Digital Trends

Sony HDR-HC7 June 24th, 2007 | by David Elrich

Testing and Use

The HDR-HC7 is a HDV camcorder, meaning it takes 1920 x 1080i high-def video, recording it to a mini DV cassette, compared to 1440 x 1080i for current AVCHD models. Of all the HD camcorders I’ve used HDV delivers the best video so far; its only drawback is the fact it uses a small cassette rather than a HDD like the HD Everio or flash memory (Panasonic HDC-SD1) I’ve “suffered” through the hassles of tape because the payoff on screen is well worth it. That’s the case with the HC7 which uses a 3.2MP ClearVid CMOS sensor—it can’t be stated enough: picture quality is really good. Yes, fast forwarding and rewinding is annoying as is the lack of self-generated index points—but that’s life in the big city.

The camcorder powers up very quickly and with a click of the mode dial you can shoot video to tape or take a still to the card. As usual, I started out in Auto and then moved to the manual options. Sony calls its auto setting “Easy Handycam” and when you’re in this setting, you can’t change anything other than the zoom. Focus for the most part was fast with limited hunting to lock in; the unit had no problems shooting through glass.

I took scenes indoors and out, moving to still mode (6.1MP) along the way. Taking the HC7 out of auto opens a variety of options including manual focus, exposure, shutter speed, AE and WB balance shift. You can assign the dial on the lens barrel to one of these five options (I chose focus). Then you simply turn the dial to adjust. This dial was rather loose and I preferred the Canon. You can also use the touch screen to make adjustments as well. The screen, rated 211K pixels, was decent but I found the colors a bit off. Adjusting it via the menu is highly recommended. Like all camcorders, this one has a number of scene modes to fit that occasion (portrait, twilight, sunrise/sunset, beach and so on). Like better camcorders, the HC7 has a zebra pattern for checking brightness levels, a histogram and lots of other tweaks the vast majority of people will never use. But, hey, it’s nice to know they’re available.

After recording video and stills it was time to see how they performed. As for the video, I was very impressed. In fact, I liked it a shade better than the HV20—just a shade, mind you. The footage seemed to have a bit more depth and detail. Video shot outdoors was very accurate, capturing the vividness of purple pool floats while shots of the sky had no noise whatsoever. Material taken indoors wasn’t as vibrant but dark corners in available light with fairly noise free, just a bit better than the Canon in my opinion.

The HC7 doesn’t have a built-in light so you might want to consider buying one if you plan to do a lot of shooting indoors. For that matter the HV20 has a light but it’s so small to render it useless. Of course, you can use Sony’s NightShot for recording in total darkness but you’ll get a scene that looks like something out of pair of night vision goggles.

This camcorder supports x.v.Color for a wider color gamut but unfortunately you need a new HDTV that can display it (new Sony—naturally--and Samsung HDTVs have it, among others). My older HDTV doesn’t so I can’t comment on the system. (Yes, I know it’s time to bite the bullet and get one.)

Although it has a native 3.2MP imager, Sony uses a variation of interpolation to pump up still resolution to 6.1-megapixels. It’s a bit of sleight-of-hand and it shows in the 8 ½ x 11 prints I cranked out--especially images taken indoors. I was not impressed at that size but 4x6 and 5x7s would be O.K. Canon wins the battle here and I hope they don’t go the interpolation route in the my-spec-is-bigger-than-yours game. And for the record, the Sony stills were better than the 7MP Sanyo photos but that unit is a clunker. But this is all a sideshow—these are video cameras and the HDV footage is delicious.

There is one area where the Canon is a hands-down winner—the 24p Cinema mode. With it, your images take on a more movie-film-like feel. It’s subtle but noticeable since it tones down video harshness. Sony tries to emulate it with its Cinematic mode but it’s not the real deal.