Video geek help needed - Sony HC9 or SR12?

[MMV]

Hi,

I am looking for a camcorder for use underwater to replace my old Sony TRV-900 and am trying to decide between the Sony HDR-HC9 and the HDR-SR12.

There seems to be a consensus on internet video forums that tape offers higher quality than HDD because data is recorded without compression (like occurs with MPEG-2 that HDD's are supposed to use). Is this true or still true? Once tape is downloaded to a PC's hard drive is the data then compressed in MPEG2 like it is on the SR12's HD? I don't mind the tape format versus the convenience of a hard drive if the quality really is better.

The CMOS sensor on the SR12 (5.6 MP) is higher than that of the HC9 (3.2 MP) however, and I don't know if this is an offsetting factor to tape's alleged higher quality or this only has to do with the still camera role on the camcorder and nothing to do with video quality.

I have spoken with someone at a call center for Sony technical support and felt I got a bunch of double-talk. I have also spoken to two housing manufacturers who very very nice and helpful, but didn't know the answers to my questions.

I have read this post already: http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/videography-marketplace/231408-hdr-hc9-hdr-sr12.html
and didn't see the answer to my questions, although the post about the HC9's manual wb capability was very useful.

Please help and thanks for your time.

M

 

[diversteve]

my .02

HDV is a compressed format also. Just less compressed than the AVCHD format that all the Sony HDD/DVD camcorders use. I don't remember the exact compression ratios either format uses but it's discussed somewhere in depth on HDVInfo or one of the other HDV specific forums. Both formats loosely fall into what you would call HD(V) - which is not uncompressed HD. But neither one costs like it either..lol.

Detailed discussion of both formats can be found on dvinfo.net's forums. They have a forum devoted to AVCHD and another to Sony's HDV consumer line. http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/forumdisplay.php?f=132

Regarding the CMOS sensor rating difference - in the past with the HDR-HC vs. HDR-HC7, the low-light performance was better with the 2.1MP sensor in the HC5 than the 3.2MP sensor in the HC7. This was thought to be that since Sony basically stuffed more imaging pixels into the same chip footprint with the HC7 it led to more cross-talk and ultimately slightly worse low-light video performance.

I'm not sure if they've done something to correct this in the HC9/SR12. Not even sure if it's possible to correct, it may be a Sony marketing decision to degrade low-light performance to provide a bigger MP number to the vast majority of people who'll buy either camera. But this is conjecture on my part.

If you're shooting in bright water conditions or plan to use lights, it's probably not as big a concern. Personally I'd like the 5.6MP sensor. It probably does reasonable stills also.

I shoot an HC1. My next camera will be an HDD model - unless the price of solid-state media significantly decreases relatively soon. Looking at all the consumer grade solid-state cameras models introduced this year, it seems like that can't be far off.

As far as MWB, it's done by physically touching the LCD screen with a control. Even in the electronic housings like the L&M Bluefin. Since Sony moved the function to the touchscreen, I'm not sure if it's even accessible electronically via LANC anymore. (although Aditech seems to be doing it...) My guess (since I've not seen a shipping SR12 housing yet) is that similar controls will be provided for the SR12. But I don't know...

We're currently discussing it in later posts in this thread.

 

[MMV]

Thanks for the detailed answer and leads to other info Steve!

M