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Technical Details
- Features 1920 x 1080 full HD video resolution
- A slim, lightweight pure titanium camcorder body
- 4.0 megapixel still image capture; Face Detection technology for video and still images
- Includes a 2.7-inch Clear Photo LCD Plus display
- Comes with Super SteadyShot image stabilization, plus a Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens
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Product Description
The HDR-TG1 Handycam camcorder records Full HD 1920 x 1080 resolution video from a lightweight, slim body crafted from pure titanium. It's tough enough for everyday HD video shooting and perfect for travel with its compact size that won't take up much room in your bag. The stylish design incorporates a Premium Hard Coating for superior resistance to even the smallest scratches. It records to convenient Memory Stick PRO Duo media, and Sony's ClearVid CMOS Sensor (with Exmor derived technology) and BIONZ image processor provide spectacular video and stunning 4.0 megapixel still images. Face Detection technology is also included, which automatically finds and enhances faces for beautiful results. Features: 1920x1080 Recording- Record stunning, incredibly detailed video footage in the clarity of 1920 x 1080 Full HD resolution. Lightweight, Pure Titanium Body- Slim and lightweight-only 8oz without the battery-the HDR-TG1’s body is constructed of high-quality pure titanium. Additionally, a Premium Hard Coating is applied on the body surface (except for hinge and lens ring area), providing superior resistance to scratches and fingerprints. Face Detection for Video Footage and Digital Still Photos- Made possible by the BIONZ image processing engine, Face Detection technology recognizes up to 8 faces anywhere in the frame and automatically controls focus, exposure, and color to help capture smiling faces brightly and clearly. Face Detection technology also helps make skin tones look natural without affecting other colors in the image. Supremely Mobile Design- Sony has created a camcorder with the ability to fit in a shirt pocket, yet still capture stunning Full HD resolution video and 4.0 megapixel still images. Whether for personal or business use, around town or on vacation.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
145 of 149 people found the following review helpful
I have this camera and a Canon HF10 so I'm going to lift some of the AVCHD-specific stuff from my HF10 review.
I bought the HF10 for it's super-fast focus when shooting my kids' sporting events. I bought the TG1 for it's superior portability. I'm happy to say both are awesome cameras. One big negative for the Sony camera is that 16gb of memory (Memory Stick Pro Duo Mark 2) costs 2.5 times as much for this camera as it does for the HF10 which uses SDHC. That's a complete rip off but no other HD video camera fits in your pocket like this one so that's the price you pay for portability. Battery life is another price you pay but I got every video I wanted, in great quality, from the beach this past weekend and had plenty of battery and memory to spare. If you're going to film long events this is not the camera for you. In still camera terminology think of it as pocket point-and-shoot and not an SLR.
This is a fantastic camera but people need to have more realistic expectations of what to expect from AVCHD. It is a highly compressed format so using this camera in low-light conditions is going to produce pretty "grainy" results. In good lighting AVCHD output from this camera can produce some really great looking results in HD but don't kid yourself into thinking you're going to get professional HDTV quality. This is a point-and-shoot.
This is a great camera if you use a Mac but you will probably find it very frustrating if you use a PC...
I use both Macs and PC and I have to tell you that you that PCs suck for AVCHD - you will waste a lot of time and pull your hair out. I'm sure PC video software vendors will address this eventually, but seriously folks if you want to do this the easy way get an Intel-based Mac (caveat: only Intel based machines using Leopard support AVCHD) and use either iMovie or Final Cut Express 4. Both of these programs (iMovie 08 and FCE4) just LOVE this camera (and Canon HF10 and hard disk-based Sony AVCHD as well) and they work like a charm. Video making has never been this easy. FCE4 lets you mix AVHCD, HDV and SD video on the same timeline and save in whatever format you want so it's worth the $200 if you want to do that or have more exacting control over your videos. It is basically a (lightly) stripped-down version of Apple's excellent professional video software (Final Cut Pro) and it is very good. For most home videos iMovie 08 (which comes in iLife 08) will be just fine. No, better than fine. You will LOVE how easy it is to create great movies with iMovie 08 and how easy it is to save them in a variety of formats and sizes and share them with friends and family. It is a piece of cake to edit movies in iMovie 08 and then put them on a Mac Web Gallery (at up to 960x540 which is higher than DVD quality) for family members to see or dump them out on a DVD (using iLife 08's iDVD) for your family members who are less tech savvy. You can even dump them out to 1080p Quicktime movies if you desire. I enjoy sticking movies of the kids on my wife's iPhone so she can show them to her friends.
