Review: Sony HDR-SR12 AVCHD Camcorder


Sony’s impressive HD cam has pretty much everything a serious user might need - great handling, dual-media recording, HDMI, mic input, headphone output and a viewfinder as well as touch-screen LCD. So why the absense of a 1080p Progressive mode?


Image of Sony HDR-SR12 AVCHC Camcorder framing woman in shot
Love it or loathe it, the fact is that AVCHD is taking the home camcorder market by storm, and the evidence for this is now all around us. Consumers, it would appear, want to shoot their movies in high definition in order that they can display their movie clips on HD television displays or polish their work on suitably equipped PCs and Macs. With AVCHD now well into its second year of life, we’re now seeing the main brands adding features to their mid-range models that indicate a clear orientation toward the serious user with increased manual controllability and the full range of inputs and output connections. Not only is Sony aiming the leisure market with its HDR-TG3 AVCHD Handycam (HDR-TG1 outside Europe) but with the new “SR” range of Handycams it’s clearly pitching up against Canon’s HF100 and HF10 AVCHD camcorders. The Sony HDR-SR12 is notable because it seems to offer just about everything the more serious user might - except that it doesn’t facilitate 25p (24p in NTSC territories) progressive “cinema mode” recording. Why not?

First Impressions


At 650g in weight and with its large black body styling, the first thing you notice about the SR12 is that it’s quite a heavy beast. However, for the more serious enthusiast at whom this is aimed that’s no bad thing. Not only does this and its AVCHD Handycam sibling, Sony’s HDR-SR11, have just about every manual control knob and dial you could wish for but it feels great to pick up and use. Particularly attractive elements are the large 3.2” TFT LCD screen (we’ll talk about the touch-screen operation shortly), a colour viewfinder, a rotating manual control dial which can be used for focus, exposure and audio level adjustments whilst recording and a selection of connector sockets all neatly hiddne by clever doors and flaps.

Sony’s Intelligent Accessory Shoe can be found under a slideaway hatch on the top, and a slot for the optional Memory Stick PRO Duo memory card is found inside the LCD recess. Frameside Menu, Zoom and red Record Start/Stop buttons are conveniently placed on the LCD frame itself. Of course, it’s the provision of a whopping 120GB hard disc drive which sits inside the right-hand half of the body (as you’re using it) which adds to its body mass.

One conspicuous feature is the Camera Control wheel on the lower fron of the body; by rotating as required, this is used to make manual adjustments to focus, exposure and input audio level whilst recording. It’s better than the more familiar thumbwheel but - in the case of focus, at least - not as good as a physical ring around the lens itself.

Features and functions


Like its sibling product, the HDR-SR11, the HDR-SR12 offers a choice of recording media - an internal 120GB hard disc drive (60GB on the HDR-SR11) and Memory Stick PRO Duo, for which a slot is provided inside the LCD screen recess. In addition, two recording modes are possible, being either High Definition (AVCHD, utilising the now popular MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 codec) or Standard Definition (using MPEG2-PS, which is a variant of the compression system employed by standard DVD recording and playback devices). High definition resolution is the full 1920x1080 specification, though only 1080/50i (interlaced line mode) is provided (60i in NTSC markets), with no option to record in either 1080p or even 720p modes. Unlike several competing products - particularly the Panasonic HDC-SD9 and the Canon HF100 and HF10 AVCHD camcorders, neither the SR12 nor the SR11 offers a so-called 25P Cinema Mode (in which frames are recorded in one complete scan for that questionable but still much desired film-like effect). It does, however, have a "Progressive Shutter" but that's not quite the same thing.

A 5.8mm (1/3.13 type) ClearVid CMOS sensor is used to generate the images in either 16:9 widescreen (movie and stills modes) or 4:3 traditional (stills mode) aspect ratios, with a maximum resolution of 10.2 Megapixels (3,680 x 2,760 pixels). This results in an effective movie resolution of 3.18 Megapixels in 16:9 mode and 5.08 Megapixels in 4:3 stills mode. Optics come in the form of a very respectable Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T* 10x Optical Zoom lens, with an additional capability of both 24x and 150x in Digital zoom mode.

Image: Frontal view of Sony HDR-SR12 showing lens and LCD screen

Four digital video recording modes are offered when shooting AVCHD. They are as follows:

Naturally, the higher the bit rate, the more data is employed in the make-up of images and sounds and the better the overall quality of recording and playback. The top rate of 16 Mbps (megabits per second) isn’t as high as some competitors’ products, but its performance isn’t compromised to any noticeable degree.

