For the past month I have been trying to decide on a new Consumer camcorder and it’s certainly not been easy, in fact I still haven’t decided 100 percent but I thought I’d write about my decision making process for those who may be interested.   So which two camcorders have I narrowed it down to and why?

The Panasonic HDC-SD700 £652.40 at Amazon
I have to admit that I have never really been attracted to any of Panasonics camcorders in the past however having seen the specification of this one I became very interested. So what features does it have? 1920×1080 50p, yes you read that correctly 50p! 28 Mbps AVCHD (which is outside of the 24Mbps specification for AVCHD) and best of all (for me at least) is the manual control of this camera, I have never seen so much manual control on a consumer HD camcorder, EVER! It has Manual Focus, White Balance, Shutter Speed, Iris and Mic Level controls, all controlled by a Lens Ring yes you also read that correctly, a Lens Ring on a consumer camcorder!  It also has Mic and Headphone jacks, this so far is my ultimate camcorder.

So all pretty positive up to this point, what are the negative points? Well for me there are a few. First off it’s the fact that this camera has a cooling fan located behind the LCD screen, Panasonic WHY did you do this? In all the sample footage I have seen from this camera so far I can hear Fan noise. The second problem has got to be the build quality, it looks and feels very cheap and I’m not sure it would survive very well in the bottom of a backpack. The third problem is only having one SDHC memory card slot making seamless relay recording impossible. Fourth problem for me is the accessory shoe, Although I’m really happy it has a standard size cold shoe it uses a stupid bracket that sits on the side of the camcorder, this can easily get lost. And finally perhaps more of a Neutral comment is that the 28Mbps and 50p can be a problem for some editing applications so the benefits may not mean much to some.

So is this the camcorder for me? No it certainly could have been if it didn’t have the cooling fan.

The Sony HDR-CX550VE £973.30 at Amazon
I briefly mentioned this camcorder in my New Sony & Canon Camcorders post back in April, it has only just become available here. And the features of the CX550V are 1920×1080 50i 24Mbps AVCHD, It has Manual Focus, White Balance, Shutter Speed, Iris & Exposure HOWEVER you can’t have manual control of Shutter Speed, Iris & Exposure at the same time which is more than a little disappointing. The manual controls are controlled via the touch screen and with a small thumb dial by the lens. It does have both Mic & Headphone jacks which are something Sony hate to include for reasons only known to them. Though seen as gimmicky by some I’m a big fan of Sony’s Nightshot feature so of course I’m glad to see it’s been included. It also has 64GB of internal solid state storage; personally I’m not too fussed about it. A nice feature though is one called Direct Copy which allows you to copy the internal memory to an external hard drive using a USB cable adaptor. Another feature worth mentioning is the built in GPS on CX550V models, this allows geo-tagging of video.

So now for the cons on this camera, as mentioned above the Manual controls are rather limited, though it does have a combination SDHC/memory stick slot, I would of liked have seen dual slots for seamless relay recording, however I admit it’s not too critical on this camcorder with it having 64GB of built in storage although another annoying thing is that the card slot is at the bottom of the camera! Sony we do use tripods you know! There are currently a lot of people complaining about a “Blue dot” problem with footage taken in the sun, this is purely a lens flare problem which can easily be solved with a lens hood, and this is to be expected on a camera with such a wide angle lens. The reason this is a problem is because Sony didn’t include a lens hood! Another inconvenience of this camera is Sony’s non standard size hot shoe; we don’t want your crap expensive accessories! So you’ll need an adaptor for this.

So is this the camcorder for me? Yes!

Back in September I posted Sony, What are you playing at? in which I moaned about Sony not putting external microphone jacks onto their consumer camcorders. Well it seems since I posted that blog entry, there is now a consumer Sony camcorder with both headphone and a microphone jack! I’d like to think my rant had something to do with this but I highly doubt it. Perhaps they were indeed losing sales to Canon, I know of a few people that certainly switched because of this. So what model is it? It’s the Sony HDR-CX550.

Another thing Sony have changed that I’m really happy with is they seem to slowly be moving away from their stupid propriety Memory Stick format. Yes you read that right, I have come across a few Sony products recently that accept both Memory Stick & and SDHC cards. So far I know that they have released an SDHC SxS Adaptor for the XDCAM EX Cameras and the new NXCAM range has a Universal card slot that accepts both Memory Stick & SDHC cards, as does the consumer HDR-CX550. Also after a quick look it seems a whole range of the Cyber-shot range also takes both types of media. I’m guessing they’ll have products that use both for the next few years and slowly ditch memory stick, but that’s just my personal prediction (and hopes).

