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Sony DCR-SR55E Hard Disc Drive Handycam Camcorder with X25 Zoom | 
 enlarge | Brand: Sony
Category: CE
Buy New: £290.03
New (13) from £290.03
Avg. Customer Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 191
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 7 x 6
MPN: DCRSR55E.CEH
Model: DCRSR55E.CEH
EAN: 4905524488968
ASIN: B0011UHEH0
Release Date: February 11, 2008
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
 An Excellent, Competitively-Priced DigiCam June 19, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
Having bought a Sony digital camera 2 years ago, and been very impressed with it, we were looking for a compact digital camcorder with a hard drive that would serve as a family machine, and also work in the classroom. This machine is proving to be an excellent buy for the following reasons:
Amazon have it very competitively priced.
At only 14oz (400grams approx) it is amazingly light and compact
The 40 Gb Hard Drive allows over 20 hours of recording at standard quality (less at high quality).
The battery gives you 2 hours of recording capability between charges.
You do not have to mess around with DVDs in the camera - the hard drive is an ideal medium for recording, and it has Sony's Pro mem stick capability which gives it great functionality with other Sony products and/or card readers in your PC.
Full USB connectivity to your PC/Laptop - and SCART connectivity to the TV
This 55 model is a better buy, and worth the few extra pounds, than the 35 for a number of reasons: 10Gb more hard drive space; a docking station which allows recharge, DVD burn, via USB to your PC, and quick link to your TV for viewing; and a remote control for the cam - excellent and useful accessories; and finally, 1 Megapixel compared with 0.8 Mp on the 35.
The screen is clear, and the touch menu system is easy to use. It has a robust carrying strap, and just feels well-made - having said that a carry case is always a good investment for such a piece of kit!
I am no technical expert, but this is a great-priced and intuitive digicam, with lots of great features. Highly recommended.
 Disappointed April 21, 2008
19 out of 22 found this review helpful
This is a great little (4-star) camera but for one thing -- the quality of the mpeg-2 compressed video, hence the two stars. If you're used to uncompressed video from the older generation of Sony mini-DV Handycams, which recorded to tape, you may find the image on SP (standard play setting) completely unacceptable. The best I can describe it is as a watercolour painting that's had a wet sponge smeared over it. Those who are familiar with this kind of compression artefact will know what I mean. I guess it's what one has to accept from the fact that 13 Gb of video -- the size of an hour's uncompressed mini-DV footage -- is being squeezed down to about 2.7 Gb, which is how you get over 14 hours recording onto a 40 Gb hard disk. It's a big hit, and I found it unacceptable. I mainly film nature subjects outdoors. If you're filming buildings or indoor settings you may find the results more tolerable.
My point of reference for this camera is an earlier one in the Handycam series -- my trusty DCR-PC8 bought in 2003. This is a tape cassette machine that turns in beautiful video for the format with good colour and no compression artefacts.
I couldn't test the HQ (high-quality) setting on my Apple computer as Apple charge for the mpeg-2 codec you need to play movies from this camera, but I doubt HQ is very much better as 8 hours of video are still being squeezed down to about 5 Gb for a hour (from 13 Gb for an hour of uncompressed video). I looked at video made on the SP setting on a good-quality digital television -- A/V connection is easy and you can view clips easily and quickly. The chapter format, whereby each clip appears as a picture icon, makes this delightfully simple. Just touch one and the clip plays.
Another reason for not liking the output of this camera is the rather poor colour. Colours are not well saturated, i.e. they look faded compared to the scene you actually see with your eyes. The DCR-PC8 produces better colour.
Apple Mac users can use this camera -- make the USB connection and you see your (Quicktime) files by clicking on the hard disk icon that appears on the desktop. These can then be dragged to the computer's hard disk. But you need the mpeg-2 codec and an up to date version of Quicktime to be able to play the movies.
