The Sony TRV16 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 TRV16 Handycam lets you manually adjust focus and exposure; it also includes six programmed exposure modes, plus backlight compensation, to help optimize your video under different shooting conditions. It features a 180x 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 TRV416 also provides widescreen, black-and-white, sepia, negative, and solarized modes. We liked the range of fade options, which included 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 TRV16 emits an invisible infrared beam to light the scene. The resulting video is basically black and white, and usually lower quality than normal video, but being able to get decent images in complete darkness is nonetheless pretty amazing.

This camcorder uses the 8mm format, which means 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

Cons:

• Optical viewfinder is black and white

On the other hand, the unit does have some nice?though limited-- advanced features such as preset exposures, special effects, and Sony's unique NightShot feature. My daughter especially likes the special effects package. I particularly appreciate the Night Shot feature. I video a lot of youth sporting events that can involve a lot of transitional lighting issues, especially on those evenings around the time change seasons, an this unit handles all those issues very well. It does a commendable job in moonlight as well.

The unit is well designed and rugged. It is not a choice for die-hard vidoephiles?the range of advanced features is too limited, but they should be adequate for normal family outing type use.

Battery life using the LCD is rather short. The viewfinder picture is black & white. Using it rather than the LCD expands battery life significantly but the quality of he picture in the viewfinder is not good.

The audio quality is average. Functionality of interface with other devices (TV, PC, etc.) is good.