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Sony DCR-TRV33 Camcorder Review by Robin Liss Published on Jul 8, 2003 12:00 AM	Advertisement

The $799 DCR-TRV33 is the high end of the Sony entry level 2003 MiniDV camcorders. The DCR-TRV33 produces impressive looking video and does a good job in low light situations. The quality still performance on the DCR-TRV33 combined with it's great automatic control make it a great choice for the point and shoot user. The DCR-TRV33 offers strong handling and is light weight and balanced well making it very easy to use. Although the touch screen LCD makes it very hard to control the manual picture functions on the DCR-TRV33 and the DCR-TRV33 is missing a couple of manual functions - the great video and low light performance outweigh the negatives making me recommend the DCR-TRV33.

The DCR-TRV33 is the bigger sister of the DCR-TRV22 (Specs, $999), the two camcorders are very similar so parts of this review will be loosely based on the DCR-TRV22 review. If you're looking for a direct comparison between the two camcorders, scroll towards the bottom to the comparisons section.

Video Performance (7.0)
The DCR-TRV33 includes a 1/4.7 in. 1.0 Megapixel CCD with 690K effective pixels for video - the exact same video system used in the DCR-TRV38. In a side by side comparison I can definitely say that the video performance and the low light performance of the DCR-TRV33 and the DCR-TRV38 performed exactly the same. Like the DCR-TRV38, I really like the color representation in the DCR-TRV33 - the camcorder does a great job with skin tones. The camcorder also has a good dynamic range producing black and whites well in high contrast situations. Where the DCR-TRV33 really shines though is in outdoor shooting situations, it does a great job at producing natural colors. My two complaints are that the DCR-TRV33 seemed to bleed excessively when high contrasted colors were placed together - some bleeding is acceptable on any consumer camcorder - though this seemed excessive. The camcorder also seemed to produce too much grain on a solid surface - the camcorder speckled too much - in other words the pixels on a solid surface were always changing slightly, though it's only a problem if you look very closely and examine the picture. Overall I'm very happy with the video performance on the DCR-TRV33 - the camcorder does a really good job.

The Front (8.0)
Towards the top left of the DCR-TRV33 is the lens. The only difference between the front portion of the DCR-TRV22 is a nice plastic lens cap on which folds out but remains attached to the camcorder (the reason for the extra half point). I think this lens cap is a really nice innovation - for a small camcorder its quite a pain to have a large plastic lens cap dangling from a string. My only fear with the lens cap on the DCR-TRV22 is that it might break off. Below the lens is the vertical IR receiver with the recording tally light towards the top. To the right of the IR receiver a a bunch of decals listing the 'DCR-TRV33' name, the Memory Stick Logo, the Sony logo and other information. Below the IR receiver but slightly to it's left is the S-Video port, covered by a piece of soft plastic. Above the S-Video jack, and moved left to the edge of the camcorder is the stereo microphone.

The Right Side (7.0)
Most of the features and hard button controls on the DCR-TRV33 are located on the right side of the camcorder. Technically on the right side, though effectively on top of the camcorder is the Night Shot off-on button which is located right up against the lens / viewfinder chamber. On the actual physical right side, starting at the top right is a small patch bay. Covered by an attached piece of hard plastic, removing the cover reveals a USB connector, Firewire in / out and Mini A / V jack. These ports fall in the way of your hand when you are shooting - however the only port which I can see your actually using while shooting (instead of playback) would be the Mini AV in / out. It certainly is poor positioning, and the port would be better placed in the front or the back of the DCR-TRV33.

If you ,move down half an inch from the patch bay you hit the memory stick slot, which is designed differently than it has been in years past. The memory sticks click and lock into the slot - inserted by flipping out a small plastic rotating door. The Memory Sticks lock into position and are ejected using a Memory Eject slider located half way in and half way down on the right side of the DCR-TRV33.

