Sony HDR SR12 - Expert Reviews

Review summary: There's a whole lot to like about the Sony Handycam HDR-SR12. Not only does this shooter capture beautiful video to its impressive 120GB hard drive, it also shoots excellent still photos. If you're in the market for a hard drive-based high-definition ...

Pros: Excellent video and performance ; impressive still photos for a camcorder ; adequate manual controls ; nice CAM CTL dial

Cons: No wind filter ; doesn't include HDMI cable

Verdict: If you're in the market for a hard-drive-based high-definition camcorder, you won't go wrong with this Sony. It delivers top notch performance and image quality

Review summary: The marker has been laid down. Sony's pulled off another AVCHD stunner that will be hard to beat this year

Verdict: The small downside is having to edit down 15 hours of probable fluff into something watchable. Thankfully AVCHD isn't the monster format it once was and most software packages will cope, but you'll still need a fairly hardcore PC to crunch all those ...

Review summary: 1920 x 1080 pixels

Verdict: 4.9-58.8mm and maximum apertures of f/1.8 at the wide setting and f/3.1 at full tele extension, this lens has a 35mm equivalent focal length of 40-480mm in 35mm format for 16:9 movie recording and 37-444mm for still pictures. Wide-angle coverage is ...

Review summary: As AVCHD grabs an increasing share of the HD camcorder market, it's encouraging to see Sony providing the HDR-SR12 with a microphone input and dedicated headphone output, in addition to enabling full specification 1920 x 1080i high-definition video ...

Verdict: What is strange, however, is Sony's continued use of only 50i interlaced frame scanning rather than the 25p progressive frame scan preferred by more discriminating users. It's a key feature that other makers - Canon and Panasonic, in particular - have ...

Review summary: Sony's impressive HD cam has pretty much everything a serious user might need - great handling, dual-media recording, HDMI, mic input, headphone output and a viewfinder as well as touch-screen LCD. So why the absense of a 1080p Progressive mode?

Verdict: The HDR-SR12 (like is lesser-endowed SR11 sibling) is a fabulous HD camcorder that generates hugely impressive full-specification 1920x1080 HD video pictures using the revolutionary AVCHD (MPEG-4 AVC/H.264) compression system. Switch off the auto mode ...