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This camera sucks bad
By: Nick
December 5, 2008 @ 10:38 AM
The software is a pain in the butt… the picture quality is ok… Sony just sucks. I have two of these stupid HDR CX7’s and they’ve just been a huge pain in the butt… takes hours and hours to convert the video the Handycam Utility program might as well been written by a 5 year old programmer…
Rating: 2 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Very solid perfomer!
By: Mike F
April 30, 2008 @ 5:38 PM
Colors are rich. Images are clear. The interface is very user friendly. This sums it up perfectly. The nice surprise is we finally have a compact, sleek hybrid device that takes superior HD video in addition to very nice digital still pictures at 6.1 megapixel resolution. The included software makes it possible to burn the AVCHD video on a regular DVD that becomes playable in a BluRay or PS3 player. Fantastic! Of course, you can still burn your video in SD on a regular DVD that is playable in most DVD players. You can capture over 30 minutes of ultimate HD resolution video on a tiny 4 GB memory stick pro duo card. The good news is that prices are coming down and this originally priced $1100 device is not selling between $750 and $850. Very nice!
Rating: 9 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Poor picture quality
By: Ramesh
March 26, 2008 @ 10:25 PM
I found that the picture quality is bad. It looks very dark recording even when shot in brighter areas. Bad still pictures that look like taken from the camera. Also, a small hand shake while recording can record a shaky picture.
On the other hand, its sleek and good sound recording.
Rating: 4 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Poor Performance of Sony HDR-CX7E
By: Mak
November 12, 2007 @ 4:41 PM
I totally agree with A.P. (the first user review). The picture quality of HDR-CX3 is very poor as compared even to my old Sony HDR-HC3E recorder running on a HDV tape.
The HDR-CX7E quality is at best equal to normal DVD recording.
Rating: 2 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Disappointed
By: A. P.
October 29, 2007 @ 12:13 PM
As a pro, I purchased this HD camera as a quality camcorder that would fit in my personal bag so I can carry it with me everywhere and still get the quality I want.
Well, I’m very disappointed for several reasons:
1. Extreme pixilation. Camera is highly pixilated when it you follow a moving subject. Even if your subject is moving slowly, you can see high level of pixilation, something like bricks, on the edges of the moving subject.
2. Poor software and incompatible HD format. You need to buy iLife8, separate to get the HD format, and even then, the computer reformats it. So, $90 for iLife8 and on a fast Macbook Pro, it takes what seems to be a long time for just a minute of HD footage to capture.
3. Very back focus. Camera is constantly auto focusing all the time. Seems to focus too much on the center. I even tried it on a close-up and it still refocuses over and over and over again.
4. No digital outputs. You must use the doc station or keep taking the card out of the camera.
Overall, the pixilation problem and the focus problem are the main issues of concern.
Rating: 4 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Disappointed
By: Adam
September 9, 2007 @ 8:38 PM
The picture is choppy and not smooth.
Theres no FireWire support so most software is not compatible with controling or editing footage from this camera.
Rating: 6 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Beats even Panasonic SD5
By: Joachim Glaubitz
August 23, 2007 @ 3:00 PM
You mention in the article the new Panasonic SD5 to record “true HD” 1920×1080 instead of 1440×1080 as Sony CX7 does. In fact, this is a fake. The SD5 only has 3xCCD sensors of 520k each yielding 1.5 Megapixels, just the same as 1440×1080 does. This gets interpolated to 1920×1080 and then stored for memory wasting space. The Sony cx7 sensor has true 3.2 Megapixels and down scales to 1.5 for its 1440×1080. Sounds much more honest to me. In fact the color resolution of the Sony cx7 is higher; let’s divide 3.2 Megapixels by 3 colors in the mosaic pixel pattern and one yield 1 Megapixel full color resolution. The Panasonic has just 520k color resolution (1.5 / 3), so the enhancement in color resolution done by 3 CCD is neglected by the poor resolution of the chips at the end. Compare to high end Canon cams with 3xccd and 1.6 Megapixels each chip instead of 520k.
Rating: 9 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No
Excellent Slim Package With Some Minor Flaws.
By: CZ
August 21, 2007 @ 7:57 AM
Overall a very high quality built HD camcorder but not without it’s flaws. Though minor, they do affect my otherwise perfectly satisfied feeling of owing this state-of-the-art piece of technological marvel.
One flaw that I encountered is the poor ability of the camcorder to stay in focus under low light conditions. There are frustrated moments where you loose focus on your subject, especially where an important part of the event that you are trying to record is totally ruined by the camcorder’s poor auto focus ability.
The other would be the cover of the so-called “Active Interface Shoe” which sort of creaks when you are recording. So you have to be wary of the fact that the cover creaks and you need to avoid pressing on it all the time, which may be kind of annoying.
Overall, I do like this camcorder. Picture quality as seen through the LCD TV are almost real-like, depending of course on the skill of the operator. It is small and super sexy to boot. We do hope to see Sony come up with a higher capacity MS Pro Duo memory sticks soon as we do seriously need more than 8GB. Hope Sony is listening.
Rating: 9 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No