Sony DCR-SR77

I bought this Sony DCR-SR77 video camera specifically for filming springer spaniels working and training.

In the 6 months I've owned it I've been pleased with the results, occasionally the camera struggles in bright sunlight to focus, the LCD can be un-viewable in bright sunlight, this highlights the lack of a view finder. The screen tilts for a better viewing angle and also turns around so you can film your self, taking the guesswork out of pointing the camera in the right direction, a useful feature when I'm filming training, using a tripod I just need to glance towards the screen to make sure I haven't stepped out of the viewing area.

The camera is easy to use, open the screen and the camera fires up very quickly, press a button on the back of the camera or a second on the screen and it begins recording, press again and it stops, zoom control is achieved by a toggle switch on the top of the camera, zooming in and out takes a little bit of practice to achieve smoothly, once you get the hang of it it's very easy to zoom slowly or quickly in and out. Zoom is a useful X25, but at the far end of the zoom you really do need a tripod for steady footage, up to about X12 zoom the camera stabilisation does a good job of keeping every thing steady. A lens cover is built in to the lens, the lens is also threaded to take various attachments such as filters.

Battery life is pretty good, but could be better, bigger batteries can be purchased to give more stamina, the 80Gb hard drive gives up to 61 hours of recording according to the manufacturer, a figure I would think would be more then enough for the average two week holiday. As well as the hard drive you can also insert a memory card for extending the memory or taking movie's off the hard drive with out connecting to a computer.

There are different scene modes, I haven't used these as I'm more then happy with the Auto default setting, Exposure, Focus and Spot meter can al be set manually, giving you the opportunity to extract the maximum quality of recording form the camera or to apply creative setting as you see fit, also included is face detection in scenes, a useful way of finding scenes with certain people in, Photo capture from movie's is also a feature as well as the ability to use the camera as a stills camera.

Sound is 5.1 stereo or just stereo, recording has three quality modes, HQ (9M), SP(6m) or LP at (3m) Recording isn't in high definition but I couldn't tell the difference when a HD was demonstrated to me along side the normal definition Sony.

Including in the box are the leads to connect to a TV and a PC and a software CD, I've never used the supplied software, Windows movie maker being adequate for my needs.