Excellent Camcorder

Author's Rating:

Pros: Excellent feature set. Excellent video quality. Good still quality.

Cons: A bit pricey. Limited manual controls.

The Bottom Line: 
Excellent product worth considering if you are looking for a hybrid camcorder and digital still camera. Extremely high video quality. The plethora of features will make any technophile ecstatic.

Author's Review
The Sony DCR-TRV50 is a wonderful camcorder. I am a feature person. Greater numbers of features allow for greater creativity in many cases and the TRV50 doesn't disappoint in this area. Though there are some minor drawbacks, the advantages of the TRV50 outweigh the disadvantages.

If you're looking for excellent sharpness, the TRV50 produces about as sharp a picture you can get on any consumer Mini DV camcorder on the market today. The image sharpness comes close to the theoretical maximum for the DV format. Color clarity and purity are good...about as good as you can get with a single CCD pickup device. Low light reproduction, though less grainy than earlier models such as the DCR-TRV20, lacks color saturation and accuracy. As long as you have good indoor or outdoor lighting the picture will reproduce well, even at the maximum of 18 dB gain.

The TRV50 provides the best hybrid camcorder/still camera features available. Though the still images are not of equivalent resolution and purity to that of a dedicated digital still camera, they are adequate for 4x6 photo prints and computer display. All my friends and relatives who have seen the 4x6 prints I've made from the TRV50 were very surprised that the images were from the TRV50 and not a 35mm instant camera (though if they had taken a very close look they could have seen some of the flaws). The built-in flash is an absolute necessity in low light conditions. Even moderate lighting conditions may require the flash, which will automatically pop up when it is needed and automatically adjust itself for the proper flash intensity based on focal distance. The Hologram AF (auto focus) feature works extremely well up to about 12 or so feet when there is not enough ambient lighting to detect contrast (even in complete darkness).

Professionals will likely find the TRV50's lack of precise manual controls a major annoyance. Being a semi-professional myself I find it very annoying that the only manual exposure control is a unified "Exposure" setting with a bar to indicate overall exposure settings. There are no individual shutter speed controls, aperture controls, or gain controls. You can use the "Slow Shutter" digital effect to slow the shutter speed down to 1/30th, 1/15th, 1/8th, or 1/4th second (with dramatically increased granularity as well), but you cannot manually adjust shutter speeds beyond the standard 1/60th second. The TRV50 normally operates at 1/100th second shutter speed (in order to accommodate the digital SteadyShot image stabilization feature) and in Auto shutter speed mode, meaning it can fluctuate from 1/60th to 1/100th second as needed. This can be defeated by turning off the SteadyShot feature and setting the shutter speed to manual (this is a menu option). Manual aperture and gain is controlled through the "Exposure" function, which reduces or increases both gain and aperture (aperture seems to have priority and gain is never increased unless the aperture is already fully open). The programmed automatic exposure settings (Program AE) can be helpful, and necessary if you wish to increase shutter speed above the 1/100th second speed (using the "Sports" Program AE setting). Some depth of field changes can be made using the Program AE settings as well, but they are not precise. Manual white balance is adequate, though it would be nice to have a variable control to manually adjust white balance rather than a simple "Hold," "Indoor," and "Outdoor" function.

Audio quality is good, though again, pros will likely take note of some flaws. Most obvious is the lack of manual audio gain control. There is an external stereo mic input jack as well as a stereo headphones jack. It would have been nice to be able to use the LINE OUT/IN jacks for line level audio input, but alas, you may only use the mic jack for external audio input while in camera mode (you can use the LINE OUT/IN jacks for audio and video input while in VCR mode). Despite these drawbacks, it may be asking too much to expect professional level control in a consumer level product. After all, the built-in stereo microphone does a decent job of picking up audio from the right places. Not too many camera function noises (they are only noticeable in complete silence when audio gain is at its maximum). Stereo separation is not great, but noticeable.

Some of the features of the TRV50 are surprisingly advanced. For those who do not have any kind of digital video NLE (Non-Linier Editing) system (such as a fast PC or Mac), the TRV50 can be set up to control either another "iLink" (also known as IEEE 1394 or FireWire) digital video recorder or an analog VCR (such as your VHS VCR). The TRV50 can control your VCR without any special wires. It does this by emulating your VCR's remote. It has preset remote control settings built-in for nearly ever brand of VCR you can think of. To edit your mini DV tape to your VCR, select the type of VCR you have, point the camera at your VCR, calibrate the camera and VCR (the TRV50 has a function to do this too) so recording transitions from scene to scene are accurate, and select the clips on your mini DV tape you want to copy to your VCR. The TRV50 takes it from there. It controls the VCR for you, starting and stopping it at the exact time needed to edit the scenes to your VCR. Though I generally use NLE software on my computer, this is a very handy feature for those who do not have the resources for software video editing but who still want to edit videos.

Another surprisingly useful feature is the touch-screen LCD. Though there are some problems with the way Sony has set this up, the overall advantages of the touch screen are numerous. First, one major disadvantage is that Sony made a few functions (notably the digital effects) only accessible through the touch-screen interface. In bright lighting conditions (sunny day outdoors), you have a hard time seeing the LCD in order to know where to touch the screen. However, the spot meter and spot focus functions of the touch-screen as well as the playback zoom and a number of still image manipulation functions are vastly improved by the use of the touch-screen. Deleting images and MPEG files from the Memory Stick is much simpler than on the TRV50's predecessors. You simply hit the DEL button on the LCD, and tap the thumbnail image of the photo or MPEG you want to delete. You can delete multiple files simultaneously by simply tapping each thumbnail image. Once all of them are selected, tap the EXEC button the screen and it confirms the deletion of the files. This makes deleting 20 or 30 images, while leaving 4 or 5 much faster than using cryptic button combinations on the camera body.

Wondering about the MPEG functions of the TRV50? If you want to easily share video clips over the Internet, the TRV50's MPEG output is very adequate. However, the frame rate is limited to 15 frames per second and the audio is monophonic, both making the use of the TRV50's MPEGs inappropriate for Video CD usage.

The new Bluetooth capabilities, though unique and innovative, are limited. You cannot share image or MPEG files with your PDA or your Bluetooth-enabled computer (I've tried sharing files with my Bluetooth enabled Mac with no success). The only functions the TRV50 seems to be able to perform via Bluetooth is to connect either to a Bluetooth-enabled cell phone or to Sony's Bluetooth to modem adapter. Neither of these solutions provide a fast enough Internet connection to waste your time uploading images, or especially MPEG files. The Bluetooth functions would only be useful in extreme cases where you had absolutely no access to your computer. In the future, I hope that Sony will release a Bluetooth to DSL or cable modem solution. Or even a Bluetooth to Ethernet solution. Bluetooth bandwidth exceeds the average DSL or cable modem upload speed by a factor of 6 and would be ideally suited for connecting the TRV50 to your existing high-speed home internet connection.

Overall, the TRV50 is an excellent product well worth considering if you are looking for a hybrid camcorder and digital still camera solution. The Bluetooth capabilities will only be useful if you are always on the road, don't usually take a laptop with you, but need to send pictures to the office for processing or to family and friends immediately after taking them. The video quality is the best you'll find in a consumer single-CCD camera. The still images are nothing to become excited over, but handy for casual vacation photos. The MPEG files from the TRV50 are useful for sharing over the Internet, but not of high enough frame rate or audio quality to be used on Video CDs. The DV video quality is extremely high and the plethora of features will make any technophile squeal with glee.