I've had no problem transferring the movies directly from the camera but you do need to have the camera plugged into the AC to do it. You can avoid plugging the camera into your Mac to transfer the files by getting a memory stick reader. You can get a Transcend M5 reader here on Amazon for under $10 and it works great with the Memory Stick Duo Mark2 cards.
The video camera is just acting like a USB reader when you connect it to your Mac anyway - it is the file layouts that the software recognizes. When read in and converted to Apple Intermediate Codec at 1920x1080 they will balloon in size. If you want to store the raw video in a more compressed way you can simply copy the root directory of the card to another directory and copy it back again later. If you're working with AVCHD you need to buy the biggest hard drives you can afford. 60 minutes of video will use up something like 50Gb of storage on your Mac when converted to 1920x1080. If you just want great looking home video to show on your HDTV, but don't want to go broke on hard drives, Apple offers to import the movies at a slightly lower resolution (960x540) which takes up a LOT less space with very little drop in quality. I have been making home videos and showing them on an Apple TV at that resolution and they look stunning. The quality difference between that resolution and full HD isn't that big of a deal.
If you want to try to get truly professional-quality video you should avoid AVCHD cameras and stick to the HDV format concentrating on cameras with larger sensors. But this is great camera for HD home videos at a great price.
The user interface on this camera is better than the Canon HDF10 for reviewing your video but sucks for adjustments on the fly. Adjusting exposure manually is a pain in the butt and the UI for it obscures a lot of the picture. I wish they had added a dial or button set for adjust exposure and/or backlighting control on the camera. In bright light the screen gets washed out enough that it is hard to tell if your exposure is really that great or not but I did find a neat trick. In bright sunlight the screen is easier to see if you tilt it at an angle forward rather than trying to keep it straight up and down. This is where a viewfinder would really help. But these are minor nits because the camera does a good job at exposure control on its own.
Still photos absolutely suck on this camera. Get a proper still camera if you care about stills. This is true of all of the video cameras - don't count on them taking decent stills unless you want to use them at very low resolutions. They're going to be better than the camera on your mobile phone but that's not saying much :)
As I said earlier this is a very compact point-and-shoot camera that shoots HD video and for that it's excellent. The beautiful thing about this camera is that it fits comfortably in your pocket. No other HD video camera out yet (as of 28-May-2008) can make that claim. For that reason you'll probably take it with you more often and pull it out for a quick video here and there. To me that makes it worth the price of the expensive memory cards because your memories are priceless - especially of your kids growing up.
I bought the HF10 for it's super-fast focus when shooting my kids' sporting events. I bought the TG1 for it's superior portability. I'm happy to say both are awesome cameras. One big negative for the Sony camera is that 16gb of memory (Memory Stick Pro Duo Mark 2) costs 2.5 times as much for this camera as it does for the HF10 which uses SDHC. That's a complete rip off but no other HD video camera fits in your pocket like this one so that's the price you pay for portability. Battery life is another price you pay but I got every video I wanted, in great quality, from the beach this past weekend and had plenty of battery and memory to spare. If you're going to film long events this is not the camera for you. In still camera terminology think of it as pocket point-and-shoot and not an SLR.
