Sony DCR-PC109E

There's something you can't quite put your finger on about Sony's design sense. Its products consistently exude style. But that doesn't always translate to them being the best in their field. Fortunately, this is rarely the case with its camcorders, which have often been market leaders. The DCR-PC109E is another Sony cam that packs a lot into a tiny unit, weighing just 450g with battery and tape.

The PC109E sports a 1/5in CCD, which is reasonably large for such a small model - most camcorders in this class go for 1/6in chips. The benefit is that it can theoretically pick up more detail in lower light, and it's rated at 5 lux without any form of night-vision enhancement. It's a 1-megapixel sensor too, which provides still photos up to 1,152 x 864 pixels. This isn't good enough for 6 x 4in printing, but at least you're able to choose a fine mode producing 500KB files, which means compression is relatively low.

At first glance, the PC109E has a worrying absence of menu and settings buttons, but the 2.5in LCD viewing panel is actually touch-sensitive, and all options can be accessed through this. There are six program AE modes to call upon, automatic white balancing with two presets or a manual mode, digital wipes and six digital effects. Particularly impressive are the manual spot focus and spot metering systems, which allow you to choose which point in the frame is to be in focus or to use as light-level reference; both work a treat. But you still might prefer the simplicity of a manual focus ring, which the PC109E doesn't have.

On the plus side, there's a built-in lens cover, which avoids dangling bits of plastic getting in the way. But the 10x optical zoom is only average for this level of camcorder.

Despite its small size, the PC109E offers a full complement of ports, although not all of them are on the camera body itself. A composite AV minijack, LANC editing port and a mic minijack can be found under a plastic cover. There's an accessory shoe to go with the mic jack, so an external microphone can be attached, although there's no manual control over audio levels. No FireWire socket is built in, but a separate, powered docking station houses this, plus S-Video, USB 2, and another composite AV minijack.

The PC109E's image quality was mostly very good. Under sunny outdoor conditions, colour fidelity and detail were both outstanding, with the slight tendency to over emphasise reds our only criticism. The auto focus was also quick and responsive. Indoors, we found that colours could be a little washed out if there was a lack of artificial lighting, placing it behind the slightly more expensive Panasonic NV-GS200B (see below). But in properly lit interiors, the PC109E achieved decent results. There's also Sony's NightShot Plus system, which uses infrared in low-light conditions. It's generally effective, if not of everyday use.

Unlike Panasonic's dinky NV-GS200B, Sony has made one major concession to achieve the PC109E's small size - the tape-loading mechanism. As with virtually all camcorders in this class, tapes are loaded from the bottom, which will make changing them when using a tripod a real pain. Otherwise, the PC109E has a lot in its favour. Image quality is good if not exceptional, it's extremely light, and it's even reasonably priced.

Author: James Morris