At the way front of the camcorder, about 1 cm wide, moving along the side is a hard plastic cover which reveals the microphone in and headphone out jacks. I like their placement here - it's not in the way. Continuing to move down the side of the camcorder you hit a Memory Stick access light, and below that is the Control-L / Lanc jack. Below the Lanc jack is an attachment for the hand strap which goes along the length of the right side. Switching to the back of the right side of the DCR-TRV33 is the power dial. Rotating it switched from VCR, OFF, Camera and Memory modes.

The Back (6.5)
Located at the top of the back of the DCR-TRV33 on the left side is the color viewfinder, which extends out and rotates at least 60 degrees upwards. To the right of the viewfinder is the batter eject button. Something to point out is that the viewfinder must be raised in order to eject the battery. To the right of the battery eject button is the AC adapter jack which is terribly placed. If you have the AC adapter plugged in and you are shooting with the viewfinder the AC adapter plug is going to poke you in the eye. Even moving the AC adapter to the bottom of the battery port as it is on most camcorders would be a huge improvement. Below the viewfinder and battery eject button is the batter port which takes up the majority of the the back of the camcorder. Moving right and underneath the AC adapter jack is the lock slider designed to prevent the camcorder from getting into the Memory mode - why Sony included this I'm not sure. Below the lock slider is the record button. To the right of the lock slider and the record button is the other side of the power dial.

The Left Side (6)
The left side is pretty dull - Sony could have placed a few manual controls here like the Canon ZRs in order to not have to use the touch screen LCD which I'm not a big fan of. At the top of the left side towards the back are the Back light and Display / Battery Info buttons - which sadly aren't in the cool transparent blue on the DCR-TRV22. I'm so disappointed! Moving downwards is the 2.5 in. LCD screen. I wish Sony had placed a batter information / tape counter on the outside of the LCD but they didn't. Opening up the LCD reveals a big nothingness other than a lone speaker. Again, here Sony could have placed VCR controls instead of making you use the touch screen LCD. I should note here that a few months ago when the DCR-TRV19, DCR-TRV22 and the DCR-TRV33 first came out someone discovered that when you turned the LCD flat against the camcorder - the touch screen acted somewhat like real buttons. Although they don't have any texture or height to them so you can't touch them blindly - it does eliminated the awkward situation of tapping your LCD while it's outwards - creating a lot of shake. Many users have reported that with some practice they can become pretty good at touching the touch screen buttons while the LCD is flat against the camcorder with out looking. Look ma' no eyes!

The Top (7)
All the features on the top of the DCR-TRV22 are located to the right of the lens / viewfinder barrel. At the front is the hot shoe port for connecting external lights, microphones and other accessories. Behind that is about an inch and half long indentation where your fingers nicely fall when griping the camcorder in your right hand. Behind the finger indentation is the small zoom control - which I'm not a fan of. Behind the zoom controller is the Photo button for taking digital stills. You certainly could put a lot of controls on all the blank space on the top of the camcorder such as VCR buttons - instead those are shoved into the awkward touch screen LCD.

Picture & Manual Control
Automatic Control (9)
The DCR-TRV33 and all it's sister camcorders in the Sony 2003 MiniDV line are the auto super stars. The combination of pretty responsive auto controls with the Spot Focus and Spot Metering features make the DCR-TRV33 a great camcorder for anyone wanting to point and shoot.

Overall Manual Control (3.0)
The DCR-TRV33 offers some manual control however it's missing the important gain and shutter speed control. The biggest problem however is that the manual control that it does offer is controlled through the touch screen LCD. It's very hard to adjust the focus and exposure through the touch screen. The DCR-TRV33 would be a much more solid camcorder if there was at least a jog dial for adjusting the exposure and the focus.

