CNET editors' review
CNET Editors' ChoiceMay 04-
CNET editors' rating:
stars
Excellent
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 05/19/2004
- Released on: 11/09/2003
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| We're not crazy about the PC330's bottom-loading cassette design, which is common among this class of camcorders. |
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| You use the PC330's power switch to cycle through the capture and playback modes. |
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 You can focus manually via the ring on the PC330's lens. |
Compared to earlier incarnations, the PC330's touch-screen menu system has additional animation and sleeker graphics. You can customize the menus, and the system is largely straightforward to understand and use. But the debate continues over the merits of the camcorder touch screen. Some love its intuitive interface; some hate having to open the LCD to get to the menus.The Sony Handycam DCR-PC330's standout feature is its 3-megapixel CCD, which can capture photos at its full resolution. Its 2.1-megapixel video resolution isn't shabby either. Combine those numbers with an excellent Carl Zeiss lens, a built-in flash, and features such as laser-holographic focusing and NightFraming, which provides an infrared preview for framing in low light, and you have the potential for a very acceptable digital still camera living inside your camcorder.
Spot metering and spot focusing, features unique to Sony's camcorders, are both novel and useful applications for the touch screen. Manual exposure control, however, doesn't lend itself to touch-screen operation; we'd prefer to have a physical control on the camera body. Some Sony models won't let you use the progressive (noninterlaced) mode and image stabilization at the same time, but that's not the case with the PC330. To record time-lapse video, such as flowers opening, use the Interval mode. The NightShot mode records infrared night vision, even in total darkness, though your images will look monochrome green--think Paris Hilton. Unfortunately, this model doesn't have zebra stripes, which indicate overexposed, out-of-gamut areas. Another feature serious amateurs will miss: You can't control the audio level manually, as you can with the Canon Optura 300 and the Canon Optura Xi.
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 As is typical of so many camcorder batteries, the one that comes with the Sony Handycam DCR-PC330 has an average use per charge that's shorter than the length of a standard tape. We'd like to see it creep up to a full hour. |
The Hologram Autofocus system works very well for focusing stills in low- or no-light situations, and the NightFraming function is extremely useful for finding your shot in the same types of limited-light scenarios.The Sony Handycam DCR-PC330's video-image performance is very similar to that of the company's older prosumer models such as the DCR-TRV39 and the DCR-TRV80. The PC330's images are sharp and crisp, with very clean edges. As is typical of Sony camcorders, the automatic color temperature on the PC330 skews a bit toward cool, producing more-vivid hues than a neutral white balance would in typical interior-lighting scenarios but not so severely that the effect is displeasing. The camcorder's standard-operation lower-light video performance is quite decent; the PC330 uses a very clean gain--which you can't control manually--to pump up the available light. When light levels drop beyond the camera's standard-mode capability, using the NightShot or Color Slow Shutter functions will allow you to keep filming, albeit with special-effect visuals of one sort or another. (NightShot produces monochrome night-vision images; Color Slow Shutter creates motion streaks and somewhat artistic blurs.)
 This scaled-down frame grab from the PC330 shows pleasingly saturated colors and good exposure. |
Still photos that we printed on photographic paper at a local lab came out excellent (using a photo process that created a negative from the file) and held their own even when we blew them up to 8x10 inches. However, in low-light situations, our still images didn't fare as well as the PC330's video. Our photos, which we printed on an Epson Stylus Photo 2200, came out fuzzy and noisy; we don't recommend enlarging and printing those. Overall, the PC330's stills look much better than those taken with your average camcorder, but despite their lower resolutions, the Canon Optura 300 and the Canon Optura Xi still produce a better final photo.
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| Under indoor lighting, the PC330's stills looked far noisier than we expected and showed some noticeable compression artifacts. | |
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