Good cam but some design miscues

Author's Rating:

Pros: Low price, takes great video, stylish.

Cons: Outdated accessory shoe, no memory card and bad documentation/software interface.

The Bottom Line: 
If you're on a budget this Handycam is a good fit. Otherwise spend a little more for the convenience afforded by a higher end model.

Author's Review
My wife bought us this DV cam for Christmas. After using it for a few weeks I think we're going to deal with the restocking charge and upgrade to a different model.

Overall the DCR-HC21 is a great cam. The image quality is great. I'm completely satisfied with the video I've taken to date. However, there are several things about this unit that reduce its desirability.

The first issue I have is with the lack of an onboard light. I realize that it is an item that most of these mini-cams have had to do away with in the interest of size reduction but this model compounds the problem by including an obsolete accessory shoe design. All of the higher grade Sony Handycam models include the Active Interface Shoe for attaching things like flashes or lights. Not this one. This one has the typical "old fashioned" accessory shoe. Not a problem except that Sony doesn't make a light attachment for it and any third party light I've come across is big, bulky and stylistically horrible when paired up with the sleek Sony style. Now I love the NightShot Plus feature that all the Sony Handycams have but that only deals with shooting in the dark. Not trying to provide better light in a dim light situation. The camera doesn't seem to have any problems focusing on subjects in dim light but the resulting video is dim none the less. My advice, opt for the next model up which has the Active Interface Shoe.

Another bad thing about the DCR-HC21 is the absence of a memory card slot. Another feature left out here but included in the higher end models. Basically if you don't intend to try and take still images with this cam the lack of a memory card slot should be a non-issue. That being the case I'm not sure why Sony included the still photo feature on this cam. It's basically useless. You record a 5 second still recording of a video frame capture onto your DV tape (mixed in with your video footage) and the image quality is pathetic. After using this feature two or three times I've already forgotten about it. (Another general issue with the Sony Handycam design - the record button is very very close to the power on/off toggle switch. It's very easy to accidentally effect either one while trying to operate the other. Another problem of miniaturization.)

Perhaps the worst thing about this unit is trying to navigate through the poor documentation and abysmal software that is included with it. This cam includes the worst written user manual I've ever gotten with a Sony product. Feature explanations are really poorly done. I installed the software and have yet to manage to figure out how to burn a usable DVD of the video on the tape. If the user manual is bad the user interface for the software is horrible. Apparently Sony designs the units to work well with Sony Viao computers and the rest be damned. Well we don't own a Viao so we're damned. Downloading video over a USB cable is ridiculously slow. The software cut off downloading after five minutes and proceeded to burn the info onto the disk which I have yet to find a means of viewing. That was enough for me.

All this brings me to my decision to make a swap to a mini-DVD model. Eliminating the hassle of having to convert the video from tape to dvd format will be worth the cost difference and I can resolve my other issues with the unit. As I said the cam takes great video. It has great Carl Zeiss lenses and works perfectly. I just think it comes up short in the long run. I don't want to be stuck with a pile of mini-dv tapes of my children's childhood that never get looked at because the old cam is broken and nothing else can play them. This review may seem a bit scattered since I've only had a little experience with the unit but it's definitely going back to the store.