Digital Trends

Sony HDR-SR12

May 22nd, 2008 | by David Elrich

Since the vast majority of adjustments are done on the LCD, there are only a few controls on the body opposite the LCD. These include the aforementioned Easy and NightShot on/off buttons. There’s also a Display/Battery Info key to remove icons from the screen and to check how much juice is left (to the minute). The camcorder offers grid lines to keep your scenes level. There’s also playback and disc-burn button, a speaker and a compartment for Memory Stick Pro Duo cards if you’d like to save photos or video to it instead of the HDD. People with card readers might like this to quickly turn out some prints.

The top of the HDR-SR12 is as nicely designed as the rest of the unit. Near the lens is a 5.1-channel mic with zoom control so it zeroes in on the main subject. This mic is quite good and eliminates much of the roaring sound recorded by the HF10 and JVC HD6 . Next to it is a slider door covering the accessory hot shoe with an electronic viewfinder (EVF) at the rear. It has a diopter control to adjust for your eyesight. Although it doesn’t pull back it does adjust on an angle offering a variety of shooting positions. Resting on top of the HDD are the wide/tele switch and a snapshot button for stills.

The rear is nicely done too with the battery fitting neatly into the body so it barely sticks out. Slightly to the right is a dial that turns the unit on and changes the modes—from still to video. In the middle of it is the record button. There are also access lights and a Quick On button. When you’ve done recording, you hit this button and the camcorder goes into standby so it quickly “boots up” in a second so it’s ready to go. The camcorder does go to a deeper sleep if you don’t use it quickly, however. The bottom of this Made in Japan camcorder has a tripod mount, a dock connection and the battery release switch.

The HDR-SR12 comes with almost everything you need other than a mini HDMI cable and MS Pro Duo card. You’ll find a battery (rated 85 minutes continuous recording in HD), charger, Handycam Station, A/V and USB cables, remote and CD-ROM with Picture Motion Browser and the full manual. Sony only supplies a 35-page quick guide in English that’s mirrored in Spanish. This is too bad since most people don’t carry their laptops around with their camcorders. I’m all for saving trees but Sony’s doing some nice things recycling older TVs so including a larger guide would be forgiven—Al Gore take note.

After charging the battery, setting it to record video to the HDD and stills to a 2GB card, it was time to see how it worked in the real world.

Image Courtesy of Sony