This is a fantastic camera but people need to have more realistic expectations of what to expect from AVCHD. It is a highly compressed format so using this camera in low-light conditions is going to produce pretty "grainy" results. In good lighting AVCHD output from this camera can produce some really great looking results in HD but don't kid yourself into thinking you're going to get professional HDTV quality. This is a point-and-shoot.
This is a great camera if you use a Mac but you will probably find it very frustrating if you use a PC...
I use both Macs and PC and I have to tell you that you that PCs suck for AVCHD - you will waste a lot of time and pull your hair out. I'm sure PC video software vendors will address this eventually, but seriously folks if you want to do this the easy way get an Intel-based Mac (caveat: only Intel based machines using Leopard support AVCHD) and use either iMovie or Final Cut Express 4. Both of these programs (iMovie 08 and FCE4) just LOVE this camera (and Canon HF10 and hard disk-based Sony AVCHD as well) and they work like a charm. Video making has never been this easy. FCE4 lets you mix AVHCD, HDV and SD video on the same timeline and save in whatever format you want so it's worth the $200 if you want to do that or have more exacting control over your videos. It is basically a (lightly) stripped-down version of Apple's excellent professional video software (Final Cut Pro) and it is very good. For most home videos iMovie 08 (which comes in iLife 08) will be just fine. No, better than fine. You will LOVE how easy it is to create great movies with iMovie 08 and how easy it is to save them in a variety of formats and sizes and share them with friends and family. It is a piece of cake to edit movies in iMovie 08 and then put them on a Mac Web Gallery (at up to 960x540 which is higher than DVD quality) for family members to see or dump them out on a DVD (using iLife 08's iDVD) for your family members who are less tech savvy. You can even dump them out to 1080p Quicktime movies if you desire. I enjoy sticking movies of the kids on my wife's iPhone so she can show them to her friends.
I've had no problem transferring the movies directly from the camera but you do need to have the camera plugged into the AC to do it. You can avoid plugging the camera into your Mac to transfer the files by getting a memory stick reader. You can get a Transcend M5 reader here on Amazon for under $10 and it works great with the Memory Stick Duo Mark2 cards.
The video camera is just acting like a USB reader when you connect it to your Mac anyway - it is the file layouts that the software recognizes. When read in and converted to Apple Intermediate Codec at 1920x1080 they will balloon in size. If you want to store the raw video in a more compressed way you can simply copy the root directory of the card to another directory and copy it back again later. If you're working with AVCHD you need to buy the biggest hard drives you can afford. 60 minutes of video will use up something like 50Gb of storage on your Mac when converted to 1920x1080. If you just want great looking home video to show on your HDTV, but don't want to go broke on hard drives, Apple offers to import the movies at a slightly lower resolution (960x540) which takes up a LOT less space with very little drop in quality. I have been making home videos and showing them on an Apple TV at that resolution and they look stunning. The quality difference between that resolution and full HD isn't that big of a deal.
If you want to try to get truly professional-quality video you should avoid AVCHD cameras and stick to the HDV format concentrating on cameras with larger sensors. But this is great camera for HD home videos at a great price.
The user interface on this camera is better than the Canon HDF10 for reviewing your video but sucks for adjustments on the fly. Adjusting exposure manually is a pain in the butt and the UI for it obscures a lot of the picture. I wish they had added a dial or button set for adjust exposure and/or backlighting control on the camera. In bright light the screen gets washed out enough that it is hard to tell if your exposure is really that great or not but I did find a neat trick. In bright sunlight the screen is easier to see if you tilt it at an angle forward rather than trying to keep it straight up and down. This is where a viewfinder would really help. But these are minor nits because the camera does a good job at exposure control on its own.
Still photos absolutely suck on this camera. Get a proper still camera if you care about stills. This is true of all of the video cameras - don't count on them taking decent stills unless you want to use them at very low resolutions. They're going to be better than the camera on your mobile phone but that's not saying much :)
As I said earlier this is a very compact point-and-shoot camera that shoots HD video and for that it's excellent. The beautiful thing about this camera is that it fits comfortably in your pocket. No other HD video camera out yet (as of 28-May-2008) can make that claim. For that reason you'll probably take it with you more often and pull it out for a quick video here and there. To me that makes it worth the price of the expensive memory cards because your memories are priceless - especially of your kids growing up.
