Sony HDR-CX116 HD Camcorder Review
Today, over 70% of US bandwidth is being used by video streaming. Why? Because everyone wants to make and share videos. Whether it be recorded on your iPhone, in a studio or on your own dedicated device - shooting great videos usually requires expensive hardware.
Maybe not.
The Sony HDR-CX116 HD camcorder is a superb choice for anyone looking to buy a relatively well-priced device with great bang for buck. It features a Carl Zeiss lens with 25x optical zoom allowing you to zoom right into the action with any loss of quality. The built in 8GB of storage is enough space to hold just over two hours of full 1080p HD video. And of course, this camcorder records in 1080p full HD.
Other perks include Exmore™ sensitivity for better videos in low light aswell as digital stabilisation for smoother videos. And if you wanted to impress your mates, the Sony HDR-CX116 also has a 2.7inch touch screen LCD.
When it comes to shooting videos, this device is absolutely fantastic. I shot almost all thirty YouTube videos using the camera and I was astounded by the quality. It had great macro detail which made it particularly useful whilst shooting technology reviews but the ability to manually focus also allowed me to create shots with more depth and detail as necessary. One feature I particularly liked was being able to touch to focus using the touchscreen LCD display.
Other features which impressed me was the ability to adjust exposure and brightness according to a white background which made videos more life-like in indoor shoots and low light.
The only two downsides to the Sony HDR-CX116 is the fact that it was very uncomfortable in my big hands. It's a fairly small device and having to wrap my fingers around it whilst being able to comfortably toggle the record button and zoom was near impossible. The other problem was that the camera had to be kept powered on whilst connect to USB, so the battery would drain whilst I was transferring files. This is largely down to the fact that the USB port is on the inside of the screen.
I have put together a short video below running through some of the other features of the Sony HDR-CX116 since it has so many features which are difficult to cover in writing.
[embed]http://youtu.be/reb9E9O6OFI[/embed]
Thanks for reading!
My name is Zahid Mahmood, and I'm one of the founders of Anterior. I started this technology blog when I was in high school and grew it to over 100,000 readers before becoming occupied with other projects. I've recently started writing again and will be posting more frequently.