This year's new camcorder models from Sony and Panasonic are focusing in on improved light sensors while slowly integrating other du jour features of the tech world: full menu controls through a touch screen, and increased portability.
No, they haven't made these HD camcorders truly pocketable yet, but they've done the next best thing. They've made them look like soda cans. Let's just hope they're not full of empty promises and fizzle out. Let's check out the specs:
Sony's new soda-sized HDR-CX12 Handycam records video at 1920 x 1080, takes 10-megapixel photos (on proprietary memory cards), and has an improved CMOS sensor that enhances the video clarity. It also has a full touch LCD that is used to control all the recording features.
But what is most interesting about this one is that it includes a so-called 'Smile Shutter' feature that takes photos at the same time that you are recording. Basically, it intuitively snoops on your smiles and snaps away. Unfortunately, this probably won't distinguish between real smiles and the fake smiles that are the custom at most of the Dumas family dinners.
The other main feature we're looking for is the quality of the sound recording. Consumer video cameras are notorious for sounding canned and unnatural, but this one has Dolby Digital 5.1-channel surround sound recording and a zoom mic.
Panasonic's new cameras, the flash memory HDC-SD100 and the hybrid
HDC-HS100, offer something else: better control and image color reproduction. Both of these are AVCHD camcorders with a 3MOS sensor system, and like the Sony camera, they also record to an SD card. The hybrid includes a 60 GB hard drive on top of that, which is pretty big size, but only about half of the best capacity available from rival
Canon.
Both models include the tri-MOS system, which assigns a specific color
(RGB) to each sensor, processing the light that comes through the lens in better detail.
These also have regular face-detection features that focus on the needs of the face as needed. And guess what? These also look like a soda can, albeit an expensive one.
The Sony HDR-CX12 camcorder will come out for $900, and the HDC-SD100
and the HDC-HS100 will both be released in early September of this year, for $1,100 and $1,300, respectively.
