Sony Handycam FX7 Review

The Sony Handycam HDR-FX7 is a camcorder with a excellent video quality, good focus and zoom, but lacks audio quality. It’s not the cheapest camcorder, being priced at $3,500, but it has great HD abilities, with good sensors and optics. It uses three ClearVid CMOS chips of 1 megapixel each, drawing less battery than the CCDs.It uses a 2,200mAh NP-F570 battery with a lifetime of 8 hours and, including it and the tape, it weights 3.3 pounds. But that’s the small battery, having the option to choose the 6,600mAh NP-970, that has a lifetime of 24 hours, three times longer.

It has a compact design, to take less space and being more comfortable to use. The focusing works excellent, when used in conjuction with it’s Expanded Focus button, which is designed to be exactly under the user’s left thumb. The camera features an EF mode that zooms in the middle of the area, so you can easily focus manually. There also is an autofocus lock, that the user can tweak manually, so it’s easier and faster to focus on hard to lock objects.

There are 6 buttons that can be assigned with 6 of 15 controls, three under the LCD and three on the barrel. Also, there are buttons for shutter speed, gain and white balance.

The Sony Handycam FX7 has a lot of features, like the 1080i HD video recording, 1/4″ ClearVid sensors, 20x optical zoom, Zeiss Vario-Sonnar lens and Sony SteadyShot, the image stabilizer.Unfortunately, it’s support for audio recording is really low, with only one input volume control, a jack for microphone and one for headphones.