In addition to the 3.2” colour widescreen TFT LCD, the SR12 (and also the SR11) features a colour viewfinder which can be tilted up to an angle of approximately 45 degrees. It’s very small and doesn’t pull out and, when flush with the upper rear body will found to be slightly uncomfortable for some users. Sound is picked up a 5-channel microphone array which is positioned on the top of the camcorder and which is pointing upwards. This Zoom Mic - in which the sensitivity of the mic is intended to mimic the lens zooming action - generates 5.1 channel surround sound in AVCHD modes.

When preparing to record, the SR12 will ask you to choose not just the recording medium you wish to use - Hard Disc Drive or Memory Stick PRO Duo - but whether you wish to shoot movies or stills. Having taken this decision, a well-designed and structured onscreen menu system guides you through the settings you might wish to use. Navigation of these menus and selection of the many options available is achieved by touching the LCD screen itself. You may think this to be awkward, but in practice it works very well - and facilitates a speedy operation - although it does result in a rather mucky screen very quality. Perhaps Sony should include screen wipes in the box.

There are three buttons on the left side of the LCD frame - “Home” button, zoom wide and Tele controls and a red Record Start/Stop button. All these can be operated by the user’s left hand whilst recording, whether hand-held or tripod-mounted. In playback mode, clip selection is very quick and easy, with a wide range of selection options appearing as tabs along the bottom and top of the graphical user interface.

Image: Diplay detail on Sony HDR-SR12 LCD screen
To make life easy for the user, there’s a single Easy button in the LCD recess which provides a single automatic over-ride to everything - if you’ve been shooting with manual control modes but you need to resort to a safe mode quickly you’ll be guaranteed a decent recording even if it’s a bit of a compromise in certain situations. This feature is complemented by a Quick On button which provides a very quick power-up from standaby mode.

Having recorded either movies or stills to your chosen medium, it’s then possible to copy clips from to the other, with the further choice of copying all the clips, single clips or a collection of clips that form part of a pre-determined Playlist.

The SR12 also offers simultaneous movies and stills recording - snap pictures whilst actually recording video to a resolution of 7.6 Megapixels.

A feature that is now familiar to many users of recent digital stills cameras and which is now becoming popular on video cameras is called Face Detection. This results in multiple human faces being detected and tracked in the frame with the result that the camera’s image processing maintains consistency in the colour (using x.v. Colour processing). In playback, it’s also possible to perform searches according to whether the image contains faces, and you create Face Roll indexes dependent upon a range of user-selected criteria.

Connectivity


The HDR-SR12 (together with its HDR-SR11 sibling) isn’t short of connections to the outside world. For a start, it contains a very welcome external microphone input together with a dedicated headphone output. These, along with a HDMI Mini-C socket for sending high definition video and audio out to a suitably-equipped HDTV display (such as a model from Sony’s Bravia range), is situated behind a nicely designed door to be found left of the lens as you look head-on. Another sliding door at the rear right of the cam (as you’re using it) contains the AV analogue and component socket for connection to non-HD TVs and recorders as well as for digital Component connections (cabling supplied for both). There’s a USB Mini-B socket here to; the supplied cable can be used to transfer movie and image files from HDD and Memory Stick to a Windows or Apple Mac computer. The DC power socket is right at the back of the camera body beneath the viewfinder.

Additionally, the Intelligent Shoe on the roof of the camera body can take hot shoe devices like a separate microphone with zoom functions and also a battery light to complement the video light that’s provided on the camera.

Performance


Shooting at highest FH (16 Mbps) setting, we were impressed by not only the camcorder’s ease of use but also with the quality of movie recording achieved. Using a Wakeboarding competition event as one of our camera test subjects, we recorded a range of activity in a variety of operator modes using the HDR-SR12. As mentioned, this model doesn’t offer 25p (24p) progressive recording, which is useful when seeking to derive very slow motion or still-frame playback, so we had to contend with 50i interlaced frame recording. The frames below were imported from the SR12’s 120GB HDD to an Apple Intel Mac via USB 2.0 using iMovie 08. This produced full-specification MOV clip files using the Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC) converter. This was then imported into Adobe Premiere CS3 for Mac where editing of a test sequence then took place (Premiere doesn’t have AVCHD importers at the time of testing). In order to make life slightly easier, the 1080/50i clips were first converted to 1280x720/25p using MPEG Streamclip, in which the De-interlace filter was also applied.

