Does anyone have the Sony HDR-HC1 HDV handycam?

[MrBonquista]

I was looking into Sony's consumer HiDef camera, the HDR-HC1 handycam, and was wondering if it is as good as it sounds. As of now I have been making films with my DCR-HC20 miniDV, (you can check them out at http://www.bonquista.piczo.com), and I wanted to know if it is worth stepping up to the big 1080i resolution 'brother' of my camera. I just checked out the new line of miniDV's that sony has, and the DCR-HC96 looks tight for a mini DV camera.

...so does anyone own, or has anyone used a Sony HDR-HC1 camera? please inform me on the quality and features of Sony's consumer HDV product. thank you.

 

[DBXMe2]

Well.. to be honest, the sound will be decent, but nothing above ordinary. You'd have to get a shotgun mic attachment for better sound.

The mic that is on there will probably have built-in filters so you can either go for Voice, or cut down wind, or leave it normal. Besides that, the mic you would need for your films would have to be a shotgun mic...

I think I might have gone over this in another one of your threads...

anyway.. Sony sells accesories with their cams... if you buy this ECM-HGZ1 Shotgun Microphonespacer ECM-HGZ1 with your camera, you'll get better sound, and what ever your camera is pointing at... thats the sound it will pick up... most probably.. but sound bounces everywhere... so no matter what you'll always have background noise, but this will get mostly what you want!

GL
Mike!

PS. buying one of these cams my self, Booya

 

[MrBonquista]

That's awesome, i might need a mic that can detach so i can have a 'sound guy' pickin up the dialouge. But what about picture quality? thats the main reason i wanted to get this camera, do u know about that DBXMe2? as far as consumer cameras go, it should be magnificent right?

 

[DBXMe2]

its a HD camera... so yes... Also I'll address the mic subject after talking about the image... still some things that are not clear....

High Def image is 1920X1080 pixels... compaired to regular Digital Video which is 720X480 Pixels. Whats great about this is that you are getting 3X the quality you would be with a regular camcorder. Also this camera offers a different chip which records your image. Instead of a regular CCD (Charge Couple Device) *fancy name for light sensitive chip which turns your image into digital info. lol This camera features a CMOS, which is Way better, supposedly, then a CCD.

The key difference between CCD's and CMOS's are that the CMOS chip works better with light. It creates less noise in black or virtualy none... So your blacks are BLACK, and your colors are nice and SMOOOOOTH. Not like a regular DV camera... with a CCD... you'd have like a greeny purple black... not cool.

SO YES, BIG PICTURE, but watch out. Even if you've got Firewire on your PC to transfer your video to edit... you might have to upgrade, since HD IS A BIG MOFO.

I was talking about HD with a collegue and he told me that regular firewire might not cut it to streem a HD image to the PC without loosing frames.... BUT appearently there's 2 versions of Firewire out there... go figure.


ALRIGHT NOW TO THE SOUND... again.......

The mic that they offer as an accessory is one that sits ontop of the camera... its clips on a special accessories shoe on the camera. BASICALY it looks like one of those things you attatch a flash too, on a photo camera... same thing... except this one is special... it does more! lol

so... the shotgun mic does not detatch from the camera... or else what you need is a REAL shotgun mic, which has an XLR jack.... thats one of those 3 prong plugs for pro mics... to a mini-jack.... thats the kind of plug that you would have on your earphones for your CD player.....

BUT I have to warn you.... Shotgun mics only pick up ONE channel of sound... that means... you're getting MONO sound... not stereo...

Anyway, keep posting if you got questions..

I know I type alot.. there's lots to say about it lol

 

[MarkG]

Even if you've got Firewire on your PC to transfer your video to edit... you might have to upgrade, since HD IS A BIG MOFO.

HDV is 3.5 megabytes per second, just like DV. What it does need is more CPU power and RAM as you need to decompress groups of 15 frames at a time, rather than single frames.

 

[MrBonquista]

i have a nice new dell laptop with 256 ram and only 60 GB on the HD, if i was to step up to HiDef (that HDV camera) then i should consider stepping up my computer probably or filling in the other port of RAM (or even getting an external HD) right?