Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5998 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Sony
• Model: HDRCX105ES.CEH
• Released on: 2009-01-11

Manufacturer's Description

The CX105 is so small and light you can pop it into a pocket and be ready to record whenever the moment presents itself. An 8GB internal memory gives you 3 hours of shooting time, with the option of boosting that with a Memory Stick. Not only do you have less to carry, transferring clips to a TV or PC is quick and easy. Full HD 1080 recording guarantees amazing picture quality, which is further enhanced by a range of the latest technologies from Sony, including x.v.Colour which virtually doubles the colour palette that you normally see on screen. And now there’s no need to pack your stills camera, the CX105 is ready to take photos too, even when you’re recording. With Smile Shutter automatically photographing every smile, you’ve got twice as many memories to look back on.

Whatever your plans, from days out to weekends away, the CX105 is the perfect portable companion when you want to keep packing to a minimum.

Recording in Full 1080HD delivers five times more detail, or ‘resolution’, than ordinary standard definition images View larger

Flexibility and convenience with a Memory Stick
The CX105 comes with a built–in 8GB internal memory, which enables you to record up to 3 hours of HD video, with the option to add a Memory Stick for up to 6 hours’ extra filming. This format means there are no moving parts so even sudden movements won’t cause skipping in your videos. And because there are no tapes or discs to worry about, the CX105 is light and easy to carry. With the optional DVD burner you can transfer videos straight from camcorder to DVD with one touch disc burn. Or save your footage to PC with super–fast USB 2.0 connection.

Detail and sound taken care of
The CX105 gives you the option of recording in Full 1080HD for five times more detail, or ‘resolution’, than ordinary standard definition images. Playback on any HD ready TV or PC, and you’ll see how closely your clips match real life. That goes for sound, too: 2.1 stereo sound recording with zoom microphone captures crisp, clear audio, adding an extra dimension of realism to your videos.

Smart automatic functions
Now you can make sure that even the trickiest scenes look great, thanks to auto functions which take the guesswork out of matching settings to subject. Take sun–drenched backlit scenes, for example. The D–range Optimiser adjusts exposure and contrast to counter the effects of high–contrast conditions, so you can clearly see faces in the foreground. And when faces are your focus, Face Detection adjusts the camera’s settings to deliver clear, natural skin tones.

Focusing on quality images
The CX105 is fitted with a Vario–Tessar lens made by Carl Zeiss, the world renowned optical specialists. These premium lenses are highly rated by photographers for their colour precision, superb contrast and extremely low distortion levels at all focal lengths. Add to this an optical zoom that extends to 10x magnification and you have the capability to shoot with amazing detail even when the subject is at a distance.

Smile Shutter automatically shoots still photos whenever your subjects smile, without interrupting your recording View larger

High quality photos too
The CX105 isn’t just about great moving pictures, you can take photos on it too. Press the shutter and catch all the action in 4 megapixel detail. In fact, you don’t have to stop filming — the CX105 will capture 2.3 megapixel still images even while you’re recording movie footage. If you’re at a party or special event and there are lots of happy faces around you, select Smile Shutter and it’ll automatically shoot still photos whenever your subjects smile, without interrupting your filming.

Great results whatever the conditions
The CX105’s powerful lens is complemented by an Exmor CMOS sensor which improves picture quality with a 2x increase in sensitivity. Working with the BIONZ high–speed processor, it reduces noise in low–light conditions, and enables a faster shooting response. Filming in dark interiors or when you’re on the move can result in camera shake ruining what was otherwise a great clip. The CX105 comes with SteadyShot which is always on, stabilising the image using sensors to compensate for any wobble, so you get beautifully composed results.

Long–lasting power
Great action can come and go in a moment. QuickStart means you’re ready to begin filming within seconds of flipping open the LCD screen. You can record continuously for up to 7 hours on one charge of the optional InfoLithium battery. Then, when you’re in standby mode, power consumption is ultra–low, so you’re all set to catch that memorable moment.

The large touchscreen puts menus, settings and clips at your fingertips View larger

The big screen
Framing and playback are that bit clearer thanks to the higher resolution and increased contrasts of the Clear Photo LCD Plus screen. And because the screen measures 2.7", it’s big enough to be viewed by more than one person, so you can share the fun. Because it’s a touchscreen, menus and settings are just a tap away, while innovative technologies index your clips and arrange them as thumbnails, for easy searches.

Easy sharing and quality viewing
Managing your growing video collection is simplified by PMB (Picture Motion Browser) software included with the CX105. Install it on your PC and it provides a perfect archive for your videos. You can arrange them by date, by person, and search through them quickly. From here you can burn them to disc, send them to friends or upload them to sites.

If you connect your CX105 or computer directly to an HD Ready TV you can view your video in spectacular HD on the big screen. If your TV is a BRAVIA which supports PhotoTV HD, you’ll be able to experience even more lifelike HD images, bursting with detail and colours. And with BRAVIA Sync you’ll be able to use the TV remote to navigate through all the clips and photos stored on your CX105.

‘Sony’, ‘BRAVIA’ and their logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sony Corporation. All other trademarks acknowledged.

Box Contains

Customer Reviews

Great little HD Camcorder
I bought this recently to replace my six year old Sony mini-DV camcorder, wanting to take advantage of the widescreen size, improved technology and of course the high definition capability. In particular I was interested in the AVCHD functionality, Sony's format for playing back hi-def footage written to a DVD-R or DVD-RW through a Blu-ray player.

I've had the camera for a couple of weeks now and have made a few hours of footage with it. I started off in the highest quality mode, HD FH, which runs in 1920x1080i at 14MBps. You can store about 50-55 minutes of footage on the internal 8Gb flash memory in this mode, and of course you can plug in Memory Stick Pro Duo cards to increase the capacity. The output in this mode is superb, very sharp when played back on my 40" Sony HD flatscreen.

