Sony HDR-SR12 First Impressions Camcorder Review by Alfredo Padilla Published on Jan 8, 2008 7:00 PM

Other Features

Smooth Slow Record - This feature allows you to record at 240 frames per second (fps), allowing you to quadruple the total amount of time you can play back in a given interval without giving up any quality. One upgrade over last year is that audio is captured as well as video. You will need to dig around in the menu system to turn it on so you have to think about it before you use it.

Super Nightshot - This feature allows you to shoot in total darkness up to ten feet away but adjusting the shutter speed. The end result, though, is that everything ends up looking green.

Picture Effects - You can apply filters to your footage like sepia, black and white and pastel. You can form your own opinion about how useful that is.

Faders - This options allows you to automatically add a fade in/out to your recordings. You can choose between black and white faders.

Conclusion
The Sony HDR-SR12 (Review, Specs, ) continues Sony’s commitment to the AVCHD lineup and adds several upgrades and new features. Sony’s face detection technology didn’t live up to the claim of tracking up to eight faces in our short time with the Sony HDR-SR12. What did seem to live up to the billing was the ability to view clips based on the faces that were captured in them. The index of faces produced allows you to quickly jump to the point where the face was detected, even if it’s in the middle of a clip.

The Sony HDR-SR12’s 120GB of storage has been upped significantly over the Sony HDR-SR7 (Specs, Recent News, $1399)’s 60GB from last year. Sony has introduced full 1920 x 1080 recording at 16Mbps with this year’s lineup, though, so the extra storage is welcome. You can also now record directly to a MemoryStick Duo/ProDuo card as well as the internal hard drive, if that 120GB capacity isn’t enough for you. Also upgrades is the LCD display, with a welcome increase in size to 3.2 inches and better resolution with 921,000 pixels.

So what’s our verdict for the Sony HDR-SR12? We feel like the upgrades to the LCD and the addition of Face Recogition and the Cam Control dial are good. The full 1920 x 1080 capture and output is great. These and a few other notable improvement make it a worthy successor to the Sony HDR-SR7. If you don’t feel like you need a full 120GB of storage, especially when you consider that it can capture to a Memory Stick as well, go with the cheaper Sony HDR-SR11 (Specs, $1399), which has half the storage but all the same features.