Zoom (6.5)
The DCR-TRV33 has an okay 10X optical zoom - though it doesn't come close to the huge zooms on the Canon ZRs. The zoom control on the DCR-TRV33 is not good at all. The small zoom slider is so tiny that it is hard to get anything other than a really fast zoom. Sony really should have included a zoom ring on the DCR-TRV33 - even though it would be small it would be much better than this terrible zoom slider. Though since we don't even get a focus ring I doubt there is any chance that Sony will be adding a zoom ring to camcorders in this price category any time soon. There is a better, larger zoom control on many of the 2003 MiniDV models - and I don't quite understand why Sony did use that zoom control on the DCR-TRV33 when it obviously would fit.

Focus (4)
Quoting my DCR-TRV22 review ''at least they give it to you.'' The focus is controlled by the touch screen LCD. To access the manual focus control you have to touch four buttons on the touch screen LCD, not to mention every time that you want to adjust the focus near or far you have to touch the LCD screen again. The first problem is that every time you touch the LCD screen you shake the camcorder slightly - and second it's just not smooth, you can easily adjust the focus fast enough to really accommodate to focus changes while shooting. The only thing that this camcorder has going for it in the focus area is the Spot Focus feature which is a great hybrid between automatic and manual control. When you enter Spot Focus mode through the touch screen (the only thing the lousy touch screen is good for other than Spot Metering) a box appears on the screen, the camcorder will adjust the focus to the area of the screen you touch. It's a great add-on for people who can tell that the automatic focus isn't quite cutting it but can't get a good handle on how to use the manual focus.

Exposure (Aperture) (4.5)
The exposure control is controlled through the same method as the Focus - and it suffers from the same problems. Would it really be that hard to include a dial? The camcorder gives you 24 steps of exposure control and the Spot Metering control which acts the same way as the Spot Focus control.

Shutter Speed (0)
The DCR-TRV33 does not give any manual shutter speed control.

White Balance (7)
The DCR-TRV33 offers normal white balance control with four settings, indoor, outdoor, manual and automatic. There isn't much more that could be offered in white balance control besides not controlling it with the touch screen LCD.

Gain (0)
The DCR-TRV33 sadly doesn't offer any manual control over gain.

Still (6.5)
I'm pretty happy with the still performance on the DCR-TRV33. The problems they suffer are the same ones that the video performance suffers. The DCR-TRV33 can take stills at a resolution up to 1,152 x 864 pixels. The stills are saved to Memory Stick and the camcorder includes an 8 MB Memory Stick - though much larger sizes are available. You can transfer the stills from the DCR-TRV33 to the computer using the included USB connection.

VCR Mode (6)
The VCR functions on the DCR-TRV33 are accessed through the touch screen LCD - its a pain but I don't mind it as much as having the picture function controls accessed through the touch screen LCD. One of the downsides of the touch screen control however is that the buttons are superimposed on the LCD screen so you will always have your video covered up slightly.

Low Light Performance (5.0)
The DCR-TRV33 does a pretty good job in low light however the smaller CCD doesn't do as well as the DCR-TRV22, the $100 cheaper model which has a larger CCD. There wasn't an excessive amount of grain however I did notice a fair amount of discoloration. I do wish that the DCR-TRV33 included manual gain control, so that you could better tweak the low light performance.

LCD / Viewfinder (9.0)
The DCR-TRV33 deserves a high score for the LCD because it is a nice touch screen - however I hate that everything is dependent on it. The 2.5 in. 123K pixel count LCD is pretty sharp however Sony does have a 211K pixel count LCD that is a lot sharper and works better in sunlight. The color viewfinder is perfectly sharp however I would have preferred a black and white viewfinder for adjusting the focus.

Audio (7.0)
The DCR-TRV33's on camera mic does a pretty good a minimizing operator and motor noise. However I would always recommend using an external microphone instead of the on camera microphone of any camcorder - including the DCR-TRV33. The DCR-TRV33 does a good job of providing you with audio options. The camcorder offers dedicate headphone and microphone jacks as well as a hot shoe. The DCR-TRV33 does include an audio dub option. The only thing that is missing is manual control of the audio recording levels.

