DCRDVD403 DIGTL VIDCAM user reviews

4.0 stars

"Great but a few problems and hard to use features" on November 21, 2005 by 1E4BAEC

Pros: unlimited storage on $1.50 1.4gig DVDs for quality stills

Cons: touch screen manual focus a bomb for macros, wipes out disks sometimes

Summary: I replaced a sony PC-10 mini-DV camcorder, that stored 1000 highest quality but low res digital stills on one mini-dv tape. It was inconvenient to transfer these to PC, involved running tape in play for an hour using only sony software. automatic mode didn't work if videos intermixed.

Good news: this new camera means you just pop the dvd disk into your PC after finalizing (a word on that later) and copy the stills to your hard drive. at highest res, 3 megapixels, you can fit 900-1000 at highest quality on one 3" dvd-r disk, or 30 minutes of video or any mix there-of. I used dvd-r's from a stack of 20 for $29 from fry's and they worked fine even tho not 'video quality'. I was doing mostly stills tho. For video I'd get video rated ones, both speed rated and hard coating on them to avoid scratches.

Finalizing: I had used this for 3 months and then one time during finalizing it gave me 'C:13:02' error on screen. then several times more in a row. This essentially means you're hosed. You can try downloading the 'isobuster' utility on the web (isobuster.com I think) and possibly recover the files (possibly, not always possible).

What causes this? either a defective disk or dirt inside the case on the disk. Prevention? use air can and dust brush, look carefully inside dvd compartment when empty, get every spec of fiber or dust out. make sure DVDs don't have any dust or smudges on them. use a lens cleaning cloth dampened with cleaning fluid. and yes, the DVD can have defects. helpfully, if they DO have defects, it tends to be visible on the write side. If you can't brush off something on write side, use another disk.

I got a brand new memorex disk, video quality and it had MAJOR visible defect. Unhappily I didn't look at disk till it had hosed a day's worth of shooting on a hike. I opened the next disk in the package and it had defect too, brand new! I even got into odd situation where one hosed disk plays on the camera but will not copy to dvd either directly or with picture perfect. and using one RW, copying directly gave me 71 pics but using picture perfect copy gave me all my pix, 276

For archival shoots where you will do alot of shooting in a day or two, use dvd-r. for alot of start-stop shooting, switch to dvd-rw, or even better, dvd+rw (+rw does NOT need to be finalized, so I'm guessing will have much less problem being wiped out as you should still be able to copy to that point to your PC). These can't be found locally but are shipped quickly from amazon or two amazon vendors.

Pick up 2 extra of the larger battery and you can shoot for 8 hours straight! battery barn is reliable. very nice to have this much reserve as I do long shoots. pick up a 30mm clear / uv filter to protect the video lens when open, even tho it has snap shut cover when off. get a 30mm lens cap at local camera store for on top of this, plus a leash so you don't drop it.

zoom: this is a problem. It zooms 120x (10 optical + digital) in video mode but unlike pc-10 only 10x (optical). I don't very much want to shoot stills over 10x but sometimes I do and I'm ticked off they did this. I also use it as a spotting scope and this means I have to switch to video mode to zoom in on an animal up a hill in their enclosure at the zoo.

They also TURNED OFF image stabilization in still mode. this is VERY BAD. the stills are great on this camera but NOT if you are having any kind of slight vibration. The monorail around sd animal park destroyed stills I used to get good quality on with old sony cam. you MUST use video to avoid this which means low res to get stills out of video.

Macros: this cam follows sony's great specs allowing macro in to 1cm from an object. it even focuses automatically much of the time. when it doesn't the old sony had an 'infinite focus ring' around lens which you activated with one finger of hand holding cam. this allowed quickly adjusting focus and getting close shots quickly of that tiny flower, etc.

Not so with this camera: you have to take 2nd hand, select menu on touch screen, scroll down, select focus (or spot focus) and touch + / - till in focus. Problem: you have to back off from screen to touch it so hard to look in screen and touch at same time; net result: takes 10 times as long to do what used to be a quick manual focus.

Flash: flash works good till you are closer than about a foot. then it over-exposes the frame. put it on red-eye to force flash anytime you want one and then off; automatic flash is sporadic on when it turns on. The optional 3w video light is nice accessory. For macros in dark areas, get an led light or the sony self powered video light. unlike flashlight which show rings in light pattern, the video light can be held separately from camera and moved in or out to throw an even circle of light covering what you want or lighting up that small object for macro. Inside? turn on flash for just about everything, will bring out colors incredibly for indoor shoots, unless too close to object.

Copying movies to HD: you can just copy them, they are in '.vob' or dvd file format. you need a player that will play these, the cd-rom with the cam has one. use their 'picture perfect' software to copy the same videos over to HD as .mpeg files. Seems they don't play on the PC I didn't install 'picture perfect' software on tho, some codec missing, will have to call sony about this, don't want to place on web then not have people able to view them.


All-in-all it's a good camera, and currently the only dvd-camcorder with hi-res stills far as I know. They goofed on a few things. Hopefully next model will fix these.

these cheap DVDs are way better than buying the 7 - 1.5 gig memory sticks I would have needed to shoot pix on my vacation without a way to upload and re-use a mem stick.

you can see examples of flower composites I made using the new camera, on our club website: www.rth.org/occss then select newsletter composites page. All the pix from 2005-07-04 CSSA show on are using this (previous ones are with PC-10)

buying it: prices vary from 800 to 1000; don't get scammed, check out resellerratings.com, type in website of who you might buy it from, I avoided some scam sites that never ship product this way. I'd check their opinion of all your online purchase sites here. epinions has user reviews of products, fun to read.

also check out sony's website and look up this camera if you buy it. has manal as PDF, good to have and has diagram explaining various types of dvd-r, -rw, +rw disks and modes.

Anyway, thanks, sony for a good but not perfect product.