And of course none of the things that DO fