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• Amazon Sales Rank: #1785 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Sony
• Model: DCRHC96E
• Released on: 2006-01-05
• Number of items: 1

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Editorial Reviews

Manufacturer's Description
The DCR-HC96 from Sony gives you a full-featured, compact MiniDV camcorder at an affordable price. Highlights include the Advanced HAD CCD imager, which captures stunning detail and clarity, and 10x optical zoom with Super SteadyShot picture stabilisation, which focuses on distant subjects, providing clear close-up images with less distortion. The Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens offers less glare and increased contrast for vivid, more life-like colour and tones. A 3.3-megapixel sensor allows you to take still images that can be printed at photo quality up to 10 x 14 inches.

Make your personal videos complete with additional customization features such as Picture and Fader effects for creative and professional looking enhancements. Picture Package software helps you easily organize and edit still images and video.

3.3 Megapixel (Gross) Advanced HAD CCD Imager
1/3-inch Advanced HAD (Hole Accumulation Diode) CCD with 2050K (effective) pixels provides stunning detail and clarity with exceptional video (up to 530 lines of horizontal resolution) and still image performance. The Megapixel technology enhances your digital videos and digital still photography performance.

MiniDV Recording
Offers up to 530 lines of horizontal resolution, 3x the colour bandwidth and a significantly higher signal/noise ratio, to provide spectacular video performance.

10x Optical/120x Digital Zoom
The optical zoom helps to bring the action close up from far away. In addition the digital zoom interpolation means that extreme digital zooming is clearer, with less distortion than previous types of digital zooms.

Professional Quality Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T* Lens
Carl Zeiss lenses have an advanced optical multi-layer coating that offers less glare and flare with increased contrast. This results in vivid image brilliance, true-to-life colour saturation and perfect renditions of subtle tones. The additional T* coating on the lens further reduces unwanted glare and flare.

2.7-Inch Wide Touch Panel SwivelScreen LCD Display (123K Pixels)
The 2.7-inch wide (16:9) LCD screen provides excellent viewing clarity with improved resolution. The high resolution 123K pixel LCD screen rotates up to 270 degrees for multiple viewing angles providing sharp, detailed images for monitoring or playback, and the widescreen format makes shooting in 16:9 mode and composing shots even easier.

Analog to Digital Conversion with Pass
Through Convert and/or record any analog NTSC video source to digital video via the analog inputs. Analog NTSC video can also be passed through the digital Handycam Camcorder directly into a PC via the i.LINK interface in real-time for easy PC editing of your analog footage.

Digital Still Memory Mode with Memory Stick Duo Media
Capture still images at 2016 x 1512 (3.0 megapixel) resolution, directly onto Memory Stick Duo Media for easy transfer to PCs for e-mailing, printing or sharing with other compatible Memory Stick devices.

Progressive Shutter System
A mechanical shutter system that provides progressive scan performance while utilizing an interlaced scanning system. Digital still images will be sharp and clear with excellent definition.

Super SteadyShot Picture Stabilisation System
Picture stabilisation system that uses motion sensors to detect and compensate for camera "shake" without compromising picture quality like some other digital stabilisation systems.

Handycam Station
The supplied Handycam Station cradle provides quick and easy connections to a TV for viewing or to a PC for editing and sharing video. Just placing the camcorder on the Handycam Station instantly makes the connections. No need to search for cables or wires when charging or playing back.

i.LINK DV Interface
Digital high-speed bi-directional interface which provides audio-video communication between two compatible devices. This connection allows for pure digital transfer between devices equipped with an IEEE1394 interface, such as camcorders, digital VTRs, capture cards, and PCs.

One-Touch Wide-Angle Shooting
Easily switch between 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios for shooting with just the touch of a button.

Manual Focus
Allows the user to manually adjust the focus of the camcorder using the touch panel. Manual focusing also allows the user to control the focus in difficult situations where either the environment or the subject does not allow the camcorder's auto focus to perform optimally, such as when shooting through a window or in a crowded environment.

Box Contents

• Sony DCRHC96 Mini DV camcorder
  
• AC-L25 power adapter/in-camera charger
  
• NP-FP50 rechargeable battery
  
• DRCA-C152 Handycam station
  
• RMT-831 remote control
  
• Stereo AV cable
  
• USB cable
  
• CD-ROM (Picture Package Software ver. 1.5, USB driver

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Customer Reviews

the best camera i`ve seen so far.

like i said it is one of the best cameras i`ve seen for a long time.there`s no point in talking about it`s features `cause many of us dont understand them anyway so i`m just gonna tell you that it`s brilliant.if you`ve got the money don`t even think about buing another camcorder.the quality of the picture it`s AMAZING.just make sure you buy yourself a spare baterry `cause the one that comes with this camera won`t last you for more than 1 hour.go for it and you wont be sorry.

Easy to use, good picture quality in low light/indoors
Very happy so far with this camcorder, much better image quality than my 3-year-old Canon MV600i, especially in low light/indoors where the Canon used to get very grainy. Wife loves it as it's easy to use: just turn on, single button to record, then place it in the docking station to show grandma her grandson on the big tv. Great. I was torn between this, the triple CCD Panasonic gs300, and the JVC MG77 (which records to hard drive in mpeg2). Tried all three in a high street store (took my own sd card and tape along too to compare image quality when i got home). Loved the jvc for size and being able to see thumbnails of recorded stuff, but editing mpeg2 was a pain, and i'd have to spend hours archiving the stuff to dvd anyway. Mini-dv was far easier to edit , you already have your archive on tape, and image quality looked far better i'm guesing due to less compression on the dv format compared to mpeg2. This Sony beat the triple-CCD Panasonic on picture quality by a long way in my opinion in low light settings and was comparable if not better in normal light so it had to be the Sony.

Excellent Camera, very good image quality
I've used a few camcorders over the last couple of years but the 3.0MP quality of this camera is really good. The controls are easy to use and for "point and shoot" (with the touch-panel on the LCD used for setup), there's quite a lot of effects and things you can change (i.e. the focus/exposure etc) but don't expect lots of manual control over what it does. You can make quite good recordings in low light, much better than what I had expected and in 'nightshot' mode too. The review mentions NTSC, though the UK Spec camera I received is PAL. Buy a Memory Stick DUO to take stills (or use the 32Mb one I upgraded a while ago from a PSP) and another battery if the standard 90 minutes record time is not sufficient. Worked out of the box on an Apple iMAC Intel with iMovie (Firewire) and the Sony supplied software (on Windows XPSP2/USB2.0).

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