The Sony TRV36 Handycam offers a powerful 330x digital zoom, built-in light, a wide range of special effects and programmed autoexposure modes, including Sony's unique infrared night recording capabilities. Sony's elongated Handycam design fits easily in one hand and is well-balanced. While not the lightest of camcorders, we found the Handycam line one of the most ergonomic and easy to use.

The Sony TRV36 Handycam has a nifty status screen on the outside of the LCD screen module that lets you know how many minutes you've recorded or how far you've played a tape. It also tells you if there's a tape in the camcorder. The LCD screen swivels 210 degrees, which lets you record above your head or put yourself in the picture. The optical viewfinder is black and white, which is not a real drawback since we ended up using the LCD screen for most of our shooting. The Sony TRV36 Handycam also comes with a basic remote control unit.

The TRV36 lets you manually adjust focus and exposure; it also includes seven programmed exposure modes, plus backlight compensation, to help optimize your video under different shooting conditions. It features a high-powered 330x digital zoom, great for getting closeups and recording faraway events.

We enjoyed Sony's full range of special effects, including the distinctive pastel, slim, and stretch picture modes. The TRV36 also provides widescreen, black-and-white, sepia, negative, and solarized modes. We liked the range of fade options, which include fade to black, mosaic, monotone, and a bounce-image effect.

The camcorder includes Sony's exclusive NightShot capability, which lets you shoot video in total darkness. The Handycam emits an invisible infrared beam to light the scene. The resulting video is basically black and white, and lower quality than normal, but being able to get decent images in complete darkness is nonetheless pretty amazing. The Sony TRV36 Handycam also includes a built-in light for normal shooting in dim conditions.

This camcorder uses the Hi8 format, which makes for sharp and colorful video--digital is the only format that will give you better quality. The only drawback to Hi8 is that you can't play the tapes in your VCR; you have to connect the camcorder to your TV for playback.

Pros:

• Ergonomic design
• NightShot capability
• Wide range of exposure settings
• Good selection of special effects
• Powerful zoom

Cons:

• Optical viewfinder is black and white