm, Optical zoom: 12x, Digital zoom 800x
LCD Monitor: 6.9cm (Aspect ratio 16:9)
Speaker: Monaural
Hard Disk: 60 GB
Storage: 9999 stills and up to 40 hours of video depending on quality setting.
CCD: 1 Megapixel
Recording/Playback format: Video: MPEG-2. Audio: Dolby Digital (2 Ch)
Weight: Approx 400g including battery. 360g without.

PROS

Huge storage capacity
Good HDD video quality for the price
Quick autofocus and autoexposure
Compact light

CONS

Small LCD
Touch screen an acquired taste

VERDICT

A worthwhile addition to the HDD cam market

Aesthetics: 90%
Performance: 92%
Features: 95%
Functionality: 85%
Price Value: 95%

Overall: 91%