35 of 35 people found the following review helpful
Other reviews have fairly described the pros and cons of the TG1. I own a Canon HV20 for "tripod events" - nothing beats HDV for image quality and low-light performance, and I always use a quality Senneheiser wireless mike for subjects greater than 10 feet away. But there are too many moments in life - of one's kids, mostly - that are over by the time you go get the beast, make sure there's room on the tape and juice in the battery. These are what the TG1 was designed for - it's your second camera, for the moments that normally get away.
I think the design and execution of the TG1 are brilliant. The IS and face detection work very well. Yes, I would have loved a mike input and an exposure button. But my guess is that Sony made these decisions of omission very carefully. If you have been waiting for a decent-quality shirt-pocket HD camcorder - as I have been ever since flash-memory models hit the market - didn't you expect to pay four figures for the early-adopters' privilege? Just think about it - this machine is roughly 30% smaller than its nearest competition, and Sony brought the price point for such exquisite miniaturization down to a level competitive with the other premium flash-memory camcorders. Every extra button or dial would have driven up the price of the unit. Design simplicity may have been a motivator as well - the camera's native point-and-shoot capability is just fine for about 75% of the moments most of us are trying to capture, and more buttons would make the unit a bit more geeky.
BTW, I have not had any trouble importing and manipulating AVCHD on my Lenovo T61 Thinkpad. The video editor is certainly meager - one can divide and trim the videos, and that's about it. But the DVD-AVCHD burning utility is fantastic. I had about twenty minutes of video from my first week with the camera. It took about 15 minutes to burn them onto a 25-cent DVD-R, and watch it on my Blu-Ray player (BDP-S350), and the daylight images were beautiful and sharp, even on a big screen.
From shooting my kids for the past week indoors and out, I have one other thought about the TG1's low-light drawbacks - they are more than outweighed by what I call 'form-factor-comfort'. It's not just the delay in getting out my big HDV unit that lets those little moments get away - the size of the tape units is inherently conspicuous and inhibiting, and my kids become self-conscious. The TG1 is roughly the size of my iPod, and its small size makes it much less intrusive in real-time. The little goofy moments when my 15, 13, and 8 year old kids all act like they're three years old are not perturbed by the TG1. This kid-comfort factor is of inestimable importance, in my opinion.
There might be two diametrically opposite subsets of first-time buyers who might consider this unit as their primary camcorder. First are tech-savvy young parents who are aware of the camera's limitations, but want to be able to grab a video with one hand while holding their baby with the other. The second would be techno-challenged people who happen to already own a blu-ray player (this may, admittedly, be a very small group).
Is there an early-adoption penalty? There is, always. Future cameras will be incrementally smaller, or slightly better in low light. But you only want an LCD so small, and the most critical limiter of low-light ability is the light-gathering ability - namely the size - of the lens. So until there is some great new video codec or a new chip technology, low-light performance won't be improved significantly without having a thicker unit. The most realistic expectation one might realize by waiting is having true 1080p resolution. But my kids get older, and less goofy, every day - 'damn good' now trumps 'even better' a year from now.
So do your research, read all the subjective and technical reviews you can, and remember the compromises inherent in the very smallness you seek. You won't find the best image quality and low-light performance unless you go HDV. But for a great second camera, you won't go wrong with the TG1.
