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CNET editors' rating:
3.0 stars
Good
Detailed editors' rating - Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 10 reviews
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Product summary
The good: Simple user interface; clever night-shooting mode.
The bad: Noisy low-light shots; poor battery life; mediocre stills.
The bottom line: The DCR-HC85 is easy to use and compact, but we expect better video quality from a camcorder in its class.
Specifications: Video input type: Camcorder; Optical zoom: 10 x; Media type: Mini DV See full specs
CNET editors' review
- Reviewed on: 03/21/2005
- Released on: 04/01/2004
The DCR-HC85 sports a total of just 10 buttons and switches, a fraction of what you'll find on most camcorders. The buttons are comfortably and logically placed for one-handed usage. You access the rest of the camcorder's functions via menus displayed on the 3.5-inch touch-screen LCD. The menus are extremely well designed: a programmable screen gives you relatively quick access to your most-used functions, and the full menus are better organized than on earlier Sony touch-screen models.
We have mixed feelings about the touch-screen design, however. Though dedicated buttons give quick access to a few functions, such as manual focus, NightShot Plus, and flash settings, you'll have to wade through touch-screen menus for other common functions, such as exposure settings and program autoexposure modes. This can be a hassle if you're, say, trying to quickly switch to Sports mode to grab a child's first solo bike ride. Casual users can just press the Easy button and use the camera in fully automatic mode, which hides all but the setup options.
The touch screen does offer a significant advantage over traditional button setups for a couple of capabilities: spot focus and spot metering. You can set the focus or exposure based on an off-center subject by simply touching the subject on the LCD. Other nice details include a Record button next to the touch screen--handy for starting a recording when holding the camera above a crowd--and the inclusion of a traditional focus ring around the lens. The ring is typically easier and more precise for focusing manually than the buttons or dials used on many consumer camcorders.
As is often the case with smaller camcorders, the DCR-HC85's tape ejects from the bottom of the camera, so you'll have to remove the camcorder from a tripod to swap tapes.
The Sony Handycam DCR-HC85's 1/3.6-inch single CCD offers a bit more than a megapixel of effective resolution for DV shooting (which gets sampled down to DV resolution) and slightly less than 2 megapixels for still shots. The Carl Zeiss lens offers 10X optical zoom and 120X digital. You can limit the digital zoom to a reasonable 20X, a handy feature for getting in close on those objects where 10X isn't enough reach, without accidentally zooming into the pixelated mess you start to see with any camcorder at extreme digital-zoom levels. The lens accepts 37mm filters, as well as optional 0.7X wide-angle and 2X teleconverter lenses.The camcorder offers a good assortment of manual and programmed features. Manual focus is a snap--just press the Manual button and use the focus ring to sharpen the image. In addition to manual-exposure mode, there are also six program AE modes. Auto white balance is supplanted by indoor and outdoor options, as well as a one-push option for manually setting it by framing a white object.
In addition to Sony's trademarked infrared NightShot Plus mode for shooting in the dark, the DCR-HC85 also boasts a slow-shutter mode that offers truer colors at the expense of frame rate. The two modes can be combined, which Sony dubs Super NightShot Plus. An accessory lets you attach external devices, such as a video light.
The DCR-HC85 has above-average still photo options. There's a built-in flash, complete with a red-eye-reduction feature, and a progressive shutter function to eliminate interlace artifacts. Though this is a midsize camcorder, it uses tiny Memory Stick Duo cards instead of traditional Memory Sticks. The too-small 8MB card that ships with the camera does include an adapter that will let you use the Duo in devices that take full-size Memory Sticks.
If you have a collection of analog tapes lying around, you can plug a VCR or analog camcorder into the DCR-HC85 to convert the material to digital format. You can either record from the analog source onto DV tape or pass the signal directly through the FireWire port to record on your PC or another device.
The Sony Handycam DCR-HC85's autofocus works well in a variety of lighting conditions, though in low light the image sometimes blurs during a pan, quickly coming back into focus when you stop moving the camera. The Super SteadyShot image-stabilization feature does a great job of eliminating shaky hand movements to about 5X zoom; at greater zoom levels, it merely dampens the movement, and some shake is evident. To its credit, we didn't notice any image-quality degradation with image stabilization active.The 3.5-inch touch-screen LCD's large size teams well with the focus ring to make manual focus a snap, but at 123,000 pixels the screen doesn't offer the detail it should. On the bright side (literally), it doesn't wash out even in the brightest sunlight. The color viewfinder works also works well. Not only can you extend it, you can also swivel it up and down, a feature we miss on some of the DCR-HC85's compact competitors.
The stereo microphone sits below the lens but didn't pick up any zoom or focus noise during testing. The front placement means that narration or prompting won't overpower the sounds of your subject. You can also plug in an external microphone and use headphones to more precisely monitor sound while shooting.
The tiny NP-FP50 battery is one of the more anemic power cells we've encountered on a camcorder, lasting less than 40 minutes with a mix of shooting and reviewing. (Sony claims as much as 80 minutes if you're shooting continuously.) You'll run out of power long before you run out of tape in most situations, so you should strongly consider a spare battery.
Though we noticed that some bright colors seemed muted on the Sony Handycam DCR-HC85's LCD, the actual video captured on tape was spot-on colorwise, with vibrant, accurate hues in all but the dimmest lighting. Footage shot in outdoor and bright conditions generally looked good, but straight lines and sharp color demarcations occasionally showed an unnatural, jaggy appearance. Shadowy areas and footage shot in dimly lit conditions showed an above-average amount of noise. This was even true for outdoor footage shot on an overcast day.The NightShot Plus mode showed the usual green cast you get with infrared shooting, as if you were looking through a set of night-vision goggles. Super NightShot Plus mode, though, delivers an excellent compromise. The slower frame rate showed more real color, with only very dark areas bathed in the green infrared cast, and the frame rate was far less jerky than the slow-shutter-only shooting mode.
The 1,600x1,200 still photos were better looking than typical camcorder stills, but they were far noisier and noticeably less detailed than the images you get with even entry-level dedicated digital cameras. In a pinch, the DCR-HC85 might take the place of a digital camera for small Web shots or 4x6 prints.
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