Hey,

I'm in the market for a new handycam and looking at the new Sony Hard Drive Handycams.. Cant find any reviews for them yet but they look good on paper.

Anyhoo I was just wondering something. You have a model DCRSR47 which has 80gb hdd but only 640k sensor but it has 60x optical zoom.

I was looking at the next model up as seems a viable choice having a 1MP sensor so hopefully better image quality. But this camera only has a 25x optical zoom.

So I am wondering why would a camera with a better sensor with more pixels only have 25x optical zoom whereas the model down has 60x ??

Is this a technical limitiation or just a blunder on sony's behalf?? Because I really would prefer the 1MP sensor camera, but 60z optical vs 25x would be nice too.

Thanks!

The larger sensor has everything to do with it. Because the sensor is larger and it is most likely placed in the exact same place, the equivalent focal length must be shorter to create the larger image for the sensor. Assuming they're using the same lenses (it wouldn't make sense not to since everything else is the same), this just means the larger sensor is picking up more of the frame which will give you a wider view when fully zoomed out at the expense of only being able to get you about half as close when fully zoomed in.

As far as the zoom is concerned, 25x is not anything to scoff at. Most of us HD folks only have about 10-12x. Personally, I'd take the larger sensor over the larger zoom. You can always get add on lenses to extend your zoom, but you can't upgrade the sensor.

That's awesome, thanks!!

Well as long as the reviews favour this new model then I'll pick one up. I'd like to go hi-def to but it still takes a lot of processing time, power and storage hey?

Like I have the power but you would need gigs and gigs of storage or back up the movies to blu ray? I only have a 720p tv anyways at the moment and thought I would jump into High-Def cams a litlle later on..

the DCRSR47 is an sd camcorder... for another couple of hundred, you should be able to pick up an hd camcorder, which will take a much better picture.

the avchd camcorders and the minidv camcorders both use about the same amount of storage space on your computer hard drive or memory card.

but yes, editing a blu-ray dvd from avchd can take a fast computer, what cpu is in your pc... worst case, you should be able to hook up the sd video outputs on the hd camcorder to a cheap desktop sd dvd burner, and make yourself a nice sd dvd, no computer necessary.

lenses with more zoom variation tend to have more optical distortion and slower apertures than ones with less zoom variation. That is why high-end camcorders have interchangeable lenses, to have more lenses, with less variation, keeping the faster aperture with shallower depth-of-field and less distortion.
So a higher-end consumer camcorder will get a slightly higher-end lens, sacrificing the wider zoom range.