Sony DCR-TRV240 Digital8 Camcorder

There are a wealth of features, many controlled by a menu system on the LCD screen. This helps keep the number of buttons down but can be tiresome to navigate. Getting started is easy, everything comes set to automatic, just pop in a tape and away you go. The camera boasts a remarkable level of zoom, a healthy 25x optical backed by digital zoom that extends this to 700x. At higher levels the picture degrades considerably though and you are advised to keep the digital zoom within reasonable levels. Usefully, the display indicates when you've exhausted the power of the optical zoom and are about to move to digital zoom. The zoom control reacts to pressure, right down to a gentle creep. There's little else to do for easy shooting. There's a manual back light button and exposure control. Other functions need to be changed via the menu between shots. It has 16:9 support which simply cuts strips off the top and bottom of the image so that when replayed on a wide-screen television the image fills the screen. This does of course cut back the image resolution a little. It can also take stills, fitting over 500 on a tape, though the quality of these do not make it a sufficient replacement for a high-quality digital camera.

Battery life is enough for a day trip perhaps but spare or better high-capacity batteries are a wise investment. A full charge takes an hour and a quarter and is good for about an hour's continuous use. If you can resist using the LCD you might get an extra half an hour. High capacity stamina batteries are separately available that can provide up to 10 hours use.

Another interesting feature is the time lapse function enabling you to film flowers opening and so forth. The Super NightShot mode offers a green-hued recording in darkness thanks to an infrared lamp below the lens. A multitude of buttons can be daunting, but after a while you begin to wish the camera had more to offer direct access to some of the features.

The edit modes include the ability to select scenes which is excellent if a little fiddly to use. It outputs and inputs analogue video either in composite or S-VHS and comes supplied with a composite lead and SCART converter but no S-VHS lead. Digital input and output is via iLink, also known as Firewire or DV-In/Out. There's also the ability to output video directly to a PC using a USB cable., enabling you to view them on your PC screen. It can even act as a analogue to digital converter, feeding the signal through the camera to another device.

The TRV240 is a sophisticated and capable camera with a impressive feature list that'll take considerable time to explore fully. Having tasted what can be done with a digital camcorder you won't ever want to go back to analogue.--Miles Berkeley