Sony DCR-TRV16 Mini DV Camcorder

Secondly, the "Super Steady-Shot" image stabiliser is a delight to use. It's not just a means of reducing camera shake, it's actually intelligent too. That means it works seamlessly and, unlike some rival's image stabilising systems, the TRV16 holds a rock-steady shot even during the start of a pullout from full zoom... a feat that the equivalent JVC or Panasonic cannot equal.

Thirdly, and most importantly, I like the picture quality. Some people would have you believe that all Mini-DV cameras are the same in this respect due to the fact that they all work in the digital domain. Let me tell you now, they are very, very wrong. The Sony produces the best picture I have ever seen from any single-chip 1/4" CCD and it also handles tricky lighting situations which would floor lesser rivals.

Finally, I would say that this camera simply has all the feature that count, while it omits the gimmicks that don't count. At the price it's a steal. A year ago you would have been paying upwards of £900 for a camera of this quality.

The only down-side I can think of is that it doesn't have DV-in enabled, due to an arcane and idiotic European law that classes a camcorder with video inputs as a VCR, and taxes it higher accordingly. That's more of a niggle than a major hassle though, as it's fairly easy to enable the DV-in by less-than clandestine means.

Overall, at this price the Sony TRV16 sets up a fence that few of its competitors will be able to jump over. I Love it.

This model is packed with features which you can brief yourself on the Sony websites Film and TV on a professional basis. I have worked as a professional cameraman so I appreciate good quality stuff. This may not offer professionals everything but it'll please everyone else. Professionals will appreciate higher picture quality, but regular consumers, quite honestly probably won't notice too much of a difference in picture quality but its there, believe me! Has better resolution especially when you're editing and using it on HDTV.

Professionals will also appreciate the 'ring focus' that performs admirably in manual mode and easier to get to while recording. As oppose to the old clumsy wheel-selector focus button. I never use auto focus I prefer manual focusing everything, but for average consumers auto focus performs fine. One thing I would have preferred is the ability to make the viewfinder Black and White, its much harder to rack focus on a color viewfinder. Don't be sucked in by 1000000000000X Digital Zooms, it has absolutely no use for me and it really guts the picture if you use it, always use optical zoom or get closer to the subject.

Don't be fooled by the small tapes that are just a little bigger than answer machine micro tapes. They can hold almost twice as much detail as VHS tape, but the trade-off is that 60sp, 90lp is as much tape that is going to fit on it. But I hear they are planning on building tapes that can store more minutes. These MiniDV tapes are ideal for long storage, they have better resiliency than analog storage mediums, VHS, 8mm, C-VHS etc.

Audio quality is MUCH higher than any analog camcorder. A nice feature allows you to squeeze two stereo soundtracks, so you can dub audio onto your recordings i.e. narrations using a slightly lower quality setting (12 Bit), there's a higher 16 Bit quality that allows the best possible audio (Stereo) recording but no dubbing over 16Bit. Good!

If you're using computer-editing, Premiere for instance, I'd suggest using 16 BIT audio. You wont be able to dub narration with your camera but on the computer you can add as many soundtracks as you want, narration, sound effects, music etc with better control and gaining best quality audio of all sound tracks.

Incidentally my former camera that is now taking the backseat to this new one was an Analog Sony Video Camcorder. The newer model is lighter, smaller, has faster response mechanisms in VCR mode.
Mind you I still use the old Analog one, the new camera has A/V inputs and I can dub my old Camcorder material, not to mention VHS tapes, or anything analog. Then I can dump footage on my computer, edit, and export to it to what ever I want. A neat thing to do is to convert all your VHS tapes into VCD/DVD's.. save you a lot of space! Another reason not to throw your old camera is that you can set up a two angle shooting method for anything. Then when you edit all your material on the computer (best editing method, otherwise you do a lot of fast forwarding, rewinding and math with analog methods) you can do some nice cutting between two angles.

I have only tried a handful of features. Firewire connection is the best for editing. Be warned you will need a fast (PIII, PIV equivalent or more) computer, big (use 13 gigs for half an hour of footage as a guide) fast Hard Disk and at the very least 128 Ram. A good editing package is the aforementioned Adobe Premiere 6.5. The camera comes with a bundle of decent transition effects that you will have to plan and execute on location, but I would suggest if you can, use the camera to capture you raw footage and then add all your transition in Adobe Premiere 6.5. This saves you from having to think and plan transitions while recording. It helps you distribute your projects, burn your home videos on CDs.

A good method for exporting your stuff is to keep your raw footage on a MiniDV tape. Then capture it on your computer, edit it, then export it to a different MiniDV (for storage and use as a master). You may choose to also make a CD right away. From that master miniDV make VHS tapes. And should you decide later on to make CDs you always have your master miniDV tapes to reload on the computer should, so you don't have to keep those big captured original files on your computer. And you have the original raw footage on yet another MiniDV just incase you want to rework your stuff! That's how I do my stuff.

The very clear LCD screen is neat, something I've never used before. I think its clearer than the viewfinder, clear enough for me to do some accurate follow-focus. It allows me to get nice high camera angles and do some nifty moves.

It has some features for night lighting that I haven't tried but I always find, and quite obvious, that the more ambient light there is the better the picture is. Otherwise you get grain; I don't know how this deals with dim photography. If I do dark shooting I go manual on exposure so that the camera doesn't gain and grain up the picture, use external lighting rigs whenever I do night shooting.

Buy it!