Sony HDR-CX250, is it a wretched camcorder or not?

[webmaster01]

Hello Others,

I plan to buy a Sony HDR-CX250 camcorder, because I need a camcorder, which I can record at night. (Now I have a Samsung HMX-Q10)

But many of my friends warned me, that this camera records a wretched quality at daytime.
(On this record of this camera they can hear a noise during zooming. I do not know is it truth or not?)

What is your opinion about this camcorder?
And can you mention me another (night)camcorder with higher quality in same or in similar price?

Best regards,

WM

[acgold7]

If you need one to record at night this is not the one for you. It has a very small sensor, as do all cams in this price range.

You need something in the cx500 series or better, but they are much more expensive. Unfortunately you must pay for better performance.

Many people report hearing the sound of the zoom in most cams when using the internal mic. Nothing you can do about that aside from using an external mic which is not integral to the cam. My cams cost $5000 each and I have the same problem. An external mic which attaches to the accessory shoe like the Rode Videomic will help the problem somewhat but may not eliminate it completely. Best solution is not to have the mic attached to the cam at all.

[Stephan]

Want to shoot videos at night?

Here are some night shots with HDR-CX740VE. Amazing!

[Doughie]

Dang!

And i thought my XR520 was good at night..

hat dB gain was that Stephan? 18dB? Or did you gain-limit it? & Shutter speed?

One thing, i cannot find CX740 on B&H site. Is it a brand new model or discontinued?
They have the CX760 there:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/8 ... dycam.html

Maybe this is a European naming convention and its actually the same model? Am interested..

[Stephan]

What dB gain was that Stephan? 18dB? Or did you gain-limit it? & Shutter speed?

That was 15dB, the limit that I had set in AGC Limit control in the menu. Everything automatic besides that - I didn't check shutter speed, but I believe it stayed at the default 1/50th for my 50i camcorder.

The reason I chose 15dB for AGC limit is (it can go up to 24 dB) - after I did some tests at home, I figured it was the setting that 1) best avoided additional grain (noise), and 2) looked closest to the dimness that the eye actually sees (increasing gain much beyond that looked too bright compared to reality). Kind of a good trade-off.

One thing, i cannot find CX740 on B&H site. Is it a brand new model or discontinued?
They have the CX760 there:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/8 ... dycam.html

Maybe this is a European naming convention and its actually the same model? Am interested..

Apparently the CX760 (96GB internal memory) is for the USA, the CX740 (32GB) is for France, the CX730 (no memory) is for the UK... Sony seem to have increased all prices across the range this year (or degraded specs such as a smaller 1/6" sensor when there used to be a 1/4" for entry-level cams) and as a consequence have heavily segmented their cams per country? Or instead maybe they had shortage of supply (think tsunami in Japan, floods in Thailand, whatever) and had to make distribution choices? No idea.

Anyway, CX740 is the same with smaller internal memory. And also can't write back to memory from the computer (read-only mode) compared to the 760. I don't recall any other difference. I really need to write a review! :-/