Handling (7)
The DCR-TRV33 is very small. The camcorder is also pretty light and balanced very well so you can hold it in just one hand for a long period of time. I like the depression on the right side of the camcorder which makes it easy for you to grip the camcorder. The small zoom control and the touch screen focus and exposure are a big pain, making the camcorder harder to operate. It's quite a task to adjust the focus or exposure and it should be much easier to do. All in all, the DCR-TRV33 is very good for handheld point and shoot filming. If you want to adjust and picture functions on the fly however, your going to run into some problems.

Jacks / Ports Plugs (9.5)
The DCR-TRV33 includes a USB jack, Firewire jack, AV Mini in / out, S-Video in / out, Headphone out, Microphone in, and a Control-L / Lanc port. These are pretty much all the plugs that you are going to need. The only complaint I have is the the AV in / out jack is mini and not normal sized.

Other Features (6.0)
Widescreen mode A new addition to the MiniDV2003 is a 16:9 mode which utilizes more of the picture. Instead of letter boxing the shot as older camcorders would, the DCR-TRV33 utilizes all the pixels on the CCD, stretching the picture - resulting in the highest resolution 16:9 picture that the camcorder can produce. A nice feature is that although the picture is stretched on the tape - it appears letterboxed in the LCD and viewfinder so you aren't looking at a distorted picture.

USB Streaming Originated by Sony - as it seems most fringe features are - the USB streaming mode allows you to use your camcorder as a web cam or for Internet chats.

Bottom Loading Tape Mechanism - This isn't really a feature though I have no where to place it. Tapes are loading from the bottom of the camcorder instead of the top, meaning that if you are shooting on a tripod you have to take the camcorder off the tripod, remove the plate, pop out the tape, put a new one, reattach the plate, and put it back on the tripod. It would be a lot faster if the camcorder included a top loading tape mechanism.

Analog to Digital Pass Through This feature has become very popular in digital camcorders. Analog to digital pass through allows you to hook up your old analog VCR or camcorder into the DCR-TRV33 convert the video on the fly to digital signal, for transfer to a computer or recording to tape.

Night Shot and Color Slow Shutter Sony invented these too. The first one makes the picture really green for low lit situations and the second one slows the shutter speed down to a crawl - both make the video unwatchable.

Comparisons (no score provided)
I prefer the video performance of the DCR-TRV33 over the $100 cheaper DCR-TRV22 - though only slightly. The DCR-TRV33 includes a slightly smaller CCD than the DCR-TRV22 which shows in the low light performance. There also isn't a significant difference however it is noticeable. Where the DCR-TRV33 outperforms the DCR-TRV22 is on still performance. In general I feel that the still performance on the DCR-TRV22 is a joke, the 640 x 480 stills are useless. The DCR-TRV33s stills are much better. This is the only major difference between the two camcorders. If you are looking for a camcorder that can produce stills I would go with the DCR-TRV33. If stills aren't important go with the DCR-TRV19 (it's best to just skip the DCR-TRV22 - it's the weak point in the Sony line).

The next model up in the Sony line is the DCR-TRV38 for $100 more. The DCR-TRV38 offers the exact same video performance, low light performance and still performance as the DCR-TRV33. What the DCR-TRV38 offers over the DCR-TRV33 is a larger 3.5 in. LCD screen and a manual focus ring as well as a better zoom control. I believe that those three upgrades are certainly worth it - especially the manual focus ring and the better zoom control. Although you won't upgrade the video quality by spending an extra $100 your videos will look much better because you will have much better control over the image.

