ABOUT THE SIZE of a cigarette packet but less likely to make you wheeze, Sony's sleek new high definition (HD) Handycam, the HDR-TG3E (€930, www.sony.iefor a full list of retailers in the Republic), might be a bit of a mouthful but it is a terrific machine.
It features crystal-clear resolution, simple controls, logical touchscreen playback, a separate button that lets you take 2.3 megapixel still pictures during HD video recording, and a light and tough titanium case.
Filming my son's school race day, tiny white squares popped up around the faces of the half dozen four-year-olds in shot. This appeared worryingly similar to the weapons targeting system used by Robert Downey Jr's character in Iron Man, but, fortunately for the children, no machine gun popped out of the top of the device. Sony says the face-detection feature is used to stabilise the image and adjust focus, contrast and skin tone - but perhaps weaponry will be an optional extra in the next generation of its HD Handycams.
I'm told the 1920 x 1080 image quality is superb - but I can't vouch for it, since I couldn't work out how to download the recordings. I tried for hours, but Macs and HD Handycams aren't on speaking terms, it seems.
It takes a while to transfer MiniDV images to your computer, and they're much grainier than those that appear on the HDR screen (standard definition miniDV records 720 lines of 576 pixels, which is about half the number of pixels of a HD camcorder - it's like the difference between watching your television and going to the cinema) but at least the system works on all computers.
There's another incentive to stick with yesterday's format: MiniDV is a lot cheaper. (The Canon MD150 1.07 megapixel is €295 with www.cam-ireland.com. The Sony DCR HC51E is €225, www.sony.ie.)