GenX Digital

For the upcoming August Men’s Vogue issue, I’ve been tasked with bringing in some new toys, and I thought I’d finally update some of this site with stories of each of the toys. To start - I’ll whip up a concoction of nouns, verbs, pronouns and sentences to feed you with the Sony HDR-HC3 high definition camcorder. At $1400 at B&H photo (I saw $800 at some places, although I can’t vouch for their reliability) - this is definitely the lowest cost “high definition” camcorder on the market. If you have only HD displays now, or your main ones are HD - this could certainly be a gem in the stable of gadgets. For more, read on…

I guess the good news first - the screen is eminently viewable outside in direct sunlight or clouds as well as inside in controlled lighting situations. It’s also a touch-screen, making the problem of finding all the damn buttons while reviewing a segment a non-issue. The zoom is capable, and being high def (1080i for those keeping track), the stablization is pretty essential. Even with, I’d actually seriously consider a steady-cam mount for the amateur - it really makes a much more watchable video.

They have a really neat feature called “smooth slow motion” which is just the lens capturing a bunch more images per second than normal, so when you playback - it slows things way down. This is the correct way to do slow motion (unlike just taking 60 frames per second and stretching them out - you lose a lot of information). Anyway - the have an icon on the screen of a golfer taking a swing, and I bet this would be a great way to analyze a golf swing (or just about any sport). An example is available here. I haven’t tried it myself yet, but looking forward to.

So, the bad news? Well, actually I’m not sure I can point to any directly at this camera. When I first plugged in the camera to the component video inputs on my Dell 24″ LCD, the image came through pretty squished. It’s clear looking at the screen on the camera that it’s MUCH wider than it is tall compared to the Dell. I thought the Dell was a 16x9 aspect ratio, but a quick look at the Dell website shows it’s a 16x10 ratio. Bummer. When I hooked up the Sony to my Runco 50″ plasma, it worked like a champ.

Then, I noticed the picture on the Plasma was a bit grainy and slightly pixelated in the transitions of different shade levels. Oops - I was standing about 2 feet from the display - pretty sure that’s not an ideal viewing distance. Lo and behold - when I sat on the couch about 7 feet away - BLAMO! An awesome picture was on my display of my kid learning how to ride a bike. Very cool.

I recognize that having 8 hours or so with this camera hasn’t made me an expert. Hell - I haven’t even tried shooting inside, so I can’t say anything about it’s standard or low light capabilities (I read some grumblings on the net about low-light performance). But, most of the time I actually want to capture video - it’s either outside or a well-lit interior. For that - this camera out-performs others because of it’s signifcantly higher resolution!

So, for the price and considering there are no other HD camcorders that record direct to a hard drive - this is about the coolest, best image you can get in a consumer class camera.

I won’t even try to take any still images with it. Partly because I don’t like the quality of pictures that come from any small camera, and partly because Sony has NEVER come out with a still camera that takes great still images. But, that’s a different blog entry entirely…