Why I buy this one ?
- Record 1920 x 1080 Full HD video to 120 GB hard drive
- 10.2-megapixel still image capture
- Face Detection technology for video and still images
- ClearVid CMOS sensor with Exmor technology
- 3.2-inch widescreen touch-panel Xtra Fine LCD screen

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What our customer's say!

"Horrible shipping!", Beware of the shipping on this product. The boxed camera was thrown into a larger box with NO packing to protect it. When the UPS box arrived, it had been crushed, scuffed, and kicked. Since this thing has a digital hard drive, I am amazed that Amazon would allow such carelessness. BE CAREFUL OF ORDERING ELECTRONICS OF ANY KIND FROM AMAZON. This is not the first time such careless packing has been an issue

"HDR-SR12 stands out from current competition", By comparing powered up camcorders at the local Best Buy I found that the
speed of zooming and of focusing was noticably faster with this model
over the SR11 and other companies' HD camcorders.
Bought it. Picture quality is great for both movies and still shots.
Appreciated the price on Amazon. Order was filled quickly and accurately.

"Great camera but need lots of CPU power to edit video", I moved from a Sony Hi-8 camera that we had for 5 years prior to this, and the first word out of my mouth was "Wow!"

The tape-based camera was great for an NTSC camera. The video and audio quality were great for home movies and the occasional training videos that I used it for at work. Aside from the fact that it was a standard def picture, the biggest complaint was for the need for tapes. Needless to say, that old camera is now gathering dust.

No tapes, no memory cards means that you can take hours and hours of video without having to worry about missing anything (except when your battery runs out, so keep a spare).

The 1080i video from this camera is great. For those who are looking for professional quality video, I doubt that any consumer model is going to do it, but this camera comes very close. People choose point-and-shoot cameras for convenience, and DSLRs for quality. To expect otherwise is to fool yourself. However, I have not been disappointed by this camera for shooting video. The size and weight are great. It's not too small or too light to give you shaky videos, and it's small enough to fit into a small camera bag.

The low light shots are still good, but a little grainy - as expected. You can use night shot mode, but then you get that eery effect. The daytime shots are better than anything that I've seen on my satellite HD channels. AVCHD still looks better than that super-compressed MPEG4 video that they're transmitting on satellite. The colors are vibrant, and the video is quite realistic. We recently used this to record a cooking demonstration at work, and the closeups, even on a cheap 720p 32" television were clear and detailed so that people 20' away could easily see what was going on. The camera's LCD display even had better picture quality than the television itself! I like the touch screen display to keep the camera's looks clean, without cluttering it with tons of buttons.

Although I prefer to use a DSLR to take still photos, the HDR-SR12 takes really nice pictures. The flash is quite bright, and the photos come out very crisp and vibrant. The Sony software utilities even allow you to take hi-res still shots out of the video, which is quite nice. Sometimes, during video, you see a shot that would make a great still shot, and you can easily extract it.

The Sony utilities are a nice way to download the videos and stills from the camera. It's a nice way to browse your collection, and supports converting files to other formats. It's a little slow, but fortunately, the latest version of Adobe Premier Elements handles AVCHD natively. However, you will need at least a dual-core processor to handle video editing at HD. Even then, it's very processor intensive, and you'll notice skips in audio and video as you try to work with the clips. Of course, converting to MPEG2 resolves those problems completely, but who wants low-res video except for on the Internet?

The standard battery that comes with it is good for about 1.5 hours of recording. I bought a second one that gets me almost 2.5 hours of recording. With just 2 batteries, you can handle most tasks.

I did have a problem with static using a Sony wireless mic, but I think that it's the mic's fault, and not the camera's.

A feature that at first seemed gimmicky to me was the face recognition. It recognizes faces, and indexes them so that you can quickly view clips that have that person in them. It's nice to be able to go through lots of video on the camera, find a family member, and play a specific clip of them.

Although this is a great camera, I do have a few reservations that keep me from giving it 5 stars:

1) I had to get a separate battery charger to avoid carrying around a huge AC adapter.
2) What happens when the hard drive fails? We all know that it will some time, but if you don't back up, you'll lose everything. It doesn't seem like a user-serviceable part either.
3) I had to buy the mini HDMI cable separately.
4) My computer's hardware is barely able to work with AVCHD video. That means that I'd have to consider going to a quad-core one to get better performance (assuming that the software can handle the extra processors). This isn't necessarily the camera's fault, but hi-def video is just cpu-intensive.
5) No easy way to make hi-def videos for friends and families who don't have a computer, Blu-ray players or memory card readers for their TVs.
6) Trying to the videos on a Mac (or an older PC) was a nightmare because you have to convert to MPEG2 before doing anything... There may be affordable software for the Mac that can support AVCHD by now.

Overall, this is the camera that I wanted, and still would buy again if I had the choice. I've had it for 7 months, and have not regretted it.