Plus points: the lens is amazing and at minimum zoom will focus from almost 0 mm to infinity. The zoom is 25x, and by adding the 2x digital zoom you get a fairly acceptable 50x zoom, which really pulls in faraway subjects. I was able to get a recognisable image of a Great Spotted Woodpecker at the top of a tree at least 80 yards away. A negative point is that fringing can be bad at high zooms. Also I noticed a pale "misty" band appearing in the lower quarter of the image at zoom settings over about 20x.
I love the manual spot focus and metering: put the camera in manual mode, touch the part of the screen you want focused or metered and bingo. The only thing I wondered was whether -- as you'd want -- you can do the two things at the same time. It seems not -- it's either one or the other -- so maybe Sony could implemement simultaneous spot focusing and metering on the next model. Silly not to have done it already. The zoom control is much better than on my old camcorder. No runaway zoom effects!
Overall impression: Nice software on a beautifully engineered camcorder, as you'd expect from Sony. But for some this will be horribly ruined by the poor movie quality on the standard setting. I'd probably have kept mine if there'd been an uncompressed video setting, which would give 3 hours of recording on the 40 Gb hard disk. I guess my reservations about the SR55 apply to the range of SR hard-disk camcorders using mpeg-2 compression.
So why such compromised quality? I guess this camcorder is aimed at people who want to take one on holiday without the hassle of tapes -- it'd easily do up to two weeks worth before the hard disk was full. Or maybe just people who aren't aware how much better quality you can get.
Great camcorder April 8, 2008
28 out of 29 found this review helpful
I've had this camcorder for the best part of a week and it's very good.
Pros:
relatively small, (will fit into a small bag not a pocket)
light weight
controls are easy to use
one of the best features is the mpeg recording so there is no conversion needed for the movie files to play e.g. on a standard pc with windows media player.
Once plugged in via usb the camcorder is shown as an external drive, so you can just drag and drop the files.
Video quality is great for home movies.
It copes with low light very well.
You can put a memory card in it and record directly to that.
It has a hot shoe for accessories.
Comes with a remote
Cons:
It uses a hard disk, so I wouldn't like to drop it (although it does have some type of impact sensor)
Doesn't come with a case
Can't switch it on from the remote
Wouldn't really use it as a stills camera because of the low resolution
Conclusion
Good all round take anywhere family movie camcorder.
My First Video Camera April 6, 2008
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
Only had this video camera for a couple of days but so far I think it's brilliant. It's small, lightweight, very easy to setup and use and the quality of the video is excellent. Still images are also pretty good and the supplied software makes it easy to manage your video's and pictures. Having problems playing back the video on my PC after uploading from the camera's hard disk but think this is down to my PC being a few years old so I may need a new video card - hopfully not a new PC! I think this may be due to the video format being MPEG-2 so worth checking if your PC supports this format. The video's play back fine on my work laptop which is only a year or so old.
 Plug and play but average picture quality March 27, 2008
30 out of 30 found this review helpful
I got sick of messing around with software and cables to convert video footage from my 10 year old Canon camcorder to DVD and started looking at the Sony HDD range. After dismissing the older SR32 and SR52, I started looking at the new SR35 and SR55. I chose the more expensive 55 because of it's larger CCD sensor.
The great thing about this camera is it records to industry standard mpeg2 format and transferring videos to my PC is now a case of plugging into a USB port and copying the files. The camera appears as a removable disk drive to Windows.
Unfortunately, I was a little dissapointed with the quality of images even when using the HQ recording mode. When recording in daylight things aren't too bad but in artificial and low light conditions, the quality of the images aren't too good. I wasn't expecting top end quality from this camera anyway, but was ultimately expecting better. I would say the quality is marginally better that that of videos from my old camcorder which have been converted through my digital TV adaptor.
Overall, I do like this camera for it's small size, low weight and plug and play capabilities. But if you are looking for high quality images, it's probably not a good choice.
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