Sony DCR-SR200C Hard Drive Camcorder Review

Reviewed Daniel MacKenzie

Introduction

Hard drive camcorders are relatively new on the market and there is a growing need for them. It is a bother to have to change tapes when you are in the middle of shooting something or just about to shoot something. It’s the same thing with DVD camcorders. You have to change the disc when it gets full. Unfortunately, right now, hard drive camcorders are expensive to the regular consumer and if you have your heart set on one, you have to make sure you get the right one.

Getting Started

It came with a couple of discs. One had a tutorial video of a weird cartoon talking to a couple on a vacation. This may just be my opinion, but I didn’t like it. It made me feel like I was a child (younger than me). The other was a software CD that contained Movie and Photo editing software. The movie software isn’t compatible with Mac, but the photo software is. It installed fine.

Using the Hardware

This camera is very easy to use. It even has a “simple mode” that you can use for simplified controls. It features 10X optical zoom with an additional 80X digital zoom. A rotatable wide screen LCD screen is used to see what you are filming. When the area around you has a lot of light, it makes the viewfinder hard to see. Sometimes you don’t know what you are filming. There also is a Night Shot mode. I had a lot of fun with this. It is used when there isn’t a lot of light around. An infrared sensor turns the video green but picks up more light. It looks like night vision. The built-in microphone is good if you are shooting home videos, but it picks up a lot of background noise. If you are looking for something more professional, you can purchase external microphones, which you can find at sony.com. Another feature is a built-in 4 megapixel camera if anyone wants an all-in-one camera. It comes with a video mode and a still picture mode but you can still take still pictures in video mode.

The camera is the perfect size. It fits in the palm of your hand and lets you reach all of the buttons you need. The LCD screen is a touch screen, which lets you access many of the camera’s features from one screen. It can rotate over 180 degrees, so you can adjust it to the way you like it.

Something interesting happened to me while I was reviewing this product; since it is a USB camcorder, iMovie doesn’t work with it. You can’t import directly into iMovie. So I e-mailed Sony’s customer support and they said that the camcorder was completely compatible with iMovie. I’m not sure what he meant by “compatible” but you can’t import directly. Eventually, I got the video into iMovie using an analog/digital converter and the camera’s preview mode. I had a lot of trouble. Another way you might be able to get the video on to the computer is having the Mac think the camera is a regular USB hard drive and extracting your video that way. Either way, it’s a pain.

Conclusion

Overall, this is a great camcorder if you have Windows. Its ease of use and video quality make it a good buy, but I would not suggest it to any Mac user. I was disappointed that the compatibility was so poor. The only major improvement that Sony can make to the product is making it usable with Apple computers.

Recommendation

A beginner to seasoned user would find this camera useful. But you should have a Windows computer or a Windows partition on your computer (Boot Camp, Parallels, etc.)