Sony CCD-TRV138 Hi8 Handycam Camcorder w/20x Optical Zoom

Great Camcorder - Better than my First.

I bought this camcorder 4 months after the sound on my other one stopped working and I was impressed. The optical zoom is good at 20x and the digital zoom (which is completely pointless) is 990x. The second thing I noticed is that the LCD screen moved to more places and that there was 2 record buttons. One was on the LCD screen the other was next to the off button. The viewfinder can also move to different places but is still in Black and white. Another feature that this camcorder has is Nightshot Plus. This feature allows you to record at night with a brighter picture than with a flashlight or lamp. There are also many DSEs or Digital Special Effects that you can play with in recording or editing. They are:



Sepia: adds a brown old tone to the screen

Black and White: the way films used to be

Negative Art: reverses the colors in the picture

Pastel: makes the picture look colored in with a pastel crayon

Solarize: makes the picture out of basic colors

Mosaic: the picture - made out of squares

Slim: stretches the picture vertically

Stretch: a lot like widescreen



When filming out or indoors there are different Program AEs you can use when the light in the picture changes. If you dont like switching them you can set them to AUTO. The PAEs are:



Sports

Spotlight

Portrait

Beach/Ski

SunsetMoon

Landscape



If you want to buy this camcorder because it has great battery life don't. It doesn't have a great battery life but it is still a great camcorder.



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Sony DCR-TRV280 Digital8 Handycam Camcorder w/20x Optical Zoom

The BEST top bang-per-buck value in digital camcorders!

This is easily the best value DIGITAL camcorder out there today hands down. 'Digital8' is just as good as 'MiniDV' in terms of resolution and picture/audio quality. Why pay more for MiniDV? For under three 'Benjamins' you get reliable digital video and audio quality with over 500 lines of resolution and a proven medium (Digital8) whose videotapes cost half as much or less than MiniDV tapes. The video quality in low light is also excellent with a low light switch and feature that works great. And size-wise the camcorder is not much larger than a MiniDV unit. It is feature-rich and comes with all the accessories you would need including a charger battery lens cap A/V cable for connection to your TV a USB cable and software for connection to your PC or Mac. The owner's manual is one of the best i've ever seen with very intuitive diagrams and easy to operate instructions. And the battery level meter and 'time left' indicator on the LCD view panel is very useful and amazing in it's detail and usefulness. Folks this is one serious digital camcorder that is available 'for a song'! Great job Sony!!!



UPDATE 1/2006: 'Consumer Reports' listed this camcorder as a 'Best Buy' and mentioned that Sony has the best 'repair free' history out of all camcorders! Proof that this is a GREAT bargain! I wrote my original review of this here last year.More detail ...