Customer Reviews

Sony HDR-SR12 10.2MP 120GB High Definition Hard Drive Handycam Camcorder with 12x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I've now had this camera for about a month now and I couldn't be happier. The video quality is STUNNING as well as the recording sounds. It comes with a base and proprietary power and video cords (both component-HD and composite, which means that they are not interchangable with over the counter video cords), but thats ok. It also has the software for transferring the videos and photos to your CPU. Back to the picture and sound... amazing really. The sound records in 5.1 surround which is so cool, plus you have many options on the video such as night vision, black and white, sepia, old movie mold, etc and some of them you can combine (I did night vision with black and white to make a short zombie movie, it looks wicked). There are so many possibilities with this cam. The play back is all touch screen, which the screen can get smeared by fingerprints (easy to wipe out), but I suggest buying a stylus. Of course if you hook it to your television, it does come with a remote control, and you can do everything with that remote except for deleting images. But that is a positive because you don't want to accidentally delete your images. And it does ask for you to confirm deleting so it's hard to do that accidentally.

Plus, it's a great photography camera. With the flick of a thumb you can change from filming to photographer easy and it takes crystal clear pictures in 10.5 mega pixel. Although I do find it a bit awkward to reach the photo button. Now it takes better picture in photo mode, then it do in filming mode (While filming you can snap a picture also),

Another word on the night vision, I had all the lights off and it films in that greenish color sort of like the movie Cloverfield. But even filming at night without the night vision on, it picks up everything. I had a buddy drive at night, while I was shooting and the only lights were coming from headlights and streetlamps (when we passed them) and you saw everything on the camera that you could see with you naked eye and I even thought it was better than my eye.

Now when you film and take pictures, it organizes the images according to date and when you film several scenes it will play them one after another without a bit of a pause. The camera also has little doors on the back and the side so you can hook up your cords without the base, which is good. Also inside of one of the doors are an hdmi output, a headphones output and a mic input. I ran my iPod through the mic input to make a music video and it turned out great (although be sure not to have your iPod any louder than half).
The camera also has a one touch DVD burning button on the camera and the base, but I haven't used it yet.

The only real negative is that the battery only last 90 minutes, but I bought a bigger battery, which last 14 hours. That battery weighs as much or more than the camera (the camera is really light) and it sticks out the back some but that isn't really that big of a deal.

The software is pretty smart. You hook the camcorder with the use of the provided usb cable (after loading the software) and it finds the camcorder and asks if you want to transfer all the items to your computer. But the cool thing is that you can keep those images on your camcorder after transfer, film other stuff, hook you camera back up to the computer and it will only transfer items that haven't been transferred yet. This is good because you don't have to try to figure out what has or haven't been transfer and you don't get dup copies, or that annoying message about whether you want to overwrite a file. And it organizes by date and you can do a total calendar view and see what dates you filmed on. When it organized and transfer to your CPU, it organized by date filmed, not date transfer, which is extremely helpful, especially if you visit multiple locations during multiple dates.

This is really the last camcorder you will possibly buy for many many years. The only thing is that it has so many cool accessories you can buy, like wide-angle lenses, telescopic lenses, attachable lights, and underwater case etc that you may eventually end up with a $2500-3000 total purchase when you are done. The accessories are not a necessity but they do look like a lot of fun.
Auto focusing can be a pain at times, but it does have a manual focus, which you can set to infinity and if you zoom, set it up on a tripod.
Oh and one last thing, I actually filmed something for 5 minutes that was playing on my plasma in HD and it look as if its the movie itself.

Just took this on a three week foreign tour and it does a lot of things amazingly well. I did a lot of research and am quite knowledgeable, and was originally going to buy one of the new units that runs on flash cards because I liked their size. But they made too many compromise -- one of the worst of them being a lack of a viewfinder. I've never seen an LCD screen that wasn't washed out in sunlight (and this unit, while better than most, is no exception), so you NEED a viewfinder. Besides which, you get a lot less jiggling holding the camera up to your eye than holding it at arm's length to view an LCD screen.

The main caveat is its use of AVCHD as its recording format. This is another case of the hardware being ahead of the software. After extensive reading of the reviews of all the programs that currently exist, I've concluded that no one has yet come out with software to make editing this new format a simple affair. Sony's Vegas 8 (which costs $[...]+) seems, from the reviews and my limited testing, to come closest, but my expensive high-powered desktop (2 1/2 years old) stutters and chokes. AVCHD is highly compressed and requires a ton of CPU power. So, for now, I've decided to just show my raw footage to friends by connecting the camera directly to my HDTV, and wait until better software emerges or I'm ready to buy a new computer.

The quality and versatility of the camera are great, however, and I'm glad I didn't compromise to get a smaller unit. The hard drive helps give you a good solid grip using one hand, and I loved being able to stop worrying about running out of space (120gb is a huge amount of shooting).

