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Micro HD Camcorders
Sony, $1,399.99
Canon, $1,299.99
Like many of you, I have a great 3-chip pro HD camera with all the bells and whistles. Amazingly flexible and dripping with accessories, it's capable of making truly superb images. I often see things I'd like to capture on the spur of the moment, be it beautiful lighting or an interesting composition. But I can't, because my professional HD camera is at home. Wouldn't it be great to have a camera you can take anywhere to shoot candid scenes unobtrusively and without fuss, in full HD?
You can take it with you
Until recently, using a micro-camcorder meant shooting standard-definition only, but no longer. The first crop of HD microcams is now available. While it's easy to think of them as consumer cameras, you can just as easily imagine them being used on lightweight jib arms, as hidden cameras, as helmet cams, as handheld B-roll cameras, or as emergency backups to your 3-chip professional HD cameras - basically, in any role for which a bigger camera would be too large, heavy, expensive, or obvious. So to get behind the hype, I tested two of the most popular HD micro-cams: the Canon HVI 0 and the SonyHDR-HC3.
Are they good enough for pro use? Is the resolution really HD?
The answer to the first question is complicated, but to the second question, the answer is an emphatic, "Yes." As small as these two cameras are, they're still true HD.
The rundown
Both the Canon HV10 and Sony HDR-HC3 have single-chip CMOS sensors, 10:1 zoom lenses, and reasonable quality still-photo capability. They both record to the miniDV tape-based HDV format and normally record at 30i (in the United States), though the Sony HDR-HC3 has a Cinematic mode with simulated 24 fps recording. But despite their many similarities, these are very different cameras.
The Canon HVI 0 is exceptionally small and, because the lens is mounted on top of the tape transport section, very thin. At just under 1 pound, it's very light as well. The HVI 0 is about the size of a large point-and-shoot still camera and definitely qualifies as pocketable.
The HDR-HC3 is Sony's update of its HDR-HCI -the first entrant in the HD micro-cam category....