Sony DCR-TRV27E

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Ready to move past the point-and-record stage? Sony's midrange DCR-TRV27E MiniDV Handycam is an excellent choice for enthusiasts looking to make the leap into cutting more advanced footage. It offers a good mix of automatic features; manual adjustments; and numerous special effects, wipes, and overlay/titling features, so you can create elaborate videos without having to do a lot of postproduction. Plus, you can save MPEG movies on a Memory Stick--convenient for creating quick clips for e-mail or posting to the Web. But this camera isn't all flashy effects: the DCR-TRV27E's one-megapixel CCD and Carl Zeiss 10X optical zoom lens produce sharp video with rich, accurate color in a variety of lighting conditions. Our only gripe? Digital still-image quality is fair to borderline.

Design
The TRV27E is certainly no pocket camcorder, but with a relatively compact design and 726g weight with battery, it won't weigh you down much. The control layout is excellent; the zoom, still-image capture, and record buttons are all easily reachable with one hand.

You access commonly used settings, such as exposure and backlight compensation, fade selection, and focus control, from dedicated buttons on the back of the camera, and Sony made an intelligent design move by incorporating a manual focus adjustment ring around the lens. You'll have to root around the adjustment dial and onscreen menus for advanced functions such as special effects and white balance, which takes a little longer since you must open the LCD screen to reach the menu button.

The cassette loads from the bottom, so you'll have to remove the camera from its tripod to swap tapes--an annoying design quirk we've seen in many other camcorders.

Features
The TRV27E boasts a number of shooting modes that range from useful to gimmicky. You'll likely use Mosaic, Pastel, Solarize, and Negative Art modes only if you're shooting a music video or a quirky art film. In our opinion, the Trail mode, which lets you add streaming trails behind moving objects, is more interesting. The Old Movie mode gives your video the appearance of an early 20th-century film by overlaying a sepia color cast and slowing the shutter speed. While these features are fun, exposure settings for beach, sports, spotlight, and other atypical shooting situations and adjustable exposure and white balance are undoubtedly more useful for day-to-day filming. A variety of built-in wipes and overlay features let you create moderately elaborate transitions and titles without the need for editing on a PC.

With the infrared NightShot and Super NightShot modes, you can film in total darkness, but unfortunately, the resulting movies have a strong greenish cast. If that's unacceptable, the Color Slow Shutter mode might be a better bet: it maintains original colors but produces grainy and jerky recordings.

You can capture both digital still images and MPEG movies to the included Memory Stick. The TRV27E's MPEG Movie EX mode lets you save digital films at 320x240 resolution, so you can easily transfer them to a PC or a CLIE PDA for playback or e-mailing. Of course, you'll want to purchase a larger Memory Stick for video capture.

In addition to FireWire, the TRV27E boasts a USB connector for transferring digital stills and supports USB streaming, so you can transform your camcorder into a 30fps Webcam. Mac videographers, take note: this feature is available only for Windows.

Performance
The TRV27E's 10X optical zoom is extremely fast--too fast, unless you use a light touch on the zoom wheel. Its autofocus works accurately and quickly. The only blur we experienced came briefly after a hyperfast zoom change. Sony's SteadyShot electronic image stabilization works very well when shooting to tape. It did a great job of smoothing out shaky hand movements, but unfortunately, it isn't active when recording MPEG movies.

Battery life with the included FM50 InfoLithium battery is good. You'll get 55 (typical) to 105 (continuous) minutes of recording with the LCD screen active. You can extend continuous recording time to as much as 390 minutes by installing larger batteries.

Both the LCD screen and the viewfinder produce sharp images without the graininess found on many camcorder viewfinders. The LCD handles fast-moving images without ghosting, and you can even see well in bright sunlight.

Image Quality
Overall, video quality looks very good in a variety of lighting. The automatic exposure and white balance controls produced accurate and rich color both indoors and outdoors. Exposure compensation settings were able to handle even the more unusual shooting situations. But under indoor lighting, quality deteriorates. This camcorder lacks both a light and a flash.

On the other hand, you'll see very little graininess even in rather dimly lit rooms. NightShot mode lets you shoot in extremely dark situations--even total blackness--albeit with a greenish cast that gives your footage an X-Files look. But alas, the Super NightShot and Color Slow Shutter modes have such a poor frame rate that they're not all that useful.

The quality of still photos taken in daylight or very bright interior lighting matches that of an entry-level digital camera. While the colors are fairly rich, the images lack detail, and in low-light situations, the images were very noisy.

The quality of the MPEG movies just can't compare to the DV footage. They're lower resolution, the slower frame rate makes movement appear slightly jerky, and the lack of image stabilization was very obvious. The quality is good enough for e-mailing or uploading to the Web, but you wouldn't want to shoot your next Sundance entry using this feature.