What else is new from Sony in the camcorder department then? The Sony HXR-MC50, it’s just recently been announced and will likely be available in July. It’s being described as an “Ultra Compact Professional AVCHD Camcorder” but in reality it’s probably just the consumer HDR-CX550 with an included external microphone and different firmware. It’s a bit like old HVR-A1E which was a compact professional HDV camcorder. Unfortunately though from what I can make out so far from photographs from NAB the new HXR-MC50 seems to lack XLR inputs, instead using the 3.5mm Mic Jack. A few members on the forums at DVinfo.net seem to be bothered about the lack of a full size focus ring. But on such a small camera screen manual focus is difficult anyway.

So what else is new? Canon has finally gone solid state with their professional camcorders. And from the looks of things you can tell they’ve been watching the competition closely for the last couple of years because they might just have made the best solid state camcorder in existence. The Canon XF300 and XF305, they are pretty much the same camera, just the XF305 includes HD-SDI, Timecode and Genlock at a couple grand extra I would guess).

The Canon XF300 main features:

• MPEG-2 MXF recording to CF cards at up to 50Mbps (4:2:2)
• Comprehensive NLE support
• 18x wide angle Canon L-series lens
• 3 x 1/3 type Full HD Canon CMOS sensors
• 10.1 cm LCD (1.23M dots); 1.3 cm (1.55M dots) EVF
• Variable frame rates

Yes that’s right, 4:2:2 at 50Mbps, this should please the BBC! Yes its only 1/3 CMOS but apparently Canon has worked miracles with it so wait to see footage from it before looking elsewhere. I was a bit annoyed at it recording to Compact Flash cards at first, however it does make sense really, we are already starting to see 64GB and even 128GB compact flash cards on the market and yet the biggest SDHC card available is 32GB, not to mention they are a hell of a lot faster and arguably a more robust card.

It’s due for release in June and I expect Sony will be worried because on paper it’s better the XDCAM EX range. We’ll have to wait and see.

I have just heard about a new professional Sony camcorder, not much information has been released yet but it seems to be a solid state version of the Z5 HDV camcorder, and I’m extremely pleased to see that it records to Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo rather than the very expensive XDCAM EX cards. The format goes under the name of NXCAM, which from what I can make out seems to be a new name for their consumer AVCHD format but they have just increased the bit rate from 16Mbps to 24Mbps. It’s a product that I’m actually very excited about and I can see it being a very popular product, possibly more popular then the Sony Z1 was.

As of yet the only available information is from Sony Japan, you can view the translated page here.

EDIT1: More information here

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!

A while back I posted HD Camcorders and Silly Formats in which I mentioned the HVR-DR60 & HVR-MRC1K HDD / CF recorders for HDV camcorders. Unfortunately these are very expensive units and are far out of the budget range for the average consumer. However after posting about the Lenovo S10E it suddenly occurred to me that this netbook would make an ideal direct to disk recorder with a couple upgrades and the addition of a Firewire Expresscard. Though I have not personally tried it, this netbook should be more then capable of capturing a single HDV feed.
Lenovo IdeaPad S10E £279.99
Crucial 2GB, DDR2 PC2-5300 Memory Module £19.54
Seagate ST9320421AS 320GB Momentus 7200RPM 16MB 2.5″ HDD £63.23
Belkin USB 2.0 and FireWire ExpressCard £56.33
So for a total of £419.09 you’ve got a hard disk recorder, with the bonus of a decent size preview monitor. Obviously the recording time is limited by the battery life of the netbook, though you can get additional batteries or power it externally. Also not to forget, you’ve also got a fully functional netbook out of it too.

It’s not that often that a manufacturer releases a product that gets me excited, the way technology is advancing nothing is coming as a surprise to me these days. However today when I came across the new Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T90 I was quite surprised with its features, the camera starts shipping mid April at a RRP of £280. It measures just W93.6xH57.2xD15mm and it features 12.1 Megapixels, 4x Optical Zoom, 720p HD Video and a 16:9 3″ LCD Screen. The bit that got me excited was the 720p 9Mbps HD video, obviously it’s not going to be the best quality video in the world but I’m sure it will out perform many AVCHD camcorders that are out there, 1280×720 9Mbps video is just outstanding for the cameras size.

Due to how compact this camera is, I would highly consider carrying it pretty much everywhere with me, as much as you say you’ve got a camera on your mobile phone, it’s crap, and always will be, the day there is a good phone camera on the market, it will be a camera with a built in phone, not a phone with a built in camera!

I’ve been a fan of Sony’s Cyber-shot cameras for years now, pretty much everyone that’s asked me for camera advice for a compact camera has gone out and bought a Sony Cyber-shot, there great value for money and very reliable.