We recently bought this camera as a replacement for our excellent Sony DRC-PC1000E handycam(with its measly 2.8MP still mode) to capture an important moment in out lives with suitable quality(video and stills) for years to come(and to view on our Sony 4K TV).
First off, the hardware is excellent and packs a lot into the small form factor and video recording results are excellent, as the projector feature is really handy.
The main problem with the camera is that it feels the software was designed for the entry level £200 version, and that the premium product features in this camera (like the eye piece, 24MP still mode, projector-in and video light) are all just tacked on after thoughts, even down to the terribly grainy results of skin detail in pictures(when zoomed), shot in good light, digital zoom disabled and with or without tripod, with iAuto settings or all manual settings. Any cheap old android phone (like an SE Arc) gives superior detail and skin tones in portrait shots and even my old handycam at just 2.8MP does matches the 24MP or exceeds it in similar shots.
What I would like to know, is when the HDR-PJ810E is going to get a new firmware update to fix the still shot quality issues and add in the basic features that haven't been implemented?
The basic handycam features that are missing from the camera are as follows:
1. You can't set the ability to enable both eye piece and viewfinder simultaneously, making the eye piece an expensive after thought you can't really use conveniently.
2.You have sno cross hair or box guides for spot focus, multi focus, etc, and no way of picking them making the ability to quickly shot what you want in focus hit and miss, even using the manual focus and viewfinder touchscreen.
3. When you toggle between iAuto on and off, all the lower level menu overriden option(like disabling steady shot, scene select, etc) get reset to defaults, making the camera useless for anything other than iAuto and the iauto defaults with the fast option on the left of the touchscreen.
4. The handycam light doesn't provide a flash option in still shot mode(unlike the US version), making the light a pointless part of the camera for still shots.
5. The camera has no histogram option, and no means by which to set the ISO film speed mode for stills, making all the other manual features a bit of a waste.
6. The ability to manage videos and pictures with the camera(for selective deleting files) isn't fully implemented and a million touch screen pressing chore, and you can't even selectively do it with a computer filesystem browser, as the camera only gives the PC read-only access to the storage. Your only viable option is to copy everything off the camera, and then format it.
7. last but not least, and very important, you can't even zoom in or pan across your pictures when reviewing on the camera, so you have zero idea if the picture you took is any good, if you are intending to crop the image later on a computer.
The whole purpose of us buying a handycam instead of a stil camera(compact or DSLR), is that it would be versatile, but unlike my DRC-PC1000E, the HDR-PJ810E seems to be only good a video, which isn't handy.