I think the design and execution of the TG1 are brilliant. The IS and face detection work very well. Yes, I would have loved a mike input and an exposure button. But my guess is that Sony made these decisions of omission very carefully. If you have been waiting for a decent-quality shirt-pocket HD camcorder - as I have been ever since flash-memory models hit the market - didn't you expect to pay four figures for the early-adopters' privilege? Just think about it - this machine is roughly 30% smaller than its nearest competition, and Sony brought the price point for such exquisite miniaturization down to a level competitive with the other premium flash-memory camcorders. Every extra button or dial would have driven up the price of the unit. Design simplicity may have been a motivator as well - the camera's native point-and-shoot capability is just fine for about 75% of the moments most of us are trying to capture, and more buttons would make the unit a bit more geeky.
BTW, I have not had any trouble importing and manipulating AVCHD on my Lenovo T61 Thinkpad. The video editor is certainly meager - one can divide and trim the videos, and that's about it. But the DVD-AVCHD burning utility is fantastic. I had about twenty minutes of video from my first week with the camera. It took about 15 minutes to burn them onto a 25-cent DVD-R, and watch it on my Blu-Ray player (BDP-S350), and the daylight images were beautiful and sharp, even on a big screen.
From shooting my kids for the past week indoors and out, I have one other thought about the TG1's low-light drawbacks - they are more than outweighed by what I call 'form-factor-comfort'. It's not just the delay in getting out my big HDV unit that lets those little moments get away - the size of the tape units is inherently conspicuous and inhibiting, and my kids become self-conscious. The TG1 is roughly the size of my iPod, and its small size makes it much less intrusive in real-time. The little goofy moments when my 15, 13, and 8 year old kids all act like they're three years old are not perturbed by the TG1. This kid-comfort factor is of inestimable importance, in my opinion.
There might be two diametrically opposite subsets of first-time buyers who might consider this unit as their primary camcorder. First are tech-savvy young parents who are aware of the camera's limitations, but want to be able to grab a video with one hand while holding their baby with the other. The second would be techno-challenged people who happen to already own a blu-ray player (this may, admittedly, be a very small group).
Is there an early-adoption penalty? There is, always. Future cameras will be incrementally smaller, or slightly better in low light. But you only want an LCD so small, and the most critical limiter of low-light ability is the light-gathering ability - namely the size - of the lens. So until there is some great new video codec or a new chip technology, low-light performance won't be improved significantly without having a thicker unit. The most realistic expectation one might realize by waiting is having true 1080p resolution. But my kids get older, and less goofy, every day - 'damn good' now trumps 'even better' a year from now.
So do your research, read all the subjective and technical reviews you can, and remember the compromises inherent in the very smallness you seek. You won't find the best image quality and low-light performance unless you go HDV. But for a great second camera, you won't go wrong with the TG1.
48 of 52 people found the following review helpful
I recently bought the TG1 and Sanyo HD1010 and posted a comparison clip on Vimeo.com
Overall, I found the image stabilization to be very good, but the video had muted colors and looked less detailed than that from the Sanyo.
Here are some things I really liked about the camera:
-built in lens cap
-slightly smaller size than Sanyo HD1010
-high quality metal body (titanium)
-matching case (extra cost)
-5.1 audio recording
-memory card plays directly on PS3
Here are thing I didn't like:
-Memory sticks are very expensive compared to SD cards, I found around 4x the cost
-The battery life is rather short, only around 45 minutes (vs 120 min).
-AVCHD are difficult to edit, can not be easily uploaded to Vimeo or Youtube without first editing on the computer. Sanyo's MP4 files can be uploaded directly.
-No in camera editing ability, can not even join or cut parts of clips
-Not able to record at 1080p
-No external mic or headphone jack
-Touchscreen has small buttons
-The menu structure is confusing
-No printed manual / comes on CD, I couldn't even find it online. My Macbook Air has no CD drive.
-It sometimes does not save the setting changes if allowed to power down on it's own. You have to press the power button after you are done making setting changes.
-No remote control included. Makes it difficult to watch clips on the TV unless you have a Sony Bravia TV which can control the camera.
-HDMI cable not included. It uses a mini HDMI cable as well.
-HDMI port is not on docking station, Mini HDMI on camera, so you have to plug it in every time instead of just docking it.
