Video hobbyists with an eye for style and a desire to travel light will like this highly compact MiniDV cam.Like the DCR-PC101 before it, the stylish DCR-PC105 MiniDV camcorder packs a 690,000-pixel video resolution, a 10X zoom lens, and good hobbyist features into a wee package. It also sports a built-in flash for still photos. The PC105's small size makes the camera somewhat awkward to grip and slightly expensive, but its price is still more palatable than its predecessor's. Many folks will conclude that this Sony's portability and pizzazz easily outweigh those drawbacks.
The PC105 is handsome, finished in silver and metallic blue-grey. Its compact magnesium-and-plastic body is vertically oriented--that is, taller than it is deep. Weighing only 460 grams sans battery or media, the PC105 is one of the most portable MiniDV camcorders we've seen. It also offers a few features that most ultracompacts don't: a manual focus ring on the lens, a viewfinder that pulls out from the camera body, and an accessory shoe.
Unfortunately, the PC105's small size and vertical design create a serious drawback: you must grip the camcorder a bit as though you were shaking someone's hand. As a result, it's hard to avoid jiggling the camera when you zoom the lens or press the record button. The still-photo shutter release also requires an uncomfortably difficult reach.
You change most of the settings with the touch-screen LCD, which is quick and easy to use. The menus are logical and largely self-explanatory. However, you must enter them even for quick exposure tweaks; we wish those adjustments were accessible via a wheel on the camera.
If you prefer the viewfinder to the LCD but want the ability to adjust exposure, you can turn off the LCD and fold it against the camcorder body with the screen facing outward. When you want to change the exposure, you still touch the LCD, but it remains dark while the relevant settings appear on the viewfinder. While this awkward setup is a little better than having no exposure control during viewfinder use, an exposure dial on the camcorder body would have been a lot simpler.
The PC105's feature list appeals to advanced family and travel videographers. Exposure options include fully automatic operation, six scene modes, exposure shift, and an easily activated Backlight mode. You can select a spot-metering and spot-focusing point on the touch screen; both functions are easy to use and effective. Along with the Auto, Indoor, and Outdoor white-balance presets, you get Hold, which essentially enables manual white balance.
The 10X zoom lens covers a range equivalent to 50mm to 500mm in 35mm-film terms, following the questionable industry trend of overemphasizing telephoto focal lengths at the expense of wide-angle perspectives. The lens does have a 30mm filter thread that accepts wide-angle and telephoto adapters, but they'll add weight and bulk. There's also an accessory shoe for a video light or an external microphone.
The PC105's better than average still-photo features include a built-in flash and the ability to save 1,152x864-pixel pictures to the Memory Stick. The camcorder can also capture MPEG-1 video and convert already recorded DV material to MPEG-1. You can either store footage on the Memory Stick or send it to your computer via USB for videoconferencing or hard-drive archiving.
The PC105's good overall performance begins with its 2.5-inch touch-screen LCD, which is sharp and easy to use in outdoor light. We were pleased that our fingerprints didn't detract from the display's visibility. The colour viewfinder, on the other hand, offers a harsh and grainy image.
The lens zoomed almost silently at several different speeds, and it was reasonably precise and controllable. Sony's Super SteadyShot electronic image stabilization did a good job counteracting camera shake, even when the lens was zoomed to maximum telephoto, and the system didn't decrease image quality.
The camera's autofocus is fairly quick and decisive, and you can designate a spot focus area using the touch screen. The servo-controlled manual focus ring on the lens is definitely a step up from dial- and button-activated mechanisms, but it's so narrow that only those with especially slender fingers will find it easy to use. We have no big complaints about the built-in stereo microphone. It recorded clear audio in our tests, but it's top-mounted, so it will probably pick up sound from you as well as your subjects.
Our PC105 test footage was everything you'd expect from a single-chip, 690,000-pixel MiniDV camcorder: well exposed, sharp, and colourful. The camera has three low-light modes. Colour Slow Shutter records in colour in dim light, but its shutter speed is too slow for moving subjects. NightShot captures colourless and noisy but still decent video in very dim conditions. Finally, Super NightShot can shoot in total darkness with the aid of an infrared emitter, but the resulting recording has a heavy greenish cast.
Like all consumer camcorders, the PC105 produces noisy, harsh, and unsharp stills. They're acceptable for quick-and-dirty e-mailing and Web posting but not much else.
Sony DCR-PC105
Company: Sony Australia
Price: AU$2,299
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 1 300 137 669
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