A discussion of the SDR-S150's design plus comments on the camcorder's video and photo quality with examples.
Lori Grunin
I've been reviewing hardware and software, devising testing methodology and handed out buying advice for what seems like forever; I'm currently absorbed by computers and gaming hardware, but previously spent many years concentrating on cameras. I've also volunteered with a cat rescue for over 15 years doing adoptions, designing marketing materials, managing volunteers and, of course, photographing cats.
The SDR-S150 has no manual metering, and its scheme--which seems to be some form of matrix metering--makes it impossible to properly expose for the people in this scene. There is a backlight compensation option, but it's not available in manual mode, and it doesn't seem to do much, anyway.
The flash can be unpredictable. I was standing roughly the same distance from the subjects in each of the shots (no-flash versions below), but the flash completely blew out the photo in one while performing quite well in the other.
If you're planning to keep 'em small, the SDR-S150's still photos look pretty good. When viewed or printed at actual size, however, you can see the serious overprocessing that blurs most of the details.
This frame from the SDR-S150's video displays two of the camcorders most serious problems. First, it has poor automatic white balance and tends to produce extremely cool video. Second, edges of objects in motion--check out the flag on the left side of the pole--tend to display severe comb artifacts. They're more noticeable in individual frames, such as this one, but they're pretty bad and easy to see in regular video playback.
It's a bit annoying that there are separate modes for each state: movie recording, movie playback, still-photo recording, still-photo playback, and one to tell it there's a computer on the other end of the USB cable.
The body of the SDR-S150 is pretty well designed, with easy-to-operate controls that fall under your thumb, while shooting controls and other less frequently needed ones require a hand reposition to operate. When in manual mode, the center button on the navigation switch pulls up the various selections you can make, such as shutter speed and white balance preset.
