Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5353 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Sony
• Model: DCRHC51E.CEH
• Released on: 2008-02-14
• Dimensions: .0" h x .0" w x .0" l, .84 pounds

Manufacturer's Description
This Sony DCRHC51E miniDV camcorder has a 40x optical zoom through a Carl Zeiss lens and a 80x digital zoom with a 2.5" LCD screen. This camcorder features an image stabiliser to reduce vibration or shake, and a night mode that lets you carry on recording in low light conditions. The Sony DCRHC51E has a mini DV recording format with a built in microphone and can be used as a digital camera. This Sony MD205 camcorder comes complete with a lithium ion rechargeable battery pack, HC51 Handycam station, AC adaptor and A/V connecting cable.

Customer Reviews

Motor noise ruins an otherwise great camcorder
Positives
- Excellent nightvision mode
- Great colours
- One of the best optical zooms I have seen on a home camcorder
- Long battery life

Negatives
- Motor noise (a constant humming sound from the motor makes filming in quiet locations impossible. I was going to put up with it, but was just too loud which has forced me to return it).

Excellent product. One can't go far wrong with Sony.
An excellent camera at an excellent price. For the semi-casual user such as myself this is a great product. Dead simple to use when you want to just get something down on film, but you can also use the provided software to get a little more clever. Not only that, but it's compact. Really very compact. I couldn't quite believe it when I opened the box and it came out. Things have moved on so much even in the last couple of years. For the money, this is a great little video camera, and well worth it.

very disappointed
Due to my JVC dx 57 finally giving up the ghost and
on the basis of reviews here I ordered the unit 05/08.

Taking some test footage of foreground panning to landscape outside in bright summer sunshine. I then transfered via firewire to my PC and was very disappointed with the results. Specifically the unit really struggled focusing (an issue I could perhaps understand in low light) and footage looked like it was shot in soft focus. Note this is not apparent when replaying footage on the unit itself (which I assume is the reason why this has not been raised in other reviews or perhaps this is the first camcorder the other reviewers have experienced).

You can manually focus the unit but try doing that when your toddler subject is running about and its definitely not recommended.

I suppose I was asking for trouble with a unit boasting 40X zoom, sounds great until you try it and find you're reaching for a tripod. Sony would have done better concerntrating on the basics.

Top marks to Amazon in their returns policy as I was dreading this but turned out the best part of the purchase (the reason why this review got a star).

I then joined Which (I only wish I'd done so before) and my experiences tallied with their review. I've subsequently up'ed my budget and bought a Panasonic nv gs330eb (again from Amazon) and I'm delighted with the quality of the footage taken.

The main lesson I've drawn from this it don't solely trust these reviews.