The frames below were derived directly off the Premiere timeline. Shooting with the SR12’s Optical Image Stabiliser on the end of the 12:1 optical zoom, the stability offered - especially on difficult tight panning shots - was surprisingly good and the results were excellent. Shooting on a tripod requires de-activating the OIS, otherwise weird optical problems can ensue.


Shooting in Easy mode might be percieved to be useful in such circumstances, too; however, it creates more problems that it’s worth in all but the most common situations - such as indoors with family, on the beach, and so on. In this instance, we were shooting into the afternoon sunlight at various stages of the action and the auto exposure control caused the iris to shut-down to an unacceptable level. Taking manual control of focus and exposure enables you to control both with the Cam Ctrl dial on the front; it’s not perfect (certainly not for focussing, for which a focus ring would be preferable) but it’s not bad once you get used to it. What we do like (surprisingly) is the Spot Focus, Spot Exposure (etc) functions in which you touch a part of the LCD screen during recording in order to tell the camcorder what to use as a reference point. It’s simple, quickly and reasonably effective.

One thing about shooting in auto is that the camcorder has a tendancy to over-cook some scenes - especially those in which there’s a mix of dark and light areas - such as white flower tips in a sea of colour and where there are darker areas of the frame - to the point where the white objects are over-exposed. In such instances, it’s a very idea to take manual control of exposure where possible. In this instance, it’s necessary to pull down the exposure by at least one stop. In doing so, we found that the resulting picture quality improved significantly. The above frames were the result of this practice and the images have a much more pleasing, mellower, characteristic.

Image showing Wakeboarder travelling left to right


Image showing wakeboarder performing a full somersault

Overall, picture quality is very good. Shooting indoors in general domestic settings, the images and sound quality is superb. Even as the evenings set in and scenes are artificially lit, picture resolution is very good (within reason) and images aren’t dominated by picture noise as is often the case with lesser models or those of some competitors. Where the SR12 does score is that it handles beautifully in both hand-held and tripod-mounted modes. It’s heavy, but that’s a plus as many professional camera operators and serious videomakers will testify.

Producing instant HD and SD copies onto DVD via USB “One click” function and standalone DVD burner


Image: Sony DVDirect VRD-MC5 DVD Burner
You don’t need to hook up to a computer in order to make quick DVD copies of your clips and image slideshows, whether for HD or Standard Definition video formats.

With Sony’s optional DVDirect VRD-MC5 direct-connection USB burner drive (pictured left) you can set up playlists of your favourite clips; these can be played out to a Sony Bravia TV using Sony's own BRAVIA Sync via HDMI connection for playback control using a compatible Bravia TV remote control or transferred direct to DVD disc.

This unit is the Sony equivalent of Panasonic's VW-BN1 Direct-to-DVD burner that is finding favour with many of the company's HD camcorder customers.

Transfer of movie clips and images to Windows/Vista and Apple Mac computers


A mini-USB 2.0 socket and cable is provided for transfer of movie clips and images to a suitable WindowsXP SP2 and Vista PC (Picture Motion Browser software CD included) or Apple Mac computer. Note that for transfer to, and editing of, AVCHD movie clips on an Apple Mac, an Intel-based Mac is required running OS10.5 Leopard or higher. No additional software is required as the Mac will import clips via USB 2.0 for editing in iMovie '08.

Conclusion


The HDR-SR12 (like is lesser-endowed SR11 sibling) is a fabulous HD camcorder that generates hugely impressive full-specification 1920x1080 HD video pictures using the revolutionary AVCHD (MPEG-4 AVC/H.264) compression system. Switch off the auto mode for all but those situations where you just can’t spend time fiddling and you’ll reap the rewards of getting material that looks great. Having the added ability to plug in an external microphone and monitor your sound via headphones on a dedicated input is a major bonus for those who want to either use a direct mic or an external audio interface like a Beach-Tek Box. The range of connections offered here is just what you’d expect from a product at this price point and calibre.

The downside - and there is a downside - is the disappointment that Sony isn’t embracing 25p (24p) Progressive Scan frame mode recording in the way that Canon and Panasonic are with products that cost less. There’s no doubt that it looks better on a large LCD/Plasma display when using HDMI connections, especially when shooting the kind of fast-action sport such as we did during our test in which slomo and still-frame pauses are required. That apart, it’s difficult to mark down the SR12 on any other count and for that reason we give it a Highly Recommended tag! Well done Sony - here’s looking forward to 1080p next time around!


Reviewed by: CB, June 2008. Sony HDR-SR12 product mages supplied by Sony UK Limited. Used by permission. Other images Copyright 2008 Colin Barrett / SimplyDV Limited.