Sony DCR-SR300 First Impressions Reviewby Matt CullerPublished on Jan 16, 2007 12:00 PM
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Video Performance
The DCR-SR300 (Review, Specs, $761.95) ships with a 1/2.9" 3200 pixel ClearVID CMOS. The imager has 2280K effective pixels in 16:9 and 1710K effective pixels in 4:3 in video mode. Although the gross pixel count is nearly identical to last year’s SR100 (Review, Specs, $999), this is a 16:9 native sensor. Last year’s CMOS sensors were not 16:9 native, and performance in widescreen mode should benefit from the change.
The DCR-SR300’s video performance will make an interesting comparison with the HDR-HC7 (Review, Specs, Recent News, $1128.56), but right now, it’ll be hard to tell exactly how they compare. On the floor of CES, we only had the LCD screens to evaluate image quality which is never as accurate as you'd like it to be. The HDR-SR100, with a smaller 1/3" ClearVID CMOS, had one of the most vivid performances we've seen from a MPEG-2 camcorder, including HDD and DVD camcorders. While we will hold off definitive judgment regarding the DCR-SR300’s video performance, we expect it to be decent.
Unfortunately, even if the DCR-SR300 produces good video, there’s not that much in the realm of manual control to support good quality video. What it does have is a decent zoom toggle and nice handling ability.
Low Light Performance
For those of you who've never been to a show like CES before, let us impart this one image: The big camcorder manufacturers spend a lot of money to make their booths look good. Bright lights and well-lit artificial scenes, for instance Panasonic's makeshift beach this year, are what manufacturers want the press and buyers to point their camcorders at. Therefore, it's very difficult to ascertain low light performance. Instead, we must look to the past and speculate on the future.
The DCR-SR100 (Review, Specs, $999) of last year produced a great looking image in low light. Part of that was due to the large 1/3" sensor, but because we saw varying degrees of effectiveness in camcorders with the same chip, it was likely its hearty processor as well. This year, the new 1/2.9" CMOS will very likely improve on that performance, but it will depend on the size of the actual pixels on the chip. The pixel count has increased substantially from the 1/3" chip, so there's a chance that low light perfomance could either stay the same or drop off a little. We'll keep our fingers crossed for the former.
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