"Sony customer service is the issue", Sony HDR-HC7 6.1MP MiniDV High Definition Camcorder with 10x Optical Zoom

I do not own this camera but please see my review of the HDR HC7 camcorder under that model information on Amazon. While Sony is barraging the market with new and innovative camcorders which do produce stunning video, it is product quality that becomes the issue if the camera has a problem. Sony customer service is incredibly frustrating and poor. Warranty information does not disclose astronomical repair charges and should be embarrasing in comparison to the ten year warranties we are seeing on complex machines like automobiles. If your product is well designed, well built, and reliable then the warranty should include internal flash memory tracking of actual customer usage. 90 day labor and 12 month parts warranties are worthless for devices which sit unused by purchasers for most of their existence. At the same time, Sony's rush to saturate the market with new products seems to occur at the expense of reliability.

"Loaded with value and features!", I'm amazed that a tiny little camcorder like this can pack in so many features. And the quality is fantastic! I've only begun to explore the capabilities of this thing, but I'm already in love with it! And the street price is pretty darn good and getting better all the time. Don't miss out on getting hi-def video of your kids while they're still young. I used a Sony Hi8 during my daughter's early years. It did a great job, but this---well, this is at a whole new level! And you can buy inexpensive wide angle and telephoto lenses for it. I bought a 2x lens so I can get 24x optical zoom from it now. Wow!!! Should be great for all sorts of settings--nature, family, sports, whatever! And you can take 10 megapixel stills to a memory card-- on the fly-- while you're recording video to the huge 120GB built-in hard drive! What's not to like?

Read this reviews before You buy...

"Some thoughts on HDR-SR12", I ordered this camera in mid-August, then used it on a 7-day trip to Cape Cod.

I rate this unit 5 stars because of its great picture quality and general ease of use.

Specifics:

1. Images were beautifully sharp and clear, just what I'd expected from a High Definition camcorder.

2. Image stabilization worked very well.

3. Autoexposure and autofocus worked well for me. Autofocus was quick and accurate. With varied lighting (full sun, heavy shade, back lit scenes), all images came out very well. Sometimes a manual adjustment would improve the exposure a bit, but things were fine with exposure set to Auto.

4. Mac users:
(a) You'll need iMovie08. A lot of camcorder forums describe additional software for using this camera with a Mac, but those threads are old. iMovie08 downloaded and converted the image files, and allowed editing, with no problems.

(b) Amazon's item description says it has "i.Link interface (IEEE1394)." I can find no iLink/Firewire connector on the camera or in the manual, but it worked fine with USB2.

5. The manual is short and not as informative as it should be; coverage of menu options is especially inadequate. I wanted to know about the HD capabilities, but all the manual says is you can shoot movies in High-Def or Standard Def. In the menus on the camera itself you'll find 4 video-quality modes, but there are few details.

6. The supplied battery (NP-FH60) will run 40 minutes of normal recording, per the manual. I had to restrain my shooting early on to conserve power, so missed several opportunities. I should have ordered a larger battery (like the NP-FH70).

7. It was hard to tell whether this camera had switched from "REC" mode to "STBY" mode when I pressed the "START/STOP" button; my last camcorder (also a Sony) had a larger button and more positive feel. I've never shot so much "pavement and pants legs" before (but beautifully sharp and clear), or missed so much action that I thought I'd captured. I'll be more careful in the future.

"State of the art video camera - recording to hard drive is better", Recording your HD video to a hard drive, or memory stick, really is a vast improvement over recording to tape. I just made the switch, felt just like when I switched from reel to reel or cassette to CDs...being able to scan through your video clips by viewing the first frame really enhances the usefulness of viewing what you captured versus hitting forward and rewind looking for a certain spot on tape. Sony has a one button feature that moves your video from the camera to a computer, incrementally, so was easy to get a copy of what was on the camera to a second device for backup every so often.

Biggest negative for me was position of camera in your hand, I found it harder to aim this camera comfortably at subjects versus the smaller DCR-PC7 format Sony I am replacing.

"We LOVE this camcorder!", We just got this camera 3 days before we took a month long trip! We actually filled up the hard drive because we filmed our son's 6 baseball tournament games in their entirety before we left. We have a 73" Mits HDTV and this camcorder looks FANTASTIC!!! We are blown away, even on such a large screen! I highly recommend it! The zoom is incredible. We were sitting in nosebleed seats at a baseball stadium and we were able to zoom into the dugout, it looked like we were in the dugout filming! We've had it about 6 weeks now and absolutely love it!

"extremely satisfying purchase!", This is my second camcorder purchase. This is a remarkably designed product: taking care of all the important details that a A-1 grade camcorder needs. The price is definitely on the higher side; but then, Amazon offers some great deals, as always, making it easier for the buyer. I have already used it on a few important occasions, involving long-duration continuous recordings. I will recommend it to anybody who looks for quality...its a superb offering from SONY.

"Best handycam now", No, it doesn't have the video quality of the cannon HF 10 but it's very close and it has much more features, better design and the still pictures are the best in its class, is also the most user friendly camera on the market.
very Recommended.