Optura 10 The difference in normal lighting video quality between the Optura 10 (Specs, $373.15) and the DCR-TRV33 is very slight. The Optura 10 in my opinion has a better dynamic range with better color representation, however the DCR-TRV33 seems to produce skin tones better and saturates the colors more. It's more about which video signal you prefer instead of which is better. Where the two camcorders to differ is low light performance. For some reason the 2003 Canon camcorders do terrible in low light situations - it's a real disappointment. Because of the Optura 10's poor low light performance I have to choose the DCR-TRV33 over the Optura 10 - despite higher resolution stills and better manual control on the DCR-TRV33.

Who's it For
Try to figure out which section you fit into, and the corresponding comments should help you decide whether or not this is the camcorder for you.

Point and Shooter's (9.0)
As I've said in my other reviews of Sony MiniDV 2003 camcorders next to motion tracking I don't know what more the DCR-TRV33 could offer to the point and shoot user. The Spot Focus and Spot Metering features are great.

Budget Consumers (5.0)
I think that the DCR-TRV33 is a pretty good buy. What is a great bargain with this camcorder is the video and low light performance, though, if you're on a budget the smart thing to do would be to purchase a DCR-TRV19 and buy a dedicated still camera - hybrid devices are overrated.

Still Photo / Video Camera Hybrid (5.5)
The DCR-TRV33 is a pretty good hybrid however there are camcorders in this price range which produce better stills such as the Canon Optura 10.

Gadget Freaks (6)
The touch screen LCD combined with USB streaming and the Night Shot features make the DCR-TRV33 a pretty gagedtly camcorder. If it only had Bluetooth it'd be a 9.

Manual Control Freaks (5)
The DCR-TRV33 has a lot of improvement to do in the manual control area. The controls need to be moved outside of the LCD and a better zoom control as well as a focus ring need to be added.

Pro's / Serious Hobbyists (4)
If you are in the price category you need to look at a slightly more expensive camcorder, I would say the cheapest that you can go with is the Panasonic PV-GS70. The DCR-TRV33 just doesn't offer the handling and manual control that a pro camcorder needs.

Conclusion
The final score chart for the DCR-TRV33 is as follows:

Area	Weight	Raw	Adj.	Poss.
Video Performance	2.00	7.0	14.00	20.0
The Front	0.20	8.0	1.60	2.0
The Right Side	0.30	7.0	2.10	3.0
The Back	0.25	6.5	1.63	2.5
The Left Side	0.20	6.0	1.20	2.0
The Top	0.15	7.0	1.05	1.5
Automatic Control	0.50	9.0	4.5	5.0
Overall Manual Control	0.60	3.0	1.8	6.0
Zoom	0.75	6.5	4.88	7.5
Focus	0.70	4.0	2.8	7.0
Exposure	0.65	4.5	2.93	6.5
Shutter Speed	0.60	0.0	0.00	6.0
White Balance	0.55	7.0	3.85	5.5
Gain	0.50	0.0	0.00	5.0
Still Performance	1.20	6.5	7.80	12.0
VCR Mode	0.30	6.0	1.8	3.0
Low Light Performance	2.00	5.0	10.00	20.0
LCD / Viewfinder	.60	9.0	5.40	6.0
Audio	1.00	7.0	6.00	10.0
Handling	1.25	7.0	8.75	12.5
Jacks / Ports / Plugs	.80	9.5	7.60	8.0
Other Features	0.70	6.0	4.20	7.0
Value	1.25	4.0	3.75	12.5
Total (weighted)			97.64	170.5

The DCR-TRV33 is a pretty good camcorder. The video performance and low light performance as well as the stills are pretty good. If you are looking for a small point and shoot camcorder the DCR-TRV33 is a great choice. However if you're a little more serious about your video I would spend the extra $100 and get the DCR-TRV38 which offers much better manual control or look at Panasonic PV-DV73 because of the improved manual control. If you don't care about digital stills, save money and go with the DCR-TRV33. When compared to the Canon Optura 10 - it's closest competitor - I would have to choose the DCR-TRV33 though only because of it's superior low light performance. I certainly recommend the DCR-TRV33 - it's a solid camcorder and a pretty good value.

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