I'll keep this short and sweet... After "purchasing" and "returng" camcorders to different stores in my area; FINALLY I found what I was looking for in a video camera... I just cannot begin to explain how crystal clear this camera shoots... Everyone I show the previews on the screen to want to either buy one or jokingly tell me if they can have my camera... The kicker is that it behaves extremely well in low-light situations... the best I've seen so far (and the reason why I returned so many camcorders after trying them out for a couple of days)... This is a no-brainer... The Sony HDR-SR12 is THE camcorder to get... Recording in space saving SP is incredible but when I switch to the highest setting (FH) the picture details became almost three dimensional... The fact that it has a Carl Zeiss lens doesn't hurt either... Beware who you buy online from as I did get burned by a New York based internet company (who shall remain unnamed... NOT AMAZON mind you)... They played a major bait and switch where I ended up paying at least $200 overprice... but oh well, live and learn... buy it here on Amazon and play it safe... 5 Star Camcorder and I can't even imagine how much any company can improve on image quality in the future after seeing what the SR12 can do!

This camcorder is phenomenal! The shots are beautiful and clear - the auto focus is very intuitive. The sound is fantastic. I love this camcorder. This takes very high grade professional videos in HD. I love that it shoots in widescreen.

I haven't had any problems with the software it came with; but if you don't like it then you can rest assured that you don't have to use it much. The only thing I've used the software for is to open the videos; you can immediately and easily convert them to a different file type (using the software); then you can use any software you want to work with them.

I've seen a lot of people give bad reviews for items because they didn't like the software it came with. In my opinion that's a bit like saying you hate a cereal because you didn't like your free toy surprise. The software is a bonus; it's the company's way of insuring that the buyer is able to use every part of their new device. The free software discs aren't generally intended to be your primary video editing software - they're just included for convenience.

This camera so far is excellent; I'm beginning my career as a filmmaker and I bought this camera to help me make a high quality film portfolio for grad school. I was absolutely right to do so - this camera will definitely help me make high quality films. (I actually bought two because it's almost impossible to do an entire film with one camera, even with a dolly.) Both cameras work great!

I ordered this camera in mid-August, then used it on a 7-day trip to Cape Cod.

I rate this unit 5 stars because of its great picture quality and general ease of use.

Specifics:

1. Images were beautifully sharp and clear, just what I'd expected from a High Definition camcorder.

2. Image stabilization worked very well.

3. Autoexposure and autofocus worked well for me. Autofocus was quick and accurate. With varied lighting (full sun, heavy shade, back lit scenes), all images came out very well. Sometimes a manual adjustment would improve the exposure a bit, but things were fine with exposure set to Auto.

4. Mac users:
(a) You'll need iMovie08. A lot of camcorder forums describe additional software for using this camera with a Mac, but those threads are old. iMovie08 downloaded and converted the image files, and allowed editing, with no problems.

(b) Amazon's item description says it has "i.Link interface (IEEE1394)." I can find no iLink/Firewire connector on the camera or in the manual, but it worked fine with USB2.

5. The manual is short and not as informative as it should be; coverage of menu options is especially inadequate. I wanted to know about the HD capabilities, but all the manual says is you can shoot movies in High-Def or Standard Def. In the menus on the camera itself you'll find 4 video-quality modes, but there are few details.

6. The supplied battery (NP-FH60) will run 40 minutes of normal recording, per the manual. I had to restrain my shooting early on to conserve power, so missed several opportunities. I should have ordered a larger battery (like the NP-FH70).

7. It was hard to tell whether this camera had switched from "REC" mode to "STBY" mode when I pressed the "START/STOP" button; my last camcorder (also a Sony) had a larger button and more positive feel. I've never shot so much "pavement and pants legs" before (but beautifully sharp and clear), or missed so much action that I thought I'd captured. I'll be more careful in the future.

So far, great experience with this camera. The resolutions are a little misleading if you are an HD techo-babble fan. It says it supports 1920x1080i on the side of the camera, but there's no such resolution. 1080i content is 1440x1080, while 1080p is 1920x1080. If you don't care or don't know the difference then don't sweat it, but if you are looking for 1080p using h.264 then this camera isn't it.

Back to the topic at hand. The information pages for this camera don't specifically say it is supported by Macs but I can confirm that it works with my Leopard install and that iMovie '08 detects the camera and offers to import the clips. This is all without having to download or install any software or drivers from Sony. If you are interested, the camera shows up as a mounted external drive and can be navigated like any other drive.

iMovie cross-converts the .mts files to .mov files and puts them on your local harddrive. .mts files are super compressed and for a variety of technical reasons most video editing software can't handle them in that format so they have to be converted. This conversion ends up increasing the file size by about 5x.

