11 out of 11 people found this review helpful.
**Kinky home videos anyone....?**
Date of Review: Feb 7, 2006
The Bottom Line: this is a great starter camera which is easy to use
My holiday is drawing nearer and with having made the big mistake of requesting a new credit card(after I had a good day and decided to cut it up!), it was burning a hole in my pocket and I decided to "window" shop at Argos.
I found a bargain of a new camcorder and snapped it up immediately! After having had my old camcorder now for around 3 years I thought I would give it the send off it deserves and write a little ...ode to cammy (the camcorder).
Made by Sony this TRV218E model has done me proud and is still going strong. I bought it from Curry's around 3 years ago and paid just over #300 for the camcorder itself, 5 blank tapes and added insurance cover for 3 years. There was some money off at the time I got it and I think I saved myself around #50. It was the cheapest camcorder that was available that had the LCD monitor display.
It was the first camcorder I had ever owned or in fact used and I was rather excited at having a new toy to play with. I rushed home and unpacked it from the excessive amount of packaging used. There were quite a few little "bits" that came with the main body of the camcorder.
Battery
Remote control
Charger with A/C Adapter
Neck strap
The specifications of this model which are printed on the side of the box are as follows:
Focal length: 2.5mm-50mm
Optical zoom: 20X
Digital zoom: 560X
Sound: Mono
Display:2.5" TFT colour
Warranty: 1 year
Manuel focus
Night shot (built in night light)
Well with that all written down I can not honestly say how good a 560x digital zoom is on paper but I can tell you my experience with this camera overall.
On having to set the camcorder up to start taking video clips with, it is very straight forward and really needs no adjusting from the factory settings. I fiddled around with the zooms and familiarised myself with all the buttons and to be truthful it did not take long at all.
Once the tape is in place and the battery charged up you are on your way to becoming the next Spielberg. I found inserting the tapes and changing them over very straight forward and the large instruction manual explained things in a very basic way. This camera takes the Hi8 tapes which are available in loads of places for not too much money.
To charge the camera up for the first time took around 5 hours for full power and has taken a little less since (depending on how much I have run it down). The charger adaptor fits into the camera port and wall socket easily and is again basic to use.
On using the camcorder itself I found it all really straight forward. The zoom, along with the hand strap, which is situated on top right (easy for me to use but a little more tricky for my lefty of a boyfriend!), is pretty good. The quality is not distorted at all with day time images but is not quite so clear on recording in the evening (dark images) the lights are somewhat blurred.
There is a option to use night vision which turns everything green and looks like an army training video. I don't really like using this so have never recorder anything using this feature. There is also a light which can be turned on and this reminds me of a TV crew camcorder. The overall size of the video recorder is really pretty large and it is somewhat heavy.
There are a lot of buttons which can be used in the playback option and most of the options for the actual recording options are under a separate sub menu. In this sub menu are options to change the look of the LCD display. This display is in colour and does tend to suck a lot of battery power up.
The LCD display can be moved to face what is being recorded or to face the person who is doing the recording. The quality of this little screen is quite surprising actually as I thought it would look a lot grainier than it actually does but I would day I am 80% happy with this LCD picture quality.
Recording with this Sony camera, apart from being a little embarrassed now a days as it is pretty large and bulky, is ok for a while but does start to ache my arm with the weight. The main reason I have now upgraded is the fact that it is so big and awkward. I don't like having to lug it round with me when going for a stroll down the beach on holiday. Its like carrying a small child!
After recording I found taking the camera and tape home to change it to video/disk was even easier than using the camcorder to record!
It comes with all the necessary cables to attach it to your TV recordable device. It does not have the right bits to be transferred onto my computer unfortunately but as I have a recordable DVD player I was able to transfer it to DVD with no problem. Once I attached the scart adaptor with two wires in from the camcorder to the TV I pressed record on the DVD recorder and hey presto I have a holiday DVD!!!
Having the remote control to use for the camcorder is an even better help when recording the data to disk as it means I don't have to sit on the floor all evening stopping and starting the camcorder buttons.
The quality of the pictures on the final DVD are really good. I can see no problems with colour or fuzziness. The picture is clear and is also has clear sound quality. On some parts where we were in a windy place the sound is really quite distorted (my new camcorder has some sort of wind ease!).
There are options for you to edit your video before recording it to video/DVD on the camcorder but I have not really looked into doing that as I tend to just copy every little bit onto disk to get every classic/crappy moment!!!
Overall I would rate this camcorder 9/10. I think it is a perfect beginners camcorder and have had no problems with it in the full three years that I have owned it (damn paying out for extra insurance cover). The only downfall is really the weight and size. This is the reason for my upgrade otherwise I think I would have stuck with it.
I don't think they are producing this actual model anymore and to be honest for what is on today's market I would probably invest that little more and get something a bit smaller. But if you can pick up one of these for cheap and are new to the world of film then I would say this is a good buy as I have had no problems and the quality is good.
I hope this has been of some help to you.
Thanks for reading x x x x x x
