Sony DCR-DVD610 DVD Handycam Camcorder with 40x Optical Zoom Review
September 15th, 2009
Sony DCR-DVD610 DVD Handycam Camcorder with 40x Optical Zoom Review from Larry Diamond. Hybrid technology makes this a cut above, This is in effect a hard drive/ mini DVD recorder. Unlike many others the memory stick can record video. On some/most? other company’s camcorders the SD card or what not can record only photos.
Without that cability it is still a fine camcorder. The touch screen is very easy to use and easy to learn, the video quality is very good, colors come out looking fine. But the video to memory stick is very nice. We have an 8gb memory stick. It gives roughly 2 hours of high quality video. Good enough for most situations where you are not on a multi-day vacation.
So you record video to the memory stick. Then connect to your computer via the USB port. A utility comes up with literally one touch copying to a DVD-R. DVD-Rs full size are very cheap. The memory stick works like an R-W disc. And 8gb for instance is much better than even a dual layer capacity. Works out to about 3 dual layer discs. So on most days you do not even need to buy DVDs. But on a vacation you have the flexibility of bringing as many discs as you want.
Finalizing discs does take sometime so it is nice to have 2 hours of capability without having to finalize. Recording straight to DVD we had no problem playing it back on a very old, at least 7 years DVD player.
I am giving it 4 stars because in the wide mode it seems to well widen people even when playing on an HD 16/9 set. Not sure if it is me or the camera but it is annoying.
Bottomline good camcorder with very easy to use and extremely useful hybrid recording.
Couple of updates after vacations. More pleased with the camera now. The video looked good with the exception of too much shake at high zooms. If you think you will be zooming a lot I would suggest one of those mini-tripods. Finalizing CDs took 2 minutes time after time. Not bad. Getting video from the memory stick onto full-sized CDs, not a problem.
Best of all because we were on a long-trip we went down from the highest video quality to standard to get more per tape. No noticable drop off on quality. Lastly on our 16:9 HD TV the width now comes out correctly. Colors were remarkably accurate, friends and family all commented positively on the quality.
As I mentioned though, the zoom does shake. So that brings me to my final advice. I bought this one over the 710 or 810 because of the higher optical zoom. But that is not as functional as I thought, at least without a tripod. The 710 and 810 have more pixels on the sensors and that should lead to better video quality. Something to think about. However very pleased with this little guy. Great results.
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