Sony Digital Camcorders

The digital revolution started for camcorders in 1986 when Sony released the first digital format for video, an uncompressed format that required an extraordinary amount of bandwidth.  Having led in the consumer camcorder market for four years at this point already, it's easy to see that Sony had developed a market dominance by the time that they released their first digital camcorder. 

Today, Sony still leads in the digital camcorder and camera market. Their most recent product line, the Sony Handycam, comes in both high-definition (using the .m2ts file format) and standard-definition recording formats (.mod file), and at an affordable price range. Further, their supporting software, the Sony Vegas suite, is one of the premier digital and audio editing suites available on the market.

So what does a top of the line camcorder have to offer: 12.1 megapixel photos and recordings; full HD recording—that is 1080p, at a resolution of 1920x1080; a 240Gb hard drive for the storage of the videos you've recorded; a back-illuminated CMOS sensor—designed to provide you excellent picture clarity when shooting in low light conditions; the ability to Geotag, or to record the GPS coordinates of the camera, in your videos and photos; face detection and smile shutter—features that control the focus and exposure on the face and also that attempt to take the picture the moment that the faces in the picture smile; and image stabilization technology, designed to prevent image problems when the camera is shaking.

Many of these features are present across their entire product line, in fact. Even their standard definition cameras include most of the features above, even if it's in a slightly reduced way—for example, by offering a smaller hard drive in the Sony camera or by lowering the megapixels. With features like these, it is easy to see why Sony is able to retain their dominance of the digital camcorder market and why your next camcorder purchase should be a Sony.