Sony HDR-HC7 Camcorder Reviewby John NeelyPublished on Mar 19, 2007 2:00 PM 
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The Sony HDR-HC7 offers both very good automatic controls, as well as a high degree of manual control over the image. The Achilles’ heel of this camcorder is the multi-function Cam Control dial that serves as the primary manual control interface. If you are the kind of shooter who makes only occasional manual image tweaks, the dial’s undersized design should be only a minor annoyance, perhaps outweighed by the camcorder’s other fine qualities. If you are accustomed to making frequent changes to focus, exposure, and shutter speed, the quirky little Cam Control dial could be a deal breaker.
Automatic Control (8.0)
The HDR-HC7’s automatic controls are excellent, and this jibes with Sony’s well-deserved reputation for making great point-and-shoot camcorders. The HC7 also includes an Easy Button, Sony’s solution for users who want to place their camcorder in auto pilot. The Easy Button, clearly labeled and marked with a blue dot, makes an appearance on most HandyCams (Sony’s consumer camcorder line) and on the HC7 it’s tucked into the LCD cavity. Pressing the Easy Button increases the font size of on-screen displays, and makes many controls unavailable including Backlight, Display/Battery Info, the Cam Control dial, and the Manual button. Menu options are also restricted, and virtually every control shifts to either Auto mode or the camcorder’s default setting. Depending on what kind of shooter you are, Easy Mode may either be a godsend or unduly restrictive.
If you do opt for Easy Mode, the HDR-HC7 will perform very, very well in shooting environments that don’t present challenging lighting or contrast issues. Auto Focus and Auto Exposure turn in good results, but one of the best traits of Sony’s auto controls is the way they transition as conditions change. When moving from a brightly lit space to a darker space, Auto Exposure responds quickly and with subtlety, and Auto Focus performs its adjustments equally well. This contrasts with some camcorders, that either lag for a second or two, or transition too quickly. Either scenario can be jarring for viewers. In addition to auto mode, there are Spot Meter and Spot Focus options that can be used as long as the camcorder is not in Easy Mode. Engaging these options allows you to specify the part of the frame you want the camcorder to use as its reference for making automatic adjustments.
Finally, the HC7 offers a number of Auto Exposure modes that Sony calls “Scene Modes.” These include Auto Mode which places the camcorder’s functions in Auto but is less restrictive than Easy Mode, Twilight, Twilight Portrait, Candle, Sunrise Sunset, Fireworks, Landscape, Portrait, Spotlight, Beach, and Snow. These Scene Modes will optimize the camcorder’s automatic controls to suit a given exposure situation that would challenge the camcorder’s straight Auto or Easy Modes. For example, the Snow mode overexposes the image so that subjects, who are relatively dark compared to the white snow around them, are not underexposed. The result may blow out the whites of the snowy surroundings, but preserves detail in the faces of the people in the shot.
As with any camcorder, the HDR-HC7’s automatic controls, no matter how refined, cannot deal with all environments, framings, and lighting situations as well as a manually adjusted image. In low light or low contrast situations, the HC7 has trouble finding focus, and tends to “breathe.” The camcorder also may not focus or expose correctly for the subject of your shot, and if the Spot functions still don’t yield acceptable results, manually adjusting the camcorder may be the best option. The Scene Modes are also brute force fixes that don’t account for the specifics of a real-life situation. While they will certainly improve your image over vanilla Auto or Easy Mode, taking the time to adjust the camcorder manually will almost always produce the best picture. Finally, the camcorder’s auto white balance did tended to produce an oddly colored image, especially in artificial and mixed lighting. We expect any camcorder to have trouble rendering true colors in mixed lighting, but the performance of the HC7 in normal indoor lighting was poorer than expected, tending towards a sickly yellow. For this reason, we recommend manually white balancing whenever possible.
Overall Manual Control (7.5)
The Sony HDR-HC7 offers a strong suite of manual controls that is superior to most consumer camcorders, and that’s appropriate on Sony’s top-of-the-line camcorder. Focus, exposure, shutter speed, and white balance can all be controlled either using the Cam Control multifunction dial, or via the conventional Sony touch screen icon-based interface. In addition to these basic manual controls, the HC7 offers both white balance shift and AE shift, picture sharpness and color adjustments, spot meter and spot focus options, zebras at 70 or 100 IRE, a histogram view, color bars, guide frames, and the ability to manually adjust audio recording volume. The addition of features like AE and white balance shift offer better fine control over the image than virtually any other consumer camcorder, while manual audio levels (not channel independent), mic and headphone jacks make this camcorder a workable solution for many prosumer applications.