The only problems I've noticed so far are an occasional failure to apply the correct white balance to footage shot in bright, contrast-y sunlight (though I've yet to play around much with the white balance settings), and the difficulty of editing the AVC-format data that comes off the camera on a PC (the footage comes out in .mts format, which can be converted to HD compliant .m2ts using the supplied Sony PMB software). The PMB software is not particularly good or useful - you can use it to burn DVDs or Blu-ray disks straight from the footage from your camera but you can't edit the footage in any useful way, not that I've found anyway.

I've therefore been using Sony Vegas and DVD Architect to build my projects, but have found problems with these. Sony camera, Sony software all the way...it should be easy, right? But even with a decent processor and 3Gb of RAM in my PC the editing of the admittedly large files is haphazard, and the rendering in DVD Architect often fails. This is not a fault of this camera of course, but Sony really should be making the post-shoot process a lot easier.

The camera itself is tiny, lightweight and very easy to use. I haven't noticed any noise from the camera during quiet moments in playback - older generation camcorders were notorious for the microphone picking up the noise of the zoom motor when there was little ambient noise during recording, but this seems fine. The functionality is great with lots of control over focus and metering, and the on-screen display is intuitive and easy to use, though the buttons on the touch-screen are a bit too small.

I haven't used this for photos and can't see why anyone would bother - the ability to take photos with a camcorder seems totally pointless to me; if you want to take still photos, use a proper still camera. You wouldn't think of filming a wedding on a still camera that happens to have built-in video recording, would you? I think it's just one of those gimmicks that manufacturers feel obliged to include, like the notorious digital zoom on still cameras and video cameras - absolutely pointless as all it does is pixellate and degrade your footage, but it sounds impressive to customers with limited knowledge of what the heck they're buying.

Anyway, the main thing we're all buying a camcorder for is the quality of the video produced and easy of use, and this comes out very well in both respects. The HD FH quality setting records in 1920x1080i, HD HQ records in 1440x1080i at 9MBps, and there's an HD SP mode at 1440x1080i at 7MBps, with quality deteriorating going down at each step (though recording time goes up, obviously). There is also an SD (standard def) mode, which I haven't used and won't be using. The camera has got the Sony EXMOR sensor which is very highly rated and produces excellent HD video.

Another reviewer said you need a tripod to use this as footage comes out very shaky - I haven't found this to be the case at all; this is not the camera's fault anyway, it's the fault of the operator. Just use nice steady zooms and pans as you would with any camcorder, job done.

Summary: great little camera, excellent quality HD footage, easy to use, superb price; with £50 cashback at the moment you can't go wrong!

Great little camera, forget the bundled software though

Where do I start?

Amazon. Bought it here because they offered it for £377 rather then £599 in the shops. Plus I got the £50 cashback from Sony, this made it £327, for that price, I thought I'd give it a go...

I used the camera for a few weeks, getting used to what it could do and found it simple to use and about the right size for carrying around on my belt for those 'wish I had my camera moments'. By the way, don't buy the recommended bag, it's far too big. I bought this bag and now use it to store the charger etc.
The little Sony bags made for the Cybershot cameras fit the CX105 much better.

I am going to avoid going into detail about the camera itself, many other reviews here have covered that much bettter than I ever could. Instead I am going to go over the issues I found after living with this camera for a while.

After reading the reviews here, confirmed by my trials of the camera, I bought an extra battery. The standard size one fits nicely in the cybershot case too, anything bigger would not.

Be wary if you buy the 16GB memory stick to go with this camera, I bought one from a reseller here because Amazon was out of stock and they sent me the version that does not have the external usb adaptor. When I contacted them, they said Sony had stopped selling the one with the adaptor. Funny that as 2 days later Amazon got the item back in stock and are still advertising it with the adaptor. Is Amazon breaking trading standards advertising guidelines or is the reseller telling me porkys, you decide.

Anyway back to the camera. As others have said, it is not great in low light but this is easily solved. As the event I was going to recording was to be at night (Singapore GP) I was a bit concerned about how it would fair. The solution is to be found by buying a wide-angle lense, this allows more light into the sensor and provides much better images in low light conditions. I saw these lenses on amazon but did not buy one here as I wanted to see if the difference was noticable. My lense was demonstrated to me in a little shop in Chinatown (Singapore) and blew me away with the difference it made to indoor/low light filming. Using such a lense does reduce the zoom distance but this was not a problem when I used it to record the event.

In the title I mentioned forgetting the bundled software. I admit I have only used it once so it might get better with more experience.. If you want to make good videos/dvds with this (or any other camera) I recommend getting an iMac. For more years than I care to remember, I have been a PC follower but my recent purchase of an iMac has shown me the light. Imagine a world where you plug in your new camera, don't have to install a driver or any software and the computer says 'new pictures/event found, would you like them importing' then being able to drag section of clips into a video timeline, press one button and hey-presto you have a DVD of your footage. A techno-phobes dream. If you want to get more creative you can, the tools are all there and they just work quickly and effortlessly.

In short, the camera is great for the money I paid, small enough to be practical, quality of footage is better than anything else I have ever owned, the battery is OK but you should have a second one, the software is not the best and if you can, get an iMac to use for video editing.

Depends what you need it for
Takes great pictures and video in good lighting conditions. I purchased to record my new baby and so it's being used in doors a lot. Unfortunately it is pretty useless when the lighting isn't so good - I'll have to buy a light for it at an additional £75. Photos are terrible quality when its being used in evenings even with the light on in the living room. Other cameras will work better in such conditions. Other than that, its easy to use but I'd recommend the purchase of an additional battery and memory.

A tripod is a must as camera shake is wild and is very obvious in playback.