Digital Trends

 

The weather on the East Cost has been miserable so it took awhile for the sun to finally come out. When it did I took a trip to the beach and some colorful scenery to see how the SR100 handled it all. And it can handle a lot. The 30GB drive holds seven hours of MPEG2 video. You’ll wear out many batteries before you can get close to filling the drive.

 

I started out using Sony’s Easy setting which basically makes video and still recording idiot proof—which is good for an inveterate button pusher like me! After the camcorder booted up in less than two seconds, I shot a lot of video. When I saw an interesting subject, switched to still mode and hit the snapshot button to grab a 3-megapixel still. 

 

Video results in Easy were good—not great—although much better than the Everio MG505. Granted there were some jagged edges on straight lines but for the most part the video looked good on my Toshiba HDTV. It was shot in 4:3 mode but you can easily switch to 16:9 at the touch of a key. Where the camcorder had problems was with strong colors such as bright red and dark blue swimming pool floats. Scenes shot indoors with available light were more accurate. Luckily there was very little noise, miles ahead of you-know-what. The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is a gas and really adds to your videos but it can be disconcerting. In one instance I closed a gate behind me and you could hear it in the rear speakers. Weird but fun.

 

Moving from Easy into more advanced settings is a breeze. Just hit the Easy key to turn it off then you can change settings using the touch screen LCD. Other than a few strange typos, the menu system is very simple to follow. There are six Program AE options along with Auto such as Portrait, Beach&Snow and so on. You can tweak the exposure, sound settings, focus and spot metering. It’s more than the average home video maker will ever need. Even adjusting them, I still couldn’t get the colors to be totally on the money.

 

As for the stills, 8x10s were decent but you really shouldn’t go beyond 4x6. I simply connected the camcorder to my PictBridge-enabled printer, followed the onscreen menu and it was done. Three megapixels isn’t great but the convenience and the enormous storage make up for it.  

 

One of the key issues with HDD camcorders is getting the footage out. Here Sony does a great job with its DVD Burn system. After you load the supplied software on your PC, you connect the SR100 to it, then press the DVD Burn key on the camcorder. A series of onscreen prompts walks you through burning a disc. It’s really simple—just make sure you burn a dash R (-R) disc instead of plus R (+R) if your equipment requires it; my Panasonic DMR-E60 didn’t take too kindly to the plus format. Ah, the joys of modern technology!