Sony Professional DSR-PD170 3 CCD MiniDV Camcorder with 12x Optical Zoom Review

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This review is for the Sony DSR-PD170 mini DVD camcorder. This camcorder here is a semi professional camcorder. Some great things about it is a three CCD camcorder which means the color fidelity is right on. Three CCDs means there is a pickup CCD for each color red blue and green so the colors are very accurate. They're one third inch CCD so they're very high high quality CCDs. The image on this thing is amazing. As you can see it's an incredible camera with a lot of features on it. It has neutral density filter here. There's a couple stages. There's Neutral Density One Neutral Density Two. It has the auto or manual focus which is right here which is great. It has a separate ring here you can see for the zoom which is great it has a zoom ring. And also which is great it has a nice big focus ring on it which is wonderful. It has the eyepiece here which you can use. You can adjust it for your level of eye to make it comfortable for you to view. Or you can see here it has the standard kind of pop out viewfinder that's on a normal camera. It's not really too big the viewfinder there but it's big enough where you can see. If not use the eyepiece it's a lot bigger a lot clearer it's more professional. Another great feature about this camera. It has the XLR inputs here for sound which is professional quality sound XLR inputs. And on the other side it has so many controls here for the sound. It's amazing. Lot of different levels and setting for the sound. There is just so many features on this camcorder it's unbelievable. Good thing about it its got 12 times optical zoom which is great. Most consumer camcorders until you get up into professional have a 10 times zoom. This has a 12 times zoom which is great. Another great feature which is great if you can see right here a little silver band and in that band is a little dial wheel that is actually for exposure. So if you want to set exposure manually it's right there you can just dial it up and down. I mean this camera is great for professional stuff. Everything is within your hand reach and can be grabbed and moved and just wonderful. It's a bit heavy. I would say it is more for a professional use. You necessarily don't want to use it for like really handheld -- a lot of handheld work. It's kind of big and bulky and heavy but it does look very professional as you can see. The way it operated basically the tape goes in here. What you do is you just put the tape in. You can see the tape mechanism here. You put the tape in load the tape like that. If you want to use the viewfinder put the viewfinder on. It's in camera mode. Press the record button here. You can see here it starts recording. Wonderful.. If you want close the viewfinder there use the top viewfinder. It looks wonderful. Very sharp. It's amazing. You can buy different size batteries for it depending on how long you want to film. This pretty much standard battery. Here if you look at the port here this is for video hookups here you know which is great. It's got the mini DVD on the bottom the firewire components and then it has video on top. This is just a wonderful camera. It's a little pricey but as you look at it it's professional and you can't go wrong with Sony. So if you need a prosumer camcorder three CCD camcorder I would definitely recommend the Sony PD DSR 170.