9 out of 9 people found this review helpful.
A top-notch camera that gets better with extras
Date of Review: Aug 29, 2000
The TRV-900 is Sony's top-end "consumer" digital video camera, and as such it does its job remarkably well. My 58 year old mother bought this camera to use as her "grandma-cam" and has taken it to the beach, on a cruise to Alaska, and just about everywhere else she travels. While she relies on others to import the video onto her computer, she has learned how to use the many features of the camera pretty well.
In basic "point and shoot" mode, the camera is able to capture a remarkably clear and fantastic looking image, even in adverse lighting conditions. It adjusts beautifuly to low-light and backlight conditions, and the quality of the resulting video is tremendous. Many of the automatic settings can be disabled to give you manual control, but the buttons are small and scattered all over the camera body. This makes the correct button difficult to find sometimes, especially when you're in a hurry.
THE CAMERA IS ONLY THE BEGINNING
In order to take full advantage of this video camera, though, you will need to buy some additional equipment. For example, in addition to the TRV-900, we also bought the following for our mother in order to make this camera do what she needed it to do:
- a Sony high-capacity battery that lasts about 2.5 hours per charge
- a 64MB compact flash card to store high-quality still images
- a flash card reader for her PC, as well as a PC-card adapter for the flash card (so that she could buy additional flash cards if necessary)
- the Sony i-Link infrared system to allow her to point the camera at the TV and watch video from the camera without having to deal with AV cables
- a telescoping microphone to capture speech from a distance
- a FireWire cable for importing video directly into the computer
Of all of these extras, the i-Link provided the most immediate payoff -- being able to point the camera at the TV and hit "play" and watch what's been recorded. Next would be the flash memory (necessary in order to store still pictures) and the PC card reader for her desktop computer.
While the TRV-900 is an excellent camcorder, without the extras you will not be able to get the most from it. With the extras, you have a near-professional quality digital video system. Highly recommended.
