Sony, What are you playing at?

Having not looked at camcorder technology for a good while I have to say I was extremely disappointed today when I saw Sony’s current consumer line. They have pretty much discontinued their HDV camcorders to which I’m now willing to accept, AVCHD isn’t too bad to edit now that high performance processors have come down in price. Unfortunately though it seems Sony are going back to their old ways of not putting external microphone jacks onto consumer grade camcorders.

At the time of writing there is not one Sony solid state AVCHD camcorder that gives the option of an external microphone jack, my guess is that Sony want to sell more of their silly hot shoe microphones. I highly doubt that they are doing it to sell more professional camcorders, especially with the difference in price being at least £4000 – £6000 for a professional solid state camcorder.

It’s pretty common these days for consumer grade camcorders to be used in professional production environments, you see them used in broadcast all the time, for instance there used in Mythbusters, Survivorman, Bear Grylls, Deadliest Catch and many more. Even if a production had unlimited funds it’s not always practical to use professional camcorders, they can be too big and heavy for certain applications. So it’s not unreasonable for Sony to at least produce one solid state camcorder with a microphone jack!

First of all I would like to make it clear that I have nothing against Canon, I think they make great products but I generally prefer Sony due to the NP-FH batteries and “Night Shot” mode and honestly I think Sony has a little better build quality. However I’m pretty sure Sony will be losing a lot of its current HC7 / HC9 market share to Canon’s LEGRIA HF range.

So in the off chance that someone from Sony’s R&D team are reading this, please make at least one solid state camcorder with external microphone and headphone jacks!