Performance
In a most welcome step up from last year's
At the top AVCHD quality level, you can fit up to 7 hours 10 minutes of video on the camcorder's 60GB hard drive. If you bring the quality level down to the minimum HD setting of 5Mbps per second, you can fit up to 22 hours 50 minutes of video.
Stepping down to standard definition, you can record up to 14 hours 40 minutes of video at the highest quality setting and up to 41 hours 50 minutes at the lowest quality setting. The lithium-ion battery gives you up to 100 minutes of continuous recording time, according to Sony, though you should expect more in the range of 40 minutes to 50 minutes during regular use when recording to the hard drive.
High resolution video capture demands a high quality lens and Sony didn't skimp. Sony included a 12x optical Carl Zeiss Vario Sonnar T* f/1.8-3.1 zoom lens. It covers a 35mm equivalent range of 40-480mm in 16:9 mode, or 49-588mm in 4:3 mode. The lens focuses its light onto a 5-megapixel sensor that uses 2.86 megapixels to capture 4:3 video, 3.81 megapixels to capture 16:9 video, 5.08 megapixels for 4:3 stills, and 3.81 megapixels for 16:9 stills. The camera can interpolate the stills up to 10.2 megapixels.
Video from the HDR-SR11 is quite impressive. Colours are very accurate and images are quite sharp. The camera's white balance does a nice job of keeping colour casts out of your video in most lighting situations, and the SR11 is quick to adjust to changes in lighting types and levels when in the appropriate auto modes. Autofocus also locks very quickly, and the optical image stabilisation is effective across the entire zoom range. Autofocus slows in low light, but it was still able to lock, even in very low light situations.
We enjoyed using the CAM CTL dial for manual focus -- it's much nicer than using the touchscreen. The built-in microphone does a good job of capturing audio and can be set to zoom along with the lens. You can also notch the recording level down to low if you're in a setting with particularly loud sound. It's not quite as nice as some higher end camcorders that let you adjust audio levels in multiple steps, but it's better than nothing, and appropriate for this level of camcorder.
Conclusion
There's a whole lot to like about the
Handycam HDR-SR11. It captures beautiful video as well as very nice
stills, for a camcorder. If you're in the market for a hard-drive-based
high-definition camcorder, you won't go wrong with this Sony. If 60GB
isn't enough for you, the
Additional editing by Shannon Doubleday
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