We applaud Sony for building a strong manual control suite into the HDR-HC7. Unfortunately, the camcorder has what many experienced shooters will consider a fatal flaw: a Cam Control dial that is so undersized that actually making adjustments quickly is difficult at best. It’s frustrating for us to see a camcorder that produces such good images, and that’s equipped with such a strong manual control feature set hobbled by an inferior controller. The dial on the HDR-UX7 (Review, Specs, $0.00), Sony’s top AVCHD camcorder is bigger, and easier to use, while the Cam Control ring on the HDR-SR1 (Review, Specs, Recent News, $1119.99), Sony’s HDD-based AVCHD model, is best of all. Yet those camcorders use AVCHD compression which is not yet suitable for professional productions. This leaves Sony fans with a difficult choice: to go with the company’s best HDV camcorder, despite the fact that its dial makes manual control adjustments during a shoot a painfully slow process; or to go with one of the AVCHD models that are better on a shoot, but produce poorer-quality video that’s not yet supported by NLEs.
To be fair, the Cam Control dial isn’t a total dud. It’s far better than a touch screen manual control interface. After some practice, I was able to perform a basic rack focus using the dial, but performing that move with precision required numerous tries, and I felt like I was pushing the control to its limits. The Cam Control ring on the HDR-SR1 is much bigger, and that alone makes performing moves like a rack focus a pleasure rather than a struggle. The other problem with the multi-function dial is that toggling between the parameters it controls (i.e. from focus to exposure) entails pressing and holding the Manual button until a submenu with dial control options appears onscreen. You can do this while the camcorder is rolling, but it takes at least ten seconds to shift from one parameter to another, and pressing and holding the Manual button jars the camcorder. If there’s time to set up a shot, and lighting conditions are stable, the process of toggling from one parameter to another won’t be a big issue. In a high-pressure shooting situation, the Cam Control dial’s weaknesses are sufficient to send most pros looking for a better solution.
And that’s a shame, given the potential to produce great images offered by the HDR-HC7. Replacing the dial with a ring would make then manual controls much easier to use quickly and accurately, and turn this camcorder into a model we’d endorse as a plausible second camera for applications like event videography or documentary production, or even as a primary camera for low-budget filmmaking. Until the Cam Control improves, our praise for the HC7 will have to stop short of that.
Zoom (6.0)
The Sony HDR-HC7 has a very good zoom control that has a rocking lever design. This is Sony’s standard zoom controller, and is implemented better than the zoom toggles found on most consumer camcorders. The placement of the lever should feel appropriate for most users when hand-holding the camcorder, and ergonomic placement of this control is a simple but important detail that some camcorder manufacturers get wrong. The rocking lever design also offers a higher degree of control than the sliders found on some models, commonly on camcorders made by Panasonic and Sanyo. The rocking lever on the HC7 responds quickly, and stops on a dime. It also provides good control over variable zoom speeds, and with practice it is possible to move the zoom at a slow crawl.
A secondary zoom interface is provided on the left, or outside, edge of the LCD frame. These buttons lie above a secondary Record/Start/Stop button and are useful when operating the camcorder in a position that makes it difficult to reach the main controls easily. The secondary zoom buttons are not pressure sensitive like the zoom lever, and only permit fixed-speed zooming.
Zoom Power Ratio (10.0)
The Sony HDR-HC7 has an optical zoom power of 10x, placing it at the lowest end of consumer camcorders currently available in terms of zoom power – some entry-level Sonys boast optical zooms up to 40x, while Canon optical zooms reach 35x. A lower optical zoom power is typical for a high-end camcorder because zoom power is dependent on the dimensions of a camcorder’s image and the focal length of the lens. With its relatively large 1/2.9” ClearVID CMOS imager, the HC7’s optical zoom is constrained by the length of the camcorder’s body. 10x is modest, but the performance dividends offered by the large imager make it a worthwhile trade-off.
The HC7 includes a digital zoom option that can be set to 20x, or disabled. When the digital zoom is enabled, the horizontal zoom bar on the LCD display is divided into two sections to indicate the boundary between optical and digital zoom territory. As always, digital zoom should be used judiciously because it literally blows up the available pixels in the image to create the illusion of greater magnification. On the positive side, this digital zoom maxes out at a relatively low 20x, or twice the optical zoom power. This means that the pixels will only be enlarged by a factor of two rather than the outlandish digital zooms on many consumer camcorders that range up to and beyond 1000x.