I've read elsewhere that the converted files can be up to 10x as big but the ones I converted this afternoon all came off the HD and onto mine in the new format 5x bigger in about 20 minutes. I'm on an 8 core macpro with 8 gig of ram so your conversion rates may vary, I have no idea how much hardware iMovie actually can take advantage of.

If you have final cut pro you can also obviously edit with these newly converted files. It wouldn't even let me drop the .mts files into a FCP timeline as it will with some other flavors of h.264.

The camera itself is a little off in its auto-white balance and its shutter is constantly a little too dark for my tastes but for the normal consumer I doubt you'll have any real complaints in there areas. The camera also has a built-in down convert to SD resolution with a simple RCA cable out of the camera and into your ancient tube TV.

This is a good camcorder but it definitely needs Firewire. Amazon lists it as having I-Link which is Firewire but it doesn't. A little slow to transfer data to your computer with USB.

I moved from a Sony Hi-8 camera that we had for 5 years prior to this, and the first word out of my mouth was "Wow!"

The tape-based camera was great for an NTSC camera. The video and audio quality were great for home movies and the occasional training videos that I used it for at work. Aside from the fact that it was a standard def picture, the biggest complaint was for the need for tapes. Needless to say, that old camera is now gathering dust.

No tapes, no memory cards means that you can take hours and hours of video without having to worry about missing anything (except when your battery runs out, so keep a spare).

The 1080i video from this camera is great. For those who are looking for professional quality video, I doubt that any consumer model is going to do it, but this camera comes very close. People choose point-and-shoot cameras for convenience, and DSLRs for quality. To expect otherwise is to fool yourself. However, I have not been disappointed by this camera for shooting video. The size and weight are great. It's not too small or too light to give you shaky videos, and it's small enough to fit into a small camera bag.

The low light shots are still good, but a little grainy - as expected. You can use night shot mode, but then you get that eery effect. The daytime shots are better than anything that I've seen on my satellite HD channels. AVCHD still looks better than that super-compressed MPEG4 video that they're transmitting on satellite. The colors are vibrant, and the video is quite realistic. We recently used this to record a cooking demonstration at work, and the closeups, even on a cheap 720p 32" television were clear and detailed so that people 20' away could easily see what was going on. The camera's LCD display even had better picture quality than the television itself! I like the touch screen display to keep the camera's looks clean, without cluttering it with tons of buttons.

Although I prefer to use a DSLR to take still photos, the HDR-SR12 takes really nice pictures. The flash is quite bright, and the photos come out very crisp and vibrant. The Sony software utilities even allow you to take hi-res still shots out of the video, which is quite nice. Sometimes, during video, you see a shot that would make a great still shot, and you can easily extract it.

The Sony utilities are a nice way to download the videos and stills from the camera. It's a nice way to browse your collection, and supports converting files to other formats. It's a little slow, but fortunately, the latest version of Adobe Premier Elements handles AVCHD natively. However, you will need at least a dual-core processor to handle video editing at HD. Even then, it's very processor intensive, and you'll notice skips in audio and video as you try to work with the clips. Of course, converting to MPEG2 resolves those problems completely, but who wants low-res video except for on the Internet?

The standard battery that comes with it is good for about 1.5 hours of recording. I bought a second one that gets me almost 2.5 hours of recording. With just 2 batteries, you can handle most tasks.

I did have a problem with static using a Sony wireless mic, but I think that it's the mic's fault, and not the camera's.

A feature that at first seemed gimmicky to me was the face recognition. It recognizes faces, and indexes them so that you can quickly view clips that have that person in them. It's nice to be able to go through lots of video on the camera, find a family member, and play a specific clip of them.

Although this is a great camera, I do have a few reservations that keep me from giving it 5 stars:

1) I had to get a separate battery charger to avoid carrying around a huge AC adapter.
2) What happens when the hard drive fails? We all know that it will some time, but if you don't back up, you'll lose everything. It doesn't seem like a user-serviceable part either.
3) I had to buy the mini HDMI cable separately.
4) My computer's hardware is barely able to work with AVCHD video. That means that I'd have to consider going to a quad-core one to get better performance (assuming that the software can handle the extra processors). This isn't necessarily the camera's fault, but hi-def video is just cpu-intensive.
5) No easy way to make hi-def videos for friends and families who don't have a computer, Blu-ray players or memory card readers for their TVs.
6) Trying to the videos on a Mac (or an older PC) was a nightmare because you have to convert to MPEG2 before doing anything... There may be affordable software for the Mac that can support AVCHD by now.

Overall, this is the camera that I wanted, and still would buy again if I had the choice. I've had it for 7 months, and have not regretted it.

