Summary: Warning - Sony Service is dismal

Comment: Lots of noise issues in low light situations. Sony's customer service isn't the best either. Their uncooperative reputation is starting to bite them or so I hear. My personal experiences with them have been frustrating to say the least. Cannon has much better customer service and their HD products outshine Sonys. This HDR-HC7's low-light performance was a disappointment.

Summary: Warning: beware warranty

Comment: When I encountered a defective internal lens cover I went to their website about getting it fixed and they state there is a minimum $250 charge. Their warranty only covers parts, not labor. I sent the camera in anyway and they called to say they would charge me $600 to fix it because of "corrosion" which was not covered by the warranty.

I only had the camera about two months when the lens cover started to fail when I was on a week's vacation at the beach in Sanibel, Florida. The camera will not start when the internal lens cover fails. When it fails, you get a message on the screen that says "lens cover failed to open, turn camera off then on." I did that several times and it usually did not resolve the problem. But sometimes it would. Ironically, here in dry Arizona it works most of the time, but at the beach or near the Colorado River it jams up.

However, this had to be a known manufacturing defect if they have an error message for when it occurs! I had ordered the camera with a lens filter and the filter was always on the camera, so it is highly unlikely anything entered the camera through the lens opening.

So now I have an expensive camera that works sometimes and sometimes it doesn't. When it works it works great, although the autofocus can be off at times. And the still photos are gorgeous. I think its a good camera when it works, but I'm a little miffed that they want me to pay over 50 percent of what the camera cost to fix their defect.

I would advise not buying their 1.7x teleconverter because it doesn't improve the zoom that much and if you zoom out your videos vignette so badly it looks like you filmed it through a pipe. I also bought the Sony wide-angle screw on, which vignettes if you put a filter on it. I suspect these may be because the internal lens cover requires the real lens to be recessed quite a ways.

Summary: Very nice video but questionable reliability

Comment: I am very pleased with the video quality and the comfortable feel of this HD camcorder. Unfortunately, the camera began to intermittently auto-focus erratically in the third month and failed in the fourth month of use. Sony offers a one year parts and 90 days labor warranty on this camera. The labor charge after 90 days is a flat rate of $249 regardless of the repair required (25% of purchase price). Since I had contacted Sony within in the first 90 days about the auto-focus problem I was able to convince the fourth person I spoke with to waive the labor charge for the failure.

Got the camcorder back from Sony today and the repair ticket states "reconnected power flex". I suppose a connector must have come loose. Hoping that I get several years of use out this camera before any more failures occur...

Summary: Professional Features in a small Body

Comment: The Sony HDR-HC7 has features that you would not expect in a Handy cam. I once asked a Professional at a local retailer, why HD Tapes are 63 minutes instead of the traditional 60 minutes tapes. He said that the additional 3 minutes were for professional Camcorder to save there settings. I wondered what settings would a camcorder need to save! Well I did not ask any more question because one again I figured that the setting were for the "Big Boy". Well one day I was playing with my HDR-HC7 and I ran across "Color Bars", so I call the retailer and asked what were "Color Bars", and he reminded me about the 3 additional minutes on the tape he told me about, was for "Bars and Tone". The next time I talked to him, he had sold his Canon HV20, and purchased the Sony HC7. He loved the feel, the ability to do so many things in manual mode, that he "now says that the Canon felt like a toy in comparison". I think you get the point. I would like to see 24p on the Sony HDR-HC7, but I would not even think about giving up my ability to use all of the great manual features available on the HDR-HC7. If you look at the Sony HVR-HD1000U HDV camcorder, it is the HDR-HC7 repackaged in a Professional looking body, for twice the price.

Summary: HDR HC7

Comment: I've had this camcorder for about 8 months now and I've been using it enough, I feel, to give a pretty accurate review.

I've been using the camera in a number of different environments (outdoors, studio, in the home, etc) and the only thing I've noticed it consistently stumble with it nighttime shooting, but considering this is camera is on the prosumer end of things, this is to be expected. Day time shooting has been flawless and the camera holds up in the studio as well. Even using the standard miniDV settings, the image is pretty superb.

The camera can be outfitted with SCORES of different accessories--lenses, filters, mics, etc. I haven't used the hotshoe at all because I have a lot of "cold-shoe" accessories which can be mounted with a video bracket with universal mounts (search online--they're about $10-$15 and totally worth it). I feel it's the way to go instead of shelling out more money for hotshoe accessories. Just carry some batteries around.

On the topic of mics; the build in one is actually pretty good (most camcorder ones are), but the problem is that, usually, the camera is too far away from the action to accurately pick up good sound. That said, it's totally reasonable to invest in a small shotgun mic ($50) if you're serious about your audio quality. A big plus with this camera is the mic input in the front of the camera. It seems today most consumer cameras are losing this option, but it's a great one to have.

The camera accepts all standard 37mm lens accessories (filters, lenses). Filters (polarizing ones, especially) are great to have if you plan to do a lot of outside shooting. As for lenses, the 37mm wide angle lenses I've used (the cheap ones, at this point) have really messed with the image quality, so I resorted to using older, larger lenses (49mm). To do this, all you need to do is pick up some adapter rings and you're set. If you choose to do this, watch out for vignetting--this is where your image gets rounded at the edges because the adapter ring/lens is cutting off the actual camera image.

The touch screen is pretty useful except there are a lot of menus to go through if you want to know EVERYTHING the camera does or is capable of. It's hard to see in bright daylight, but there are hoods you can buy (or make out of cardboard...) that will help you out.

The one thing the camera lacks is a real focus ring. Sure, there's a dial on the side near the lens, but it just doesn't feel right and focusing becomes a somewhat daunting task. You can set the dial to do a number of things, like exposure, for example, but I would've preferred an actual focus ring.

The still photo quality is pretty decent and now that my old digital camera has crapped out on me, I've been using the camcorder for still shooting.

All in all, the camera is pretty versatile--if you're using this for leisure, it's great as is with some menu-tweaking, but if you're looking to do some amateur work, it can be tricked out with more accessories than you can imagine.