July 7 - 1:35pm EDT   Sony today significantly ramped up the quality of its HD Handycams with two new models that promise fundamental changes. The HDR-CX500V and HDR-CX520V both have significantly upgraded visuals with a new backlit CMOS sensor. Moving the illumination away from the front gives either camera about twice as much light sensitivity, improving shooting in darker scenes. Both sensors are also upgraded to 12 megapixels and can shoot still photos at the high resolution in addition to 1080i widescreen video. [full story]

April 2 - 1:20am EDT   Sony has debuted a new high-definition camcorder, the HDR-TG5V, that is designed for travelers requiring lightweight gear. The Handycam features a Carl Zeiss lens, with 10X optical zoom, and captures 1920 by 1080 pixel video and four-megapixel still images. A titanium body and compact form factor contribute to the low weight. An integrated GPS antenna and NAVTEQ maps can be used to automatically geo-tag videos or images to keep a record of the exact shooting location. [full story]

September 10 - 8:40am EDT   In an unusual move, Sony this morning announced a pair of full-size HD video cameras that includes a model specifically built for home users truly serious about making videos. The Handycam HDR-FX1000 is built like a professional's camera with a separate microphone boom and manual controls normally left off of camcorders, including the iris opening, gain and white balance; it brings the price down chiefly by trimming features unlikely to be used at home, such as XLR mic inputs and DVCAM support. [full story]

June 19 - 7:30am EDT   Sony on Thursday issued a relatively surprising mid-year Handycam update through the CX12, a new mid-range camera. The handheld is Sony's first to use smile detection and does so to give videographers a hands-off approach to taking photos alongside video; the camera can automatically snap 10-megapixel still photos when it sees smiles without having to interrupt video capture. Like recent Cyber-shots, the CX12 can also prioritize those shots to take photos only of smiling groups or of adults or children. The Handycam can even take these photos in standby mode. [full story]

April 3 - 8:15am EDT   Sony this morning turned around its focus on traditional camcorders to competing against very small cameras such as Sanyo's Xacti line. The AVCHD-based Handycam TG1 is less than five inches tall, 2.5 inches deep, and weighs 10 ounces but is still capable of capturing a 1920x1080 picture. This makes it the smallest HD-capable camera yet, Sony says. While much of this size reduction comes from recording to Memory Stick Pro Duo cards, a 2.7-inch touchscreen offloads many of the controls that would otherwise occupy space on the main body. [full story]

January 8 - 11:40am EST   As part of its efforts at CES, Sony has revamped nearly all of its Handycam models for the new year. The HD models now all receive face detection that auto-focuses on as many as eight human faces in a given scene and adjusts color balance to properly capture the subjects. For these HD cameras, more time is spent on encoding video for these pixels than the rest of the scene, Sony says. Topping the range, the SR12 (pictured) and SR11 are also the first Sony home cameras to use a new 5.7-megapixel sensor that nearly doubles to 10.2 megapixels for still photos alone or 7.6 megapixels while also recording video; this dual-record method can also be sustained on these models ... [full story]