Sony DCR-HC48 First Impressions Reviewby John NeelyPublished on Feb 1, 2007 12:00 PM
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Picture & Manual Control
Automatic Control (0.0)
Sony has excelled in producing camcorders that are easy to use, with automatic controls that perform consistently well. In essence, automatic mode, or “Easy” mode as Sony calls it, takes care of all aspects of image control other than zooming in and out and... well, holding the camcorder for you - hence its popularity. These are seriously easy camcorders. Higher-end enthusiasts and video professionals tend towards the use of manual controls to govern image quality. When the subject in the frame is clear and lighting is good, Sony camcorders make fast adjustments to focus, aperture, gain and white balance. In more challenging situations, all camcorders, including Sony's, have difficulty making accurate picture adjustments because their electronic brains don’t know what the subject is.
Say the subject is your brother Joe. Joe's on a ski slope with the sun at his back. Joe is a small portion of the frame compared to the mountain in the background, your camcorder may assume that the mountain is the subject. It then adjusts for the brightly lit mountain, leaving Joe out of focus and underexposed. Camcorders have similar difficulty gauging appropriate color in mixed lighting, for example, when some light in the frame comes from an incandescent source and some is streaming in through a window. The DCR-HC48 can be expected to struggle in all these situations, though Sony cams often make auto adjustments more adeptly than camcorders from other manufacturers.
Like the HC46 (Review, Specs, $419.99), the HC48 does include a suite of recording modes that optimize auto mode for some of the challenging situations mentioned above. Called Scene Modes by Sony, they include: Beach, Candle, Fireworks, Landscape, Portrait, Snow (yes, your brother Joe might find a little help here), Sports Lesson, Spotlight, Sunrise & Sunset, and Twilight. In addition to these Scene Modes, the HC48 includes Spot Meter and Spot Focus which are features that are helpful when auto mode is making adjustments based on the wrong part of the frame. When either of these settings is engaged, you can force the camcorder to use a specific part of the frame as its reference by touching the area on the LCD you want it to measure.
Overall Manual Control
The Sony DCR-HC46 (Review, Specs, $419.99) offers manual control over zoom, focus, exposure in EV steps, and white balance. All of these controls, other than zoom, are accessed and adjusted using the touch screen interface. After entering the menu, you tap your way to the appropriate control and then touch the relevant onscreen buttons. While a touch screen is fine for menu navigation, or checking in at the airport, it’s a terrible method for making fine adjustments to a video or still image because it lacks the refinement of almost any external physical controller. The icons and buttons that appear onscreen also obstruct your view of the image you are adjusting, and annoyingly, your fingerprints are bound to grease up the screen.
We like the ease of navigation that Sony’s touch screens provide, but they render manual control virtually useless. Sony is after the mass market of point-and-shooters who seldom if ever use manual controls. Their decision to relegate manual controls to the touch screen on all but their highest-end consumer camcorders speaks to this business decision, as does the lack of many other important manual image controls including shutter speed, aperture control, and gain.
Zoom
The DCR-HC48 features a 25x optical zoom and a digital zoom that maxes out at 2000x. It can also be disabled or set to 50x (a far more sensible option). Digital zoom magnifies an image electronically, meaning that the resolution of the image will decrease as you move further into digital zoom territory. For this reason, we recommend either disabling this feature or capping it at 50x. The step-down DCR-HC38 (Specs, $279) features a massive 40x optical zoom – the strongest on the consumer market, while the DCR-HC96 (Review, Specs, $516), with its larger sensor, has only a 10x optical zoom. The main zoom toggle is excellent, in keeping with other Sony camcorders. This zoom controller is a rocking lever that protrudes up slightly from the top of the body and falls right under your index finger when gripping the camcorder. The zoom lever allows for fine control over zoom speed.
Two buttons on the LCD frame under the screen are the HC48’s secondary zoom control and are useful for shooting in positions that make it difficult to use the main lever. The buttons operate the zoom at a medium fixed speed unlike the zoom lever, which allows you to change the zoom speed according to finger pressure.
Focus
Manual focus is adjusted using the touch screen interface that has changed little from last year’s HC46. After selecting manual focus from the camcorder submenu, a horizontal bar appears superimposed over the image being monitored. On the left side of the bar is an icon of a man, representing near focus, and at the right side is an icon of a mountain, representing distant focus. To change focus in either of these directions, you simply press and hold or tap the correct icon.
As you might imagine, it’s difficult to accurately assess focus when there are icons cluttering up your 2.7” screen. Onscreen buttons also make fine adjustment nearly impossible because they are pressure-sensitive, activating only when the amount of force applied reaches a certain point. As a result, it’s impossible to start or stop the focal adjustment on a dime. Mechanical focus controls are almost always better than Sony’s touch screen buttons.
Luckily, Spot Focus works reasonably well and can be a lifesaver when neither straight auto nor manual focus is up to the task.
Exposure & Aperture
The exposure control on the Sony DCR-HC46 has a touch screen interface that is nearly identical to the manual focus interface and is plagued by the same problems. Once exposure is selected from the menu, a horizontal bar appears, this time with – and + icons at the left and right ends. Pressing either icon decreases or increases exposure through a 24 step range that presumably refers to EV steps, an aggregate of aperture and shutter speed. Sony’s high-end HD camcorders do feature an external physical dial that can be used to adjust exposure that is a great improvement over the touch screen.
There is no mode in which you can set the aperture directly. All Panasonic camcorders give you that option, as do some upper-end Canons.
Shutter Speed
You cannot manually control shutter speed on the DCR-HC48, an omission that is consistent across Sony’s whole Handycam line. You will find manual shutter speeds adjustments of some kind make an appearance on camcorders from nearly every other manufacturer, including Panasonic, Canon, JVC, Samsung, and Hitachi.
White Balance
White Balance is one manual control that Sony gets right, with a manual “one push” option, as well as indoor and outdoor presets. Setting white balance manually is quick and easy. After you have navigated to the white balance screen, you simply press the One Touch button to lock in your setting.
Gain
Like other consumer camcorders from Sony, the DCR-HC48 does not offer manual control over gain.
Other Manual Controls
The Sony DCR-HC48 offers no manual controls in addition to those mentioned above.
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