Focus (7.0)
The Sony HDR-HC7 offers two ways of manually focusing the lens: the Cam Control dial, mounted near at the front of the left side, and a touch screen icon-based interface. The Cam Control dial is by far the superior method, in terms of speed and precision. Despite its small size (about a centimeter wide and only half a centimeter tall) the dial provides a good manual focus interface. As mentioned above, switching from one Cam Control setting to another can’t be done in a way that does not disturb a shot, but as a focus controller it’s a fine tool, better than a joystick, but not as good as a ring (or a larger dial).
Manual focus can be assigned to the Cam Control dial by first pressing the Menu Button in the LCD cavity, selecting the Camera Set submenu on the touch screen, then the Focus option, and finally pressing the Manual button on the touch screen. Focus is measured in meters. If another setting has been assigned to the Cam Control dial, such as exposure or white balance shift, you can toggle the setting to focus by pressing and holding the Manual button next to the dial. When the Dial Set menu appears on screen, rotating the dial moves through assignment options, and pressing the Manual button again when Focus is highlighted sets the dial for focus control. The users manual notes that the at wide angle, the HC7 can focus on an object as close as 1cm from the lens, while at telephoto the minimum distance is about 80cm.
Unlike the HDR-HC3 (Review, Specs, $969.99), there is no Extended Focus feature (often known as focus assist) on the HC7. This one-touch button digitally zooms in to help with fine focusing, and can prove to be extremely useful. Why they would cut a feature like this is puzzling, at best. The HC7 also lacks a peaking function, often found on HD camcorders, that increases contrast to help define edges while focusing.
Exposure & Aperture (6.3)
The Sony HDR-HC7 offers exposure control in the form of 24 EV steps via either the touch screen interface, or the Cam Control dial. Although this camcorder does not offer independent iris control per se, it is possible to set the shutter speed independently and then make adjustments to exposure. According to the manual, once a given image control has been set, adjusting another parameter does not change other settings. This means that when the shutter speed has been set, say at 60 frames per second, adjustments to exposure may only affect the iris. However, because the HC7 does not allow for control over gain, even setting the shutter speed does not guarantee you’ll make iris-only adjustments.
This becomes apparent when shooting in relatively low light, such as an interior space lit by a few 60 watt bulbs. After setting the shutter speed to 1/30, it was impossible to achieve proper exposure without seeing significant grain in the image – a byproduct of automatic gain kicking in. Still, the ability to adjust shutter speed and exposure independently allows more control than is found on most other consumer camcorders, and especially most Sonys.
In addition to manual exposure control, the HDR-HC7 offers a healthy array of Scene Modes, often known as AE, or Auto Exposure modes. The Scene Modes are automatic exposure settings that are tailored to a variety of lighting situations, and include Twilight, Candle, Sunrise Sunset, Fireworks, Landscape, Portrait, Spotlight Beach and Snow. In each case, the camcorder’s exposure, shutter speed, and white balance controls are modified automatically to keep achieve video with an appropriate look.
Shutter Speed (8.5)
The Sony HDR-HC7 offers manual control over shutter speed via either the touch screen interface, or the Cam Control dial on a range from 1/4 to 1/10,000 of a second, with 20 intervals to choose from. This is a considerable range that is among the best available on a consumer camcorder. The ability to manually raise the shutter speed, i.e. to 1/1000 in brightly lit environments, allows the camcorder to capture fast motion without blurring. Dropping the shutter speed below 1/60 will heighten the camcorder’s light gathering ability in low light, or allow for capturing scenes with a blurred, stuttering appearance.
In addition to manual control over shutter speed, the HC7 has an Auto Slow Shutter option that can be turned on or off. When this feature is engaged, it allows the camcorder’s shutter speed to drop to 1/30 in darker settings. A shutter speed of 1/30 doubles the light gathering capacity of the lens, but will not produce the obvious stuttering effects of an even slower shutter. The Color Slow Shutter option does allow the shutter speed to automatically drop below 1/30 in accordance with available light. This setting should be used when color fidelity is more important than accurate motion capture, and shutter speeds below 1/30 will produce a blurry, stuttering footage.
