With visions of daredevil cameramen leaping from airplanes with HDV helmetcams, or the entire cast of some reality-TV opus being outfitted to shoot HDV, Sony has packed some hefty imaging technology into a small package— the sub- $3500 HVR-A1U, an HDV camera built around a new, Sony -manufactured CMOS chip. Unveiled less than a month after NAB, the new camera shoots 1080/50i and /60i plus "cineframe" modes approximating 24p and 25p, and weighs less than 1.5 pounds. It includes a fixed Carl Zeiss HD lens with 12x optical zoom (41-480mm equivalent). But Sony’s equally proud of its new CMOS chip, which liberates it from reliance on third-party manufacturers. The sensor’s native resolution is 1920x1440, which yields true 1920x1080 images, and Sony’s proprietary signal-processing algorithms maximize dynamic range and image quality. Look for it this fall.
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