The HDR-HC1 has been hailed by many as camera of the year, and the HD wonder on the cheap at $1600.  Does it live up to the hype?  We've put it through its paces over the last two months, and yes it is one of the best cameras for the price, but it definitely isn't the silver bullet we were hoping for.  Read on for the full review.
So, the package arrived after a week of antici....pation.  I opened it to see beneath a sea of packing peanuts, a tiny box filled with what I'd been waiting for: the HDR-HC1 from Sony.


[Sorry about the crappy cameraphone pics.  I'm working on replacing them with better ones, as soon as I can find a better camera --RB]

Opening the box, my feelings almost overwhelmed me.  I pulled the printed instructions out quickly, to notice a bundled 16 MB Memory Stick Duo card.  Wish Sony could have been standard, and adopt the SD standard, or splurged on a bigger card, or both.  Oh well.

As I continued to rummage through the box, I got to the meat, packed nicely in the center, the smallest camera I've ever owned. To give you some perspective about how small it is, length wise, it is literally as big as a Beta tape.  I put my hand in the holster to see how it felt, and how steady I could hold it, and to my surprise, it felt very solid.  The small form-factor works, although not without its faults.



For starters, bottom loading tapes?  Are you kidding me?  Bottom of the barrel thinking.  Sony had to drive everyone insane and put the tape loading mechanism on the bottom, BENEATH THE TRIPOD PLATE.  Yeah, it's as annoying as you think.  There's got to be some huge engineering reason behind what seems to be such a lack of foresight, but I haven't quite figured that out yet.  Every time you're done with a tape, find your handy-dandy flathead screwdriver, unscrew the blasted plate, change tapes, screw it back on, and then you're back to shooting.  The laborious process takes a little bit too long for my taste. 



You'll also notice, from the underside of the camera, my big honkin' battery.  The HDR-HC1 takes the Infolithium-M batteries, so if you've got any of those cameras lying around, you can reuse your batteries.  I splurged, and picked up this nice fellow, which I've nicknamed my fatty batty, and the battery life with it is astounding.  The bundled battery is the standard smallest size Infolithium battery, and its battery life isn't so hot.  With no objective controlled environment (AKA the real world) I've seen about an hour of shooting time with the bundled battery, but with my fatty batty, I've seen around 3-5 hours.  Basically, if I charge it, I have to worry more about changing tapes, and less if I'm going to run out of juice.



Moving towards the front of the camera, you'll notice a few interesting tidbits specifically relating to focus.  You'll notice there are three settings for focusing: Manual and two auto-focus settings.  Sony might have missed the boat on the bottom-loading tapes, but this is a feature more camera manufacturers should implement: a combination zoom and focus ring.  Yes, the ring ends up controlling the camera's internal CCU, and not some sort of real world manipulation of the focus or zoom lens, but the execution is smooth.

With the focus setting all the way away from my face, I now control the zoom of the camera through the ring.  Move it to the middle?  Nothing happens.  All the way back?  Now, focus is set to manual, and controlled via the focus ring.  For all the hating I do on Sony, improvements like this are a welcome change to other cameras labeled 'consumer.'  A word of warning though: I have had troubles with the cameras focus, specifically in ultra-close shots.  If I go in for an ultra close, it seems like I almost lose all control of focus, regardless of whether I'm set for manual or auto.  I've only experienced this maybe three times, but it was super inconvenient.



Moving inside the actual camera, the CMOS is pretty good, but definitely not great.  I'd compare it to a lower end 3CCD camera.  A common misconception with prosumer and pro buyers looking at the HC1 (and A1U, for that matter) is the tendency to say "OH, it's a one chip camera."  Yes, it is a one chip camera, but it's one CMOS, not CCD.  CMOSes work differently than a CCD, and consequently, the image quality is superior to a single CCD.  Out of overall image quality [DV] between comparably priced cameras, like a GL2 or something, the camera is competitive. 

The HDR-HC1 definetely gets the job done, especially in optimum light, but head beneath your happy place of optimum light and you start seeing noise... lots and lots of noise.  When this camera was being demoed to me, I saw a fireworks show, and thought "Wow, that's the best picture I've ever seen."  The actual fireworks looked spectacular on a spectacular screen.   What I didn't realize was in moderate and low light, the small CMOS sensor gets a lot more noise than your traditional 3CCD camera, since the chip is still smaller.



The camera's on-screen interface is pretty nice, thanks mostly to its flexibility (Sony... Flexibility? Together at last?!)  The touchscreen interface makes use of quick menus.  When I head into the menu, I've got access to my six most used items with nice big square buttons.  You can build many different pages of quick menus (I've got about three or four,) but there is no limit per se.  While the quick menus are nice, and work well, you'll notice something else about the camera: The complete lack of real buttons beneath the LCD.  At first, I was astonished and shocked that Sony would have the guts to create a prosumer camera without these standard features, but as I used it, I felt like it actually was the right decision.  There are still manual buttons for exposure, and a volume / exposure tilt towards the front of the camera, and some (less) useful buttons on the barrel, but other than that, everything is touch screen.  Just hope you don't ruin the thing.



In real world productions, the camera has performed pretty well.  I went to Vegas with Engadget for the Consumer Electronics Show, covering the A/V end of things.  To accomplish this, I took my new, shiny, small and sleek little camera to the convention.  Check the videos on their site to get an idea of how the camera performs in live action.

I also worked in my former home state of Utah and headed to Sundance where we taped some two-camera interviews with directors, actors, and the sort.  Sundance is where I started to truly understand the camera.  One camera was the HC1, while the other was a Panasonic DVC60, about twice the price of my HC1.  The difference was noticeable enough to me, that if I weren't striving for portability and price, I'd definitely get one of those (actually, I'd rather get a DVX/HVX) than my camera.  Oh yeah, remember my drop frames problem?

We've also shot enough video on the (on-hiatus) DV Guru Vodcast to have some experience with the cam.  One aspect I really like is the ability to flip in and out of still mode really quickly.  The CMOS is especially great in photos.  Check out these photos:


The HC1 is the highest end in consumer cameras, but it still is a consumer camera.  If you're looking for portability, price and need another HD cam, rock it.  If you're looking for super hi-qual productions, look elsewhere.  Yes, it is a great camera, but I'm having a hard time deciding if it'd be my camera of the year.  Would I use this for feature film production?  Simply put, no.  If your scenes are well lit all the time, and you need a secondary camera, maybe.  If you're looking to do TV, stick with a couple of Z1Us, then maybe use this as a cheap backup camera.  If you're shooting for the web, you most definitely can use this camera.  If you want a pretty good still camera, in your video camera, this camera definitely holds its own there.  I'd say this is definitely a trade-show camera, in that it can take great stills, can get lots of video quickly, is small, and you could put it in your luggage.

With all the different scenarios broken down, would I recommend this for general use?  I feel really conflicted about that.  Yes, because it is so inexpensive and does shoot great HD footage, has a great touch screen interface and is really compact, but with some reservations about whether you're changing tapes often (get a FireStore) and need hi-qual in low-light.  I'm gonna go middle of the road and say it's a 7 out of 10, but if you're looking for video on the cheap, it's a must buy.