May’s issue of Videomaker has a review of the Sony HVR-A1U digital camcorder if you care to take a look. There’s not too much in the way of techy statistics and the like, but rather it’s more of an overview of how the camcorder operates from the eyes of an actual user.

Obviously they didn’t like the fact that the tape is bottom-loading, since anyone who might use this for professional videography purposes would have to have a few moments to switch tapes. In a business like wedding videography this would turn out to be a nightmare. They also didn’t like the fact that many of the manual options are buried in the menus, rather than on the body itself. Albeit, Sony’s HVR-A1U is a very small camcorder, and the fact that they got a couple of XLR inputs on it without adding too much bulk is no small feat.

They also found that shutter speeds lower than 1/100 gave a sort of “stuttery” look on moving shots, especially in low light. Other than that, the HVR-A1U gave a very clean, crisp image with great detail, and Videomaker seems to give it a big thumbs up. Definitely check out the review if you are in the market for the HVR-A1U camcorder.

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