It's been a couple years since we were issued the Sony HDR-SR7 hard drive-based HD camcorder. It served its purpose. But it was one of those cameras that could have been better. It's definitely not for the hybrid shooter, even though the SR7 captures both still and video. I say, "video," because it looks like video. It captures interlaced frames only; you have to use MPEG Streamclip to be able to output the 480p .mpg files as .mov files and produce in Final Cut Pro. And MPEG Streamclip is definitely a free app worth keeping. It's a valuable application that can analyze your video files and export in a host of different formats, at all kinds of bit rates. Get this (for Macintosh and Windows) before you edit another shoot.
The SR7 has a built-in microphone. Don't bother using it too often. Get two different microphones (if you want to buy the camera): The ECM-HGZ1 Shotgun Microphone and the ECMHW1 Bluetooth Wireless Microphones were in our arsenal. Both accessories are proprietary. The shotgun is better than the stock, but it still doesn't isolate with quality sound. The bluetooth is nice, but Sony now has released the ECM-AW3 Wireless Microphone Set which can be used with any camera that has a mini jack input so get this, instead of the ECMHW1. Either set will extend you to up to 150 feet from your subject.
We love the ease and simplicity of the Bluetooth technology. The sound seems much warmer than the shotgun mic. Be aware though, that each AW3 unit holds a single AAA battery, so size can be an issue since the microphone is larger than that. The lavaliere mics are easily hidden, if you need that, but are you ready to plunk down $500 for a simple wireless set? And the other drawback is that the AAA power lasts perhaps three hours. Either invest in rechargeables, or prepare to spend lots of money on replacement batteries.
The still images taken with the SR7 are only barely adequate. They look jaggedy and the color doesn't look deep. You can only capture three images as you're recording video, before the buffer fills. The camera shoots in several different resolutions, WVGA (854x480) and 1080i (1440x1080 interlaced). Because it shoots high definition in AVCHD, Final Cut Pro has to be used to extract the streams as clips. So there was a compatibility issue. And it also hurts that you need the camera's base plate to extract from the hard drive. Why, oh why, didn't Sony simply put a USB port on the camera?
And the widest the camera can get simply isn't wide enough for me, so I got a wide angle converter (not the Sony proprietary one, its sharpness lacked. I also wound up getting a 3X teleconverter to screw onto the front of the SR7 because I couldn't reach as far as I would have liked in telephoto.
The image quality on Auto setting doesn't cut it with me. Auto white balance seemed too blue, the images seemed too light, and the tonal range between white and dark seemed too limited. The image quality truly suffers in dark settings too. But it sure keeps you on a low profile if you're working for a media organization.
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