Sony Handycam DCR-SR80 Video

Sony Handycam DCR-SR80 Video Transcript

[ Music ]

>> Hello, I'm Phil Ryan, senior editor, CNET.com, taking a look at the Sony Handi Cam DCRSR80. It's got a 60 gigabyte hard drive built into it that holds a little over 14 hours of MPEG2 video at its highest quality setting. That doesn't quite match what you get from mini DV, but still it's quite good for most home movies and vacation movies and things like that. It's got a 12x optical zoom lens in it. But a lot of people will notice it does not have a view finder. So you have to frame everything on its 2 point 7 inch LCD screen, but there's also a touch screen, which is the home to most of the controls for the camera. And given that it's not very large, it feels a little bit cramped. Sony does include a little shield on top. So you can add a light or a microphone if you like. It weighs about the same as most mini DV camcorders. But that said, you can probably carry it around for a pretty long period of time and should be comfortable to shoot with. And it has a little ridge along the top that makes it comfortable to hold and a good grip. It shoots one mega pixel still images, but we found that the images were actually pretty nice when printed and you could get a 4 by 6 but more comfortably maybe a 3 and a half by 5 and they'd be fine to send around to your friends and family over email. I'd say overall it's a pretty good value for the money for a hard drive camcorder. Stepping up to SR100 could get you three mega pixel stills, so if you like still images and you want to print, that's probably a good idea. But if the SR80 is in your budget and you're not really finicky about your stills, it's probably a pretty good camera for you. I'm Phil Ryan and this is the Sony Handi Cam DCR SR80. ^M00:01:56 [ Music ]