Sony HDR-SR12E HD Hard Disc Drive Handycam - 10MP

Sony HDR-SR12E HD Hard Disc Drive Handycam - 10MP Reviews

Simply the SR12E Cant be Beaten!
Basically this little beauty for sony is amazing! It is the top end consumer product, with just about every feature you can think of. The fantastic HD video quality in my opinion is maybe the best quality of any HD handycam on the market (Well it is a Sony of course)

I've bought the wide conversion lens, bigger battery and zoom mic to make this thing my very own professional video camera shooting some great footage. Transferring video is easy on imovie on my macbook. What you waiting for? Buy it as I am very VERY pleased with mine!!


An almost excellent bit of kit, and works with my mac!
If you need a fully pro camera this isn't the one for you - you need to buy some really high-end stuff. But if you want an excellent handycam that will blow your friends away, that's easy to use and won't ever disappoint, this has to be the one!
I had an older sony mini-DVD model and wanted to upgrade to HD and a hard disc so I could edit the video content easily. After a bit of looking around I too the plunge and got this.
The results are amazing. It's a little bit heavier and more robust than the DVD one but that's to be expected - after all, this has got a whacking great big slab of memory in it!
The colour capture if fantastic. They don't run, the footage captured isn't grainy, in fact it offers as close to perfect capture as I think you can get without taking the step up to the serious kit level. It does sometimes take a little while to focus, but this tends to be limited on things that are close to the camera when the camera is zoomed right in.
There are a couple of things that need to be improved. The first is sound - the microphone isn't great and quite often picks up on what is going on behind the camera instead of what's in front of it, but this can be rectified by buying an external microphone (which I'm in the throws of doing now). The second is the battery, which had a quite pathetic lifespan, but again I've upgraded to what looked like a monster battery. This goes on for hours and hours and has done very little in the way of adding weight to the camera.
I'm one of the Mac faithful and had been worried about this working with my MacBook Pro. I needn't have been - you literally just plug it in and iMovie will do the rest for you! It's fantastic, and transfers quicker than it does to my partners Sony Laptop! The footage does seem to take up a lot more space on a computer than it does on the camera itself, but the footage is extremely easy to edit in iMovie or Final Cut Pro.
All in all there's nothing else in this range that comes close to this camera, and I really can't see how someone would be disappointed with it once they've got it!

Very happy with the HDR-SR12E
Having had a number of video cameras in the past, I am more than pleased with the HDR-SR12E. One reviewer complains about the quality of the stills, but for a video camera I think they are more than acceptable. Yes, the frame grabs are only about 800 to 900kb in file size, but in photo mode they are around 3mb.........perfectly adequate for holiday snaps to print at 5" X 7".

On the downside, its a nuisance having to select fade-in/out every time you use it.......my old Panasonic VHS-C camera of twenty years ago was better in that way! Also, with a camera of this value one would expect Sony to supply the full manual in booklet form rather than on cd!

I'm giving it 4 stars........a couple of quibbles in the previous paragraph, but otherwise a camera that takes super quality vids and saves you having to take a compact digi camera to the beach as well!





HD = Highly Delighted!!
I bought this camera via Amazon and use it for both business and pleasure. I needed a camera that provided high quality images both still and video for business with detailed views of the environment and macro images for forensic work. I have not been at all disappointed. I have used it in the UK "as is" and got magnificent results with pinpoint clear video and stills. I have also been using it in the Middle East but to protect it from humidity and sand bought the SPK-HCD Sports Pack. Although bulky that performs well. Editing footage is far easier and more rapid than with conventional film to computer transfer methods particularly with the provided "Picture Motion Browser" software. Just attach a USB cable and away you go.But for full HD quality the Sony Vegas Pro 8 software is required. I used a trail version of that and found that I got excellent results. Having the hard drive also means its far easier to decide on footage "on the fly". Overall the camera is an extremely good product and although I am Sony fan anyway I would suggest they may have a market leader with this product.

Very Flexible and impressive video
This camera is nothing short of excellent. I had prvious owned a 8mm tape camcorder, and eventually sold it because of the labourious process of converting scenes to watchable content on a VCR.

The SR12 is a million miles away from that experience and I have quickly started putting together my own films. There is a total flexibility of how to watch your content, and I now store everything on my removable hard drive and play on the Lounge Media PC or PS3. DVD or Memory Stick transfer is also a breeze to share with the family.

Thouroughly recommend Vegas Platinum to edit movies also.

Film quality is excellent and the 120Gb harddisk is ample for capturing additional shots to make a final cut. Stills are very impressive and will replace a large number of applications from my current still camera (recommend 7.6 Mpixel).

The camera itself is very capable and adaptable, with a wide range of options that can be added to increase the packages capabilities.

There are no other HD camcorders that compare to this and a great price on Amazon with rapid delivery - Mine was here within 20 hours of order!