Cameras
Camcorders
Cell Phones
Components
Desktops
HDTV
Home Theater
GPS
Laptops
Monitors
MP3 Players
Networking &
Printers
Storage
RSS
At $400 (as of 5/2/06), the Sony DCR-HC36 is very affordable. But, unfortunately, it produced some of the lowest-quality video among recently tested MiniDV camcorders. Our test video shot in studio lighting looked acceptable (scoring slightly below average); compared to video produced by costlier camcorders, the DCR-HC36's looked fuzzy and grainy, and colors looked pale. These problems were much more exaggerated in low light, where the grain was extremely distracting.
The DCR-HC36 handles well and is easy to use. It fits comfortably in the palm of the hand, with the zoom control falling under the index finger when the hand strap is properly adjusted. The record button is a little high, though; you may have to brace the camcorder with your left hand to reach up and hit it. This camcorder is a bit bulkier than the Canon Elura 100, but it's pretty light, at 15 ounces.
Most of the DCR-HC36's controls are located in an on-screen menu, which is accessed via the touch screen. Though this does keep camcorder operation as simple as possible, you end up with fingerprints on the screen, and many options are buried deep within menus, requiring a number of screen presses to access. But to be fair, this is a camcorder that's designed for point-and-shoot users, many of whom will never want to go anywhere near options such as the white-balance setting. And Sony offers another option that these users will find attractive: Easy mode (accessed through a button on the camcorder body) puts most settings at Automatic, which is great for inexperienced or nervous shooters.
The 2.5-inch LCD display is clear and bright, but it doesn't accommodate wide-screen viewing: If you shoot with the camcorder in 16:9 (wide-aspect) mode, it adds two black bars at the top and bottom; this letterboxing makes the video more difficult to see. The DCR-HC36 has a 20X zoom lens and includes electronic image stabilization, which does a reasonable job of controlling the effects of camera shake. It's not as effective as the optical image stabilization of Panasonic's PV-GS300 and PV-GS500, though. The battery life of just over 100 minutes was acceptable but not outstanding.
The DCR-HC36 can also capture still images to a Memory Stick Duo card, but only at a resolution of 640 by 480. And the results are, as you might expect, less than appealing: We saw grainy images and pale, washed-out color. Frankly, the image quality is so poor that it's not worth bothering with. Unless you have a burning need to record low-resolution images to Memory Stick, go with the DCR-HC26 (the next model down in the Sony line, it skips the Memory Stick slot completely) and put the $50 you'll save toward a decent point-and-shoot still camera. Even a low-end digital camera will take better still images than this camcorder.
The Sony HC36 MiniDV Handicam is a budget camcorder that takes adequate video in daylight, but its poor performance in low light will be a problem if you want to take videos indoors--at a party, for instance.
Richard Baguley