I wanted to clear the air about a little misinformation that has been posted on hi def resolutions. There are other sites on the net that explain the same thing with but with more detail, but the link below is the reference for my information:

[...]

How 1080i and 1080p Are Both The Same and Different

1080i and 1080p are both High Definition display formats for HDTVs. 1080i and 1080p signals actually contain the same information. Both 1080i and 1080p represent a 1920x1080 pixel resolution (1,920 pixels across the screen by 1,080 pixels down the screen). The difference between 1080i and 1080p is in the way the signal is sent from a source component or displayed on an HDTV screen.

In 1080i each frame of video is sent or displayed in alternative fields. The fields in 1080i are composed of 540 rows of pixels or lines of pixels running from the top to the bottom of the screen, with the odd fields displayed first and the even fields displayed second. Together, both fields create a full frame, made up of all 1,080 pixel rows or lines, every 30th of a second.

In 1080p, each frame of video is sent or displayed progressively. This means that both the odd and even fields (all 1,080 pixel rows or pixel lines) that make up the full frame are displayed together. This results in a smoother looking image, with less motion artifacts and jagged edges.


Differences Within 1080p

1080p can also be displayed (depending on the video processing used) as a 1080p/60 (most common), 1080p/30, or in 1080p/24 formats.

1080p/60 is essentially the same frame repeated twice every 30th of a second. (enhanced video frame rate).

1080p/30 is the same frame displayed once every 30th of a second. (standard live or recorded video frame rate).

1080p/24 is the same frame displayed every 24th of a second (standard motion picture film frame rate),


The Key is in the Processing

1080p processing can be done at the source, such as on a Upscaling DVD Player, Blu-ray Disc Player, or HD-DVD player - or it can be done by the HDTV itself.

Depending on the actual video processors used, there may or may not be a difference in having the TV do the final processing (referred to as deinterlacing) step of converting 1080i to 1080p.

For instance, if the TV is utilizing a Faroudja Genesis, DVDO, Silicon Optix HQV, or homegrown processors, such as the ones used in higher-end Sony, Pioneer, Hitachi, and Panasonic sets for example, may be equal to the processors used in many source components - so the results displayed on screen should be equivalent, or very close. Any differences would be more noticable on larger screen sizes.


1080p, Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD

Also, keep in mind that with both Blu-ray and HD-DVD, the actual information on the disc itself is in the 1080p/24 format. Players, such as LG BH100 Blu-ray/HD-DVD combo player, have the ability to output 1080p/24 direct from the disc to its output.

However, since most current HDTVs cannot display 1080p/24, when you connect the LG BH100 to an HDTV that does not have 1080p/24 input and display capability but only has 1080p/60/30 or 1080i input capability, the LG BH100 automatically sends its 1080p/24 signal from the disc to its own video processor which then outputs a 1080i/60 signal. This leaves the HDTV to do the final step of deinterlacing and displaying the incoming 1080i signal in 1080p.

Another example of 1080p processing, is the Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray Disc Player - what is does is even more complicated. This Blu-ray player reads the 1080p/24 signal off the disc, then it actually reinterlaces the signal to 1080i, and then deinterlaces its own internally made 1080i signal in order to create a 1080p/60 signal for output to a 1080p input capable television. However, if it detects that the HDTV cannot input a 1080p signal, the Samsung BD-P1000 just takes its own internally created 1080i signal and passes that signal through to the HDTV, letting the HDTV do the final deinterlacing step.

Just as with the previous LG BH100 example. The final 1080p display format depends what deinterlacing processor is used by the HDTV for the final step. In fact, in the Samsung case, it may that a specific HDTV has better 1080i-to-1080p deinterlacer than Samsung has, it which case you may see a better result using the deinterlacer built into the HDTV.


Final Take

In the final analysis, the proof is in the actual viewing - how the image looks to you in the real world with your specific HDTV. Short of having a tech come out and doing actual measurements, or comparing results using different TVs and source components yourself, even if you don't have a 1080p input capable Television, as long your HDTV has 1080p internal processing, you may still be able to get the benefits of 1080p. The key is in the processing, and, of course, not all HDTVs and video processors are created equal - let your eyes be your guide.

This is truly a awesome and perfect camera. Being my first camcorder it is perfect because it is easy to use. All the functions are self explanatory and there are very few buttons to confuse you. I thought taking stills by just pressing one button was pretty cool. I didn't need to switch to camera mode. I also can barely even hear the hard drive, it's as if they put 120gig onto a flash memory. They have added the USB port onto the camcorder making the docking station an option now. Which I thought was the best upgrade from the SR11. It almost seems like they took all the bad reviews they had with the SR11 and fixed them with this model (SR12). I am very satisfied with this camcorder. Sony has came through once again. In addition, you can also move hard drive data to the flash memory if you like.