Sony HDR-CX12 High Definition Memory Stick PRO Duo Handycam Camcorder With 12x Optical Zoom
by Sony
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List Price: Our Price: $498.98 You Save: $401.01 (45%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Digital Camera See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Sony HDR-CX12 High Definition Memory Stick PRO Duo Handycam Camcorder With 12x Optical Zoom
Customer Review: If you've been undecided about this camera, Just get it!
Summary: 5 Stars
I've been thinking about purchasing this camcorder for the past year. I have an older hi8 that i thought was sufficient. My kids are starting to get older, I have a 3 year old and 1 year old and wanted to record the memories in hi def. Finally decided to get it and WOW, what a great camera and picture quality. The camera is faily intuitive to use, small light weight, with great features. The picture quailty is absolutely fantastic in hi def. I receive FIOS HD channels and the picture quality is almost similar. It exceeded my expectations. The only downside is that a 16 gig card i purchased records about 1 1/2 hours of top HD quality, so I have to transfer it often and I could only fit half hour of hd on a 4.7gig DVD. but the upside is that I don't have to worry about hard drives failing. The other item to note is that in low light, you get grainy picture. the room has to be very well lit to get amazing picture quality, i get the best picture quality outside in bright sunlight, low light in HD is a disappointment.
Remember this camcorder records in AVCHD format which i believe is equivalent to 1080i, not 1080p. So you can burn it on a regurlar DVD burner with the enclosed software, but you can't play it back on the same DVD burner/player. You need a blue-ray player that is AVCHD compatible (I think all of them are these days) or on a sony playstation 3, which i plan to purchase because not only do you get a blue ray player, but also you will be able to surf the net with it and play games. If you don't own a blueray player or a dvd burner on your pc, expect to purchase both and should be factored in your costs. Blue ray burners are not available in the US but are in japan.
But overall I gave it 5 stars because it exceeded my expectation. I shouldn't have waited so long to purchase it.
Customer Review: Quality Product/ Curious when non miniDV HD cams will be streaming capable
Summary: 5 Stars
I will firstly admit that my husband was the one to do the research on this item. He is incredibly thorough before he buys anything. However, I'm the one that gets the most use out of it. There was one agreement upon what type of camcorder we'd get, and that's flash based memory. A. miniDV will definitely become obsolete in the near future, B. HardDrive based have potential room for error, and C. DVD as well as the MiniDV have gear components that have risk of breaking. Knowing from experience, fixing motor parts in a camcorder are costly!
We love to tape our parties and trips, but we also live far from family and like to use it as a webcam. Our old Canon MiniDV did this easily, but with the new generation of cameras out there, they are not streaming capable. WE have a $30 video capture card that does the trick, but obviously quality isn't HD, nor would hdmi be even capable of streaming. The key is for a video capture card to do real-time compression that's better than 480i. This is what I'd like to see. If you're going to spend up to 1k for a camcorder, I think they need to merge webcam capabilities along side of the regular video taping soon. The cameras with the flash drive memory are getting smaller and smaller, not to mention more efficient.
Back to the camera itself. Wonderfully compact, straighforward with its touch screen lcd menu display, INCREDIBLE low light capabilities, and overall obviously the HD quality image. Some complained about the proprietary SD card, but you must realize that this SD card is half the size/thickness of regular SD cards.
Customer Review: I love this camcorder
Summary: 5 Stars
Well, i am an amateur when it comes to camcorders, so my review may NOT be very technical. I love this camcorder, this is my first HD camcorder and the picture quality is real amazing. I use this camcorder mostly to take home videos and for our trips. The camcorder is real sleek and fits nicely in your hand. I dropped SR12/SR11 just because of their weight and their bulky harddisk. One down side is that this camcorder uses just a memory stick, they are expensive, but they are reliable. i have been using memory sticks with my Sony digital camera as well and no issues until now. If they could provide one more slot for relatively inexpensive SD/SDHC cards it will be a killer camcorder. A nice feature is the smile shutter and it takes stills of your subject without you being aware. It is a nice feature and will bring smile to your face. The PMB software that comes along with the camcorder is good enough to transfer and view the HD videos in your laptop. However, for advanced editing, you should probably order a video editing software like Sony Vegas movie studio or vegas Pro as your budget and needs are. I have just ordered the Sony vegas movie studio platinum pro 9 and hoping it will be fun to edit the videos. The still picture quality is very good. I tried the night mode in dark, it works, but subjects will look like ghosts, so not using that one a lot. a good buy, will recommend it. Amazon ships it fast too.
Customer Review: works great with iMovie '09
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm upgrading from a Sony SD DV camera. Had to take all those old tapes and digitize them first.
This CX12 is made in Japan and fits my hand very well. The one gripe I had with the old DV camera was the cheap lens cap. The CX12 has a built-in one and is great to have.
iMovie '09 works great despite the note on the Apple website about tapeless Sony cameras and issues regarding having to delete SD content first. I bought this camera solely to shoot HD - duh.
The only complaint I have about this videocamera is the on/off switch sometimes turns on in my jacket accidentally.
The dock is okay and is NOT needed for charging, but is needed for video capture via USB.
Some items to think about when purchasing this videocamera:
-the 4GB MS is less than 30min of highest quality HD. The 8GB seems to make sense because that captures about an hour and the built-in battery last about 70 minutes.
-would recommend getting a small bag since it is so small.
-I also purchased the $40 Sony light for indoor shooting which I'm happy enough with as it's so small.
-may want to purchase an mini-HDMI to HDMI cable for instant viewing on your HDTV.
-the included remote seems nice and small.
-the power brick is nice and small as well.
Customer Review: Simply the best
Summary: 5 Stars
This is simply the best camcorder I have ever owned, and I have owned seven dating back to 1987. I have a fairly new Sony hard disk camcorder and this HDR-CX12 has it beat hands down. The hard disk will skip and stop recording if the buffer is exceeded when there is repetative movement, whereas the HDR-CX12 just keeps on recording. The storage media is so much easier to deal with than the video tapes in other camcorders. I purchased this camcorder for my motorcycle tours and it has worked out perfectly. I wish that Sony would get away from using their Sony-only storage media (in this case the Memory Stick Pro Duo) and start using the storage media that is more widely available. I would also like to have more storage on the memory stick than 16GB, but that is the max currently. But, until then I will continue to buy Sony simply for the quality of the product. Highly recommended for anyone looking to purchase a quality camcorder.
Pros: extremely small camcorder, storage media easy to handle, video quality outstanding (records in HD), simple to operate, quality product.
Cons: not waterproof, Sony needs to develope storage media greater than 16gb (seems like a ripe market for Sandisk?), pricey (but most likely worth it), pricey stoage media, so much fun that I end up recording TOO much.