Category — Sony

If you’ve been chomping at the bit to try straight to memory stick high definition recording, you might want to give the Sony HDR-CX7 1080i camcorder a try. In addition to it’s much anticipated memory stick recording feature, the Sony HDR-CX7 includes a Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T lens, and Steady Shot image stabilization technology.

The 1080i’s swiveling screen, a 2.7 inch wide Clear Photo LCD Plus, includes touch screen technology for easy menu adjustments. The camcorder swivel screen adjusts to almost any angle, so it looks like you’ll have comfortable on-screen viewing while you record.

Weighing in at just 15.9 ounces, the Sony HDR-CX7 1080i includes 20X digital zoom, 9 shooting programs, and special effects capabilities including sepia, pastel, monotone, and old movie.

Yesterday, while watching Michael Phelps win some gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, I wondered to myself what camcorders were being used to broadcast the event.

Turns out Sony tricked out NBC’s crew with its new XDCAM system, which included 30 PDW-700 camcorders and 170 PDW-HD1500 recording decks.

“It’s rewarding to be an integral part of one of the major HD television sports events in the world,” said Alec Shapiro, senior vice president for sales and marketing, Sony Electronics’ Broadcast and Production Systems Division. “The broadcast requirements for the Games continually increase in scope and complexity, and are a perfect showcase for our HD production technology. This year, Sony’s new 2/3-inch XDCAM HD system, as well as all our proven HD equipment, will play a major role in the coverage of the Games, bringing viewers at home an unforgettable experience.”

That’s quite a professional feat to be the major sponsor of the Olympic games! The image and sound were flawless. It’s like the entire event is one big commercial for Sony professional camcorders. Panasonic, Canon, and JVC have comparable hd systems for broadcasting, but having the Olympics as part of your company reel certainly must give Sony a leg up over its competitors.

Source: Market Watch

Online video communities are chock full of digital videos of dancing babies. Parents + digital camcorders can sometimes turn into a dangerous situation.

They become totally addicted to filming their little bundles of joys (can ya blame them, tho?). A video of their first steps quickly turns into 500 clips of the kid dancing away to a leap frog fridge dj!

Good thing there are tons of affordable camcorders on the market, so all parents can learn how to capture family videos. If you know someone who is expecting and is in the market for a compact camcorder, I’d recommend any entry level flash memory camcorder by Panasonic, JVC, or Sony.

JVC Everio GZ-MG555 HDD Camcorder

Sony Handycam DCR-SR200 40GB HDD Camcorder

Panasonic Palmcorder SDR-H18 HDD/SD Camcorder

While researching digital camcorders, I noticed that the product descriptions always play up the optical and digital zoom. But what’s the difference between the two types? Is one more important than the other?

From Cnet:

“As with digital still cameras, the optical zoom of a camcorder determines the number of times a camera can magnify an image through its lenses. Take note that this is different from digital zoom which simply takes a portion of an image and enlarges it, resulting in a loss of quality. Optically zoomed images enlarge the picture without sacrificing quality.

Bearing this in mind, it is important to look at the optical zoom power rather than the digital zoom rating on the camcorder to determine the actual amount of zoom you need. In fact, we don’t even recommend using digital zoom since it affects the quality of the video capture. Instead, look out for at least a 10x optical zoom lens which is commonly found on most camcorders today and would generally be more than sufficient for most users.”

Well, it looks like the optical zoom seems to be the most important. Optical zoom refers to the ability to preserve the image, while digital zoom is just the basic zoom capability of the device without regard to image quality.

Most camcorders have a optical zoom between 10x and 42x. And even better, many affordable camcorders have high zoom capabilities. Take this Sony DCR-DVD610 for example. It has a 40x optical zoom, while only costing around $294 - $352 bucks.

I knew there tons of Hellboy fans, but who woulda thought there was enough to warrant two movies. But when you think about it, it has been a popular dark horse comic since 1997!

Luckily for Guillermo Del Toro, this provides a somewhat guaranteed audience for his Hellboy movies. The first movie did alright at the box office, but was by no means a Spiderman size success. And as such, I had almost totally forgotten about the sequel until I saw the Hellboy 2: The Golden Army trailer.

Del Toro seems to love sharing production news as he goes. There’s even video segments on the design process of HBII that were shot on set with a digital camcorder. I wonder what type of camcorder was used? You could definitely use a Sony HDR-SR12 since it’s compact size is perfect for grabbing interviews on set, all in HD quality.