Sony HDR-HC9E

G-Rating

Rating of 4

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The basics

The Sony HDR-HC9E camcorder offers full HD video recording on DV tape for up to 1 hour, a ClearVid CMOS sensor for crisp and clear video images and a Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T* lens with 10x optical zoom. It also sports a 6 megapixel still photo recording feature which is directly saved on to a removable memory stick.

The good

The HC9 is the Sarah Palin of the camcorder world. The slinky black dress and sharp eyewear makes you think you’re getting something new and exciting, then you realise it’s full of the same old story inside. That’s right, this cutting-edge Full HD camcorder runs on creaky old HDV (aka MiniDV) tapes. Having said that, video quality is out of this world, with the stabilised Carl Zeiss optics adding a steely Germanic twinkle to the dullest of scenes. There are also more high-end tweaks than you could ever want, such as spot metering, peaking and a glorious wide colour viewfinder to match the 2.7-inch touchscreen LCD.

The bad

This is a pricey camcorder for one that uses yesterday’s technology, regardless of how good the video looks. The 10x zoom is shorter than Danny DeVito when he’s been through a hot wash and shooting time on tape is limited, too: just 60 minutes per tape.

The bottom line

While plenty of ‘serious’ movie-makers swear by HDV, plenty of amateur auteurs swear at it. If you want the best possible video quality, though, the HC9 (and its close rival, the Canon HV30) are well worth a screen test.

Sony HDR-HC9E is tagged with Sony, HDV, Carl Zeiss and camcorder. Select a tag (Sony, for example) to find everything on FiveFWD about the subject.

User comments (4)

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Peter07 December 2009

Read your review. No mention of sound quality. Can we expect headphone monitoring, What about an external mic socket?. I thought that tape was the better format for storing better quality codecs, with less compression then that used on Hard Drive storage. Maybe Ive been misinformed.

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NaiART08 December 2011

I've been using this model for Wedding's & Events for 3years+, & I'm so very happy with the performance. I just sent to it's 1st service (LCD) last 4 days & I have it back now. yes, we can monitor from the headphone port to headphone, recording device, mixer... & the sound quality is good. yes, it has Mic socket at the front, but for me, most of the time I just use the built in STEREO mic, & for speech I used my wireless bluetooth SONY ECM-HW1R device. Yes, it has TIME ELAPSE function. Audio Input:YES Audio Output:YES Video Input:NO Video Output:YES S-Video Input:NO S-Video Output:YES (with optional accessory cable) i.LINK (DV) Input:YES i.LINK (DV) Output:YES USB Input:YES (USB 2.0 Full-speed) USB Output:YES (USB 2.0 Full-speed) Component Video Output:YES HDMI™ Output:YES External Microphone Input:YES Headphone Jack:YES once, I've also think what others think about the video's color.. dull, BUT after all these years, now I've noticed 1 important things when I'm starting to used FINAL CUT PRO to edit this model footage, IT'S BROADCAST SAFE!. If you want a brighter color, you can simply boost up the saturation from the menu, that's all actually. On the day light, this model Video's quality as high as the "big-bang" 3ccd pro shoulder mount videocamera... hellooo, it is Carl Zeiss optics. just think about this: IT'S A CARL ZEISS OPTICS HDV THAT LIGHT & ONLY AS BIG AS YOUR HAND. Do want to climb a mountain with 1 thing that weight few kilo's or 1complete set that's weight equals?

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