White Balance (6.5)
White balance on the Sony HDR-HC7 can be adjusted manually using the One Push white balance option. Although historically we’ve been critical of Sony’s touch screen interface (for reasons including the fact that the icon-based displays impede your ability to accurately assess the image, and the screen’s tendency to pick up fingerprints), One Touch white balance suffers less from being a touch screen control. To set white balance manually, press the Menu button, select the Camera Set submenu, and then the White Balance option. The White Balance screen appears, with options for Auto, Outdoor, Indoor, and One Push. When One Push is selected, the One Push button becomes active and pressing the button sets white balance to match ambient light.
The HC7 also has a White Balance Shift feature that allows you to fine-tune a manual white balance setting. White Balance Shift is an option in the Camera Set submenu, and is also assignable to the Cam Control dial. An onscreen scale appears, with a minus sign at left, and a plus icon at right. Adjusting the WB Shift value lower produces cooler, bluer color, while moving it higher produces a warmer, redder color. White balance shift is rare in consumer camcorders, and is a very useful way to fine-tune the white balance of your image on the fly. It’s an excellent addition to the HC7’s manual control suite.
Gain (0.0)
Alas, gain is the one major manual control Sony has omitted on the HDR-HC7.
Other Manual Controls (9.0)
Spot Meter - The Spot Meter feature is located in the Camera Set submenu. When Spot Meter is engaged, a wire frame appears around the edges of LCD display. Touching any point within the frame will force the camcorder to automatically expose for that point. This is a very useful, if inexact tool. It can speed up the process of achieving an acceptable exposure in high-contrast settings, but it is not always be possible to select the precise spot to meter using this feature.
Spot Focus - The Spot Focus feature is located in the Camera Set submenu, and as with Spot Meter, a a wire frame appears around the edges of LCD display when engaged. Touching any point within the frame forces the HC7 to automatically focus on that point. Again, this is a useful but inexact tool. It is a good shorthand method for focusing accurately when auto focus does not yield the desired results, but it will not always work well, especially in low contrast settings.
Sharpness – Another Camera Set submenu option, Sharpness can be used in increase or decrease the amount of in-camera sharpening of the image. As with many image control settings, this one should be used with care. Excessive in-camera sharpening can produce unwanted artifacts and unnaturally contrasty borders.
Camera Color - Camera Color is an adjustment that allows you to modify the intensity, or saturation of color in the image. When the Camera Color option is selected, a display appears on screen with a plus icon on the left, and a minus icon on the right. Lowering the Camera Color value reduces saturation, and increasing the value raises saturation. Camera Color resides in the Camera Set submenu.
Zebra Pattern – The Zebra Pattern option will display moving diagonal stripes on portions of the image that surpass a specific brightness level, and are a useful tool for determining the proper exposure in a given setting. Zebras default to off, but can be set to 70 IRE or 100 IRE. Many videographers consider 70 IRE to be an appropriate exposure level for highlights on a subject’s skin; objects in the frame that surpass 100 IRE are over-exposed, and may lose detail during playback. Zebra settings can be found in the Camera Set submenu.
Histogram – The histogram option displays a small onscreen graph that represents the distribution of brightness throughout the displayed image. Like zebras, the histogram graph can be used to asses the exposure of your image, but represents the overall distribution of brightness across the image rather than pinpointing specific instances of a given exposure level in the picture. The histogram display can be turned on in the Camera Set submenu.
Conversion Lens – The Conversion Lens setting in the Camera Set submenu defaults to Off, and includes Wide and Tele conversion options. This setting optimizes the camcorder’s OIS (optical image stabilization) for wide or telephoto conversion lenses.
X.V.Color – X.V. Color is a new color space developed to take advantage of the improved dynamic range of HDTV. The setting can be turned on or off in the Camera Set submenu.
Microphone Level – The level of recorded audio can be adjusted by selecting the Mic Level option from the Standard Set submenu. When manual levels are selected, the camcorder will record audio at a constant level without automatic modulation. This control does not allow for independent level control over the left and right channels of a stereo microphone.
Guide Frame – The Guide frame option in the Standard Set submenu overlays horizontal and vertical lines on the frame to assist with framing an image properly, and maintaining an accurate horizon.
Color Bar – Color bars can be displayed onscreen and recorded to tape by selecting the Color Bar option from the Standard Set submenu. This is a rare feature on a consumer camcorder, and a useful aid in calibrating playback monitors for HC7 footage.