Camcorder Review Sony HDR-HC9 HDV Camcorder

Sony's new HC9 looks and feels a lot like last year's HC7, all in all a good thing. The design proves to be solid and usable, and it captures good images. For some users, the very best feature is one you can take out and hold in your hand: tape.

At the risk of sounding old-fashioned, I will admit to liking tape. In this era of solid-state memory cards and high-capacity on-board hard drives, there is something gratifying about a consumer camera that still stores its images on a good ol' spool of magnetized Mylar.

What's new in the HC9? A nice little lens hood to block the sun. Spot meter and spot focus. And a peaking feature that helps with manual focusing.

This camera targets the home user as its main audience, but the wide range of manual controls makes it a very nice choice for the professional as a throw-it-through-the-air / tape-it-to-the-fuselage B-roll camera.

The most-used controls sit in pleasantly ergonomic locations. The right index finger and thumb hover over the zoom control and start/stop button respectively. The photo button sits just behind the zoom rocker, easy to reach but recessed enough that it's not too easily bumped.

The stereo mic hides below the lens on the front of the camera. I thought I would like this location a lot, since top-mounted mics are so easily disturbed. Unfortunately, when I stabilized the camera with my left hand, my fingers wanted to fall in a tripod arrangement that put the end of my middle finger right on top of the mic. Your hand may want to do something completely different.

Sony deserves commendation for putting so much manual control in a consumer camera. It deserves even more commendation for putting much of that control in a physical wheel (the Cam Control) that you can program for manual control of four functions: focus, exposure, auto exposure shift and white-balance shift. The only improvement on the system would be to enlarge the wheel itself, which is a somewhat touchy roller actuated by your fingertip.

You can make your choice between the 2.7" LCD screen monitor and the color viewfinder. The viewfinder conveniently slides back, which allows for a bit more nose room. It also has a focus adjustment.

On the back of the camera, you'll find the DC power jack and the full-size HDMI jack. Other jacks hide behind a small fold-down cover below the LCD screen on the port side of the camera: component out, A/V out and i.LINK (FireWire). Behind the LCD panel, you'll find a mini-USB jack. That's a lot of connectivity options.

For those who want to control the camera remotely, a LANC jack is next to the FireWire port. That feature just may cinch the deal, if you want to use this camera on the end of a crane or in some precarious position.

The lens cover activates automatically, similar to many new digital still cameras. Turn the camera off: it closes. The new hard plastic lens hood screws into the lens. It also contains 37mm threads to allow you to screw small filters inside. Surprisingly, the instructions say that you must remove the lens hood when using the flash, as it will cast a shadow in the frame of your stills.

Speaking of stills: a slot for Memory Stick Pro Duo cards allows you to store up to 8GB of stills on one card. It would have been nice to also have this card as a secondary storage for video clips. Sadly, this doesn't seem to be an option.

For novices or serious shooters who want to rest their brains for a while, the Easy button gives you a break. Sony offers this feature on a lot of their cameras. Once you press the Easy button, most of the menu options disappear completely, and the camera goes into auto-everything mode. Kinda nice for the family picnic.

Don't forget the looks of the camera. For this year's summer fashion, black is the new black. It's sleek. It's modern. It's black.

The quality of the images we captured with the HC9 left us very satisfied. This one-chip camera sells at a street price of well below a thousand dollars. For that price range, it performs well. Colors reproduced in a lifelike fashion, but they didn't have exotic vibrancy. A Camera Color adjustment allowed for greater saturation if desired. Details held all the sharpness you've come to expect from HDV.

CMOS cameras commonly manifest the symptom of marginal performance in low-light conditions. The HC9 is no exception. In moderate lighting, colors still look good, and all the automatic controls function well. In low light, noise creeps into the image, the auto focus starts hunting and the white balance struggles a bit.

On the other hand . . . in well-lit situations, the image quality speaks for itself, and the auto focus and auto white balance perform very well. The spot focus/spot meter feature worked as advertised, adjusting to the portion of the frame selected. While I was stumbling through the menu maze, it took me a while to realize that, while one button has both spot focus and spot meter linked, another selection allows independent use (that's a good thing).

The Peaking feature places a thin colored edge around objects in focus. For the edge color, you can choose white, red or yellow. When focusing manually, just keep adjusting until a thin colored border appears around the object of your choice. Works like a charm.

The onboard mic works about as well as most small onboard mics. It captures nearby sounds (within about eight feet) pretty well. As always, serious shooters will want to use an external mic.