Sony Professional HVR-Z1U 3CCD High Definition Camcorder with 12x Optical Zoom

Point, shoot and record stunning images in 1080i with this HDV professional digital camcorder.

The Sony HVR-Z1U professional camcorder shoots brilliant high definition 1080i pictures with jaw-dropping detail, color and clarity, and comes equipped with a Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar® T 12x zoom lens – the same glass and coatings as in Zeiss prime lenses.

The HVR-Z1U has features that can make your videos look more like they were shot on film. Cinematone Gamma allows operators to quickly setup and load a gamma curve with similar contrast characteristics to a film gamma curve. The Cineframe feature allows movement to be reproduced at 24 frames per second–the speed of film–as opposed to video’s 30 frames per second standard.

The Color Extraction function can retain up to two desired colors of monitored pictures in the screen by designating color hue, saturation and range, while making the other colors black and white. The Color Revision function can change the hue of only the colors designated by Color Extraction, while retaining the hue of the other colors, thus making it possible to change the color of something you’ve already shot.

Technical Details

• High-definition video camera records in 1080i, 720p, and 720i specification with analog down-converting
• 16:9 widescreen recording; 4:3 conversion capable
• Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T* 12x optical zoom Lens; optical Super SteadyShot System dampens hand jitter and vibration
• 3CCD camera system; records to conventional DV tape stock
• Powered by NP-F570 InfoLithium rechargeable battery pack
• List Price: $5,999.99

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

The HVR-Z1U seems too good to be true. And it is… It promises a camera with full HD resolution and outstanding features for a reasonable price. In many ways, it delivers. The video quality is superior to the JVC HDV camera. Unlike the JVC, the camera offers full manual control and is a pleasure to shoot with professionally…The pixel count is thus about twice that of standard video, not four times, as we perhaps hoped. The 1200 lines of horizontal resolution is pretty good – just about the same as 720p. But the vertical resolution is not very good at all.

I’ve chosen this camera for my short film after viewing some rough footage at a local studio. The colors that this camera can capture in DV mode are jaw-dropping! It comes with all of the manual controls you could hope for and they’re very intuitive. I highly recommend this to independent filmmakers if you’re able to rent them in your area.

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