-No ability to change volume while playing a video on the camera. You have to exit out and go into a menu to adjust the playback volume.
-Playback screen only shows three thumbnails at a time, I couldn't figure out how to show many thumbnails at once.
Overall, I found the image stabilization to be very good, but the video had muted colors and looked less detailed than that from the Sanyo.
Here are some things I really liked about the camera:
-built in lens cap
-slightly smaller size than Sanyo HD1010
-high quality metal body (titanium)
-matching case (extra cost)
-5.1 audio recording
-memory card plays directly on PS3
Here are thing I didn't like:
-Memory sticks are very expensive compared to SD cards, I found around 4x the cost
-The battery life is rather short, only around 45 minutes (vs 120 min).
-AVCHD are difficult to edit, can not be easily uploaded to Vimeo or Youtube without first editing on the computer. Sanyo's MP4 files can be uploaded directly.
-No in camera editing ability, can not even join or cut parts of clips
-Not able to record at 1080p
-No external mic or headphone jack
-Touchscreen has small buttons
-The menu structure is confusing
-No printed manual / comes on CD, I couldn't even find it online. My Macbook Air has no CD drive.
-It sometimes does not save the setting changes if allowed to power down on it's own. You have to press the power button after you are done making setting changes.
-No remote control included. Makes it difficult to watch clips on the TV unless you have a Sony Bravia TV which can control the camera.
-HDMI cable not included. It uses a mini HDMI cable as well.
-HDMI port is not on docking station, Mini HDMI on camera, so you have to plug it in every time instead of just docking it.
-No ability to change volume while playing a video on the camera. You have to exit out and go into a menu to adjust the playback volume.
-Playback screen only shows three thumbnails at a time, I couldn't figure out how to show many thumbnails at once.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Best video camera I have ever owned.
I started in 1968 with super 8 movies, moved on to Betamax as soon as it came available, upgraded to a Sony SL2000 Betamax in 1982, in the early 90's I moved up to a Sony 8mm video... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Michael A. Brennan
Sony handycam HDR-TG1 is LEMON
I have used this camera less than 6 hours total, then suddenly I got a error message and the shutters would not close or open. Sony has now become synonymous with garbage! Read more
Published 20 months ago by Manny
Best Pocketable HD Camcorder
We've been using the HDR-TG1 for about a year on vacation trips, while sailing and hiking. In every respect it has proved to be an outstanding instrument. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Gerard Muller
Liked it until now
I have owned this camera since December 2008. We bought it because we liked that it was compact and did video AND still images. Read more
Published on March 24, 2010 by M. Young
Wow, what a waste of money!
My video camera died right after the warranty expired! Now it will cost $171 just to have someone look at it. Beware! The quality is comparable to the flip. Read more
Published on January 27, 2010 by Leahbodeah
Great portable camera. No so great indoors or in low light situations
What's the point of having an HD camcorder if you don't use it? This unit is compact enough to carry everywhere so I can capture those random precious moments. Read more
Published on December 29, 2009 by NYC guy
Cool camera but....
It's a very high quality camera overall..but I have one complaint ; transferring files (videos) to PC.. That's a very very hard process for me..
Published on September 18, 2009 by Levo
Great Camera - some hints for best usage
I got the TG1, which didn't have GPS. No big deal, but make sure when traveling abroad that the time is set to local, and the TIME ZONE is also. Read more
Published on August 22, 2009 by Brayton Fisher
convenient and fully compatible with Macintosh OSX
This is an extremely convenient, easy to use digital camcorder and camera. It fits very nicely into both my pants pocket and small pockets on skirts, and the controls are very easy... Read more
Published on July 11, 2009 by CK94
If this is what you're looking for it's a great product
This is my first video camera. I am no way a video expert. I bought it for the arrival of my first child.
Pros:
Out of the box it is easy to get started. Read more
Pros:
Out of the box it is easy to get started. Read more
Published on July 6, 2009 by E. Curnutte
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