» Sony DCR-DVD610 DVD Handycam Camcorder with 40x Optical Zoom

Sony DCR-DVD610 DVD Handycam Camcorder with 40x Optical Zoom Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: For the price, excellent
Comment: I purchased this camcorder a few days ago for my dad, I must say I am quite impressed with it. I compared the Canon DC310/320, Panasonic VDR50, and the Sony 610/710. I went to the store biased in favour of the Canon based on the specifications alone. But what a huge disappointment the canon cameras were. They look cheap, the plastic is cheap, the buttons are flimsy, the buttons next to the screen were tiny and the on screen info was not clear at all. Canon's design department needs to wake up, I have tried quite a few canon entry level/mid range products in the recent past and have come up very disappointing with design and build quality. To make things worse, there was noise all over the place, indoor light wasnt great, but the dark carpet had light green and red spots all over on the LCD. The zoom action was quick. The one aspect where Canon trumps is that it has optical image stabilization, not found on the sony. This is a huge help when you go closer to the telephoto end of things, its impossible to keep the sony still at telephoto.

The Panasonic looked much sleeker than the Canon, had a nice feel to it, felt a tad heavier as well though, some might find it a bit heavy for its size. The screen looked sharp, the menu system was ok, everything seemed just about fine. But the colors seemed a tad unnatural, and slightly over saturated. I tried to go fiddle with the settings, but I could never get the colors to look natural.

The Sony has a very appealing design, the materials look of high quality, the fit and finish is excellent. Power up is quick, the touch screen is very responsive and so much easier to use compared to the dot sized rocker switch on the Canon. The LCD was sharper, the colors were natural although a tad dull looking (never a bad thing, you can always add saturation later depending on your subject). The camera gains up and down really quickly based on the lighting conditions. Indoor focussing speed is not very good, but it gets there. Quick movements can lead the video to just get out of focus. Nightshot plus is useful only when there is very little light, otherwise it over exposes like crazy. Even if you have bulbs or stuff indoors, you can manage without nightshot plus.

Outdoors video is fantastic, I couldnt see many compression artifacts, details were there, I could make out the leaves on the tree clearly, the colors werent bleeding (A major issue with a previous samsung dvd camcorder i tried). I tried the Memorex DVD-RW format disc and it worked fine. Format takes 6-8 seconds (which is quite fantastic IMO). Finalizing the disc took more than 6 minutes. Not sure if this was because of the media. I will try other discs and see if I see any improvement. One annoying thing with this camera is the pop up message that shows up with you insert a non-sony disc. This can be very misleading since its pretty much just blatant advertising on sony's part saying "Use Sony Media". But it goes away in a few seconds. Ppl might think its an error or that other brand discs are unusable. Another thing is the clever marketting of battery life on the box stating "9 hrs" in a big font and below that in ultra tiny fonts it says "Using F__100 battery, with LCD off). The battery that comes with the camera is the F__50 that manages about 90 minutes of recording time. These sort of marketting schemes are sometimes why I get irritated with Sony. But nevertheless, the product is good. If you are looking for a DVD camcorder in the 300$ range, this is the one to get. If you want a marginal improvement in video quality, the 710 offers a slightly boosted pixel count. I didnt get to see both on a television screen so I cant tell you how much of a difference there is, but on the LCD screen I couldnt tell the difference, which is why I settled for the 610.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A Great Gift for a New Parent!
Comment: When my oldest daughter had her first child (it was also my first grandchild) two years ago I bought her a digital camera and printer. I have been since rewarded by receiving many photos of my favorite (and only) grandchild.

Now, for my granddaughter's second birthday, I bought her this video camera. After reading many of the reviews for this and other camcorders on Amazon I picked the Sony DCR-DVD610 because met all of the needs that I had for a camcorder that I would give as a gift:

1. POPULAR. Almost everyone who purchased this item was very happy with it. This was not so with all of the best-selling camcorders, even those at twice the price.

2. EASY. I wanted to get her one that was fairly easy to use. I read the instruction book on-line and felt that this fit the bill.

3. DVDs. It was important to me that it used some sort of DVD as the primary recording media since I feel that it is more archival than tape and more secure than a hard drive only.

4. PRICE. Even though would have been willing to spend more, I was hoping for something under $400.

I also purchased an accessory kit (which included a bag, an extra battery and 2 DVDs) and then some extra Sony brand DVDs (after reading some of the reviews I decided to stick with the Sony brand in order to avoid the message that pops up when you use a different brand of DVDs).

So far my daughter and her husband have been VERY happy with this gift and I am hoping see some great videos of my beautiful granddaughter who lives several states away.

Sony ACC-DVDH2 Accessory Starter Kit for Handycam, DVD, Camcorders

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Camera - Hybrid is the key
Comment: Have had this camera for two weeks now and it has surpassed my own expectations, which were fairly high. Picture quality and ease of use are superb, but I can't overestimate the hybrid feature. Being able to record to memory stick and then dub copies to mini-DVD all within the camera when you're on the road is fantastic. This allows you to make copies for people on the fly. The memory stick makes editing a cinch too. Just pop it in your memory card reader and load the converted mpg files into Vista Movie Maker, then have some fun!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: poor performer
Comment: very dissapointed with the performance of this camcorder... my old sony tvr250 had much better picture and performance.. stay away
it does not focus well... the video looks slightly pixelated

I tried multiple recodings, media, and lighting situations without improved performance...

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Great video. Easy to transfer to PC
Comment: This is a great camcorder. I use the highest quality and the videos have very good quality. Transfering the videos to the computer is very easy, just set the camera in USB mode, connect cables to camera and PC using the USB cable provided and copy the mpeg files to your computer. One file is created everytime you start and stop recording which makes it easy to create a DVD menu.

Another feature that I like is the ability to record video either using the mini DVDs or memory stick. I bought a 4Gb memory stick and I am able to record 59 minutes of video in HQ mode. I went on a trip to London and carried mini 3 DVDs which I didn't have to use. Every night I would transfer videos to the laptop in the hotel and start with 59 minutes of video the next day.

One thing I didn't like about the camera was the battery. It should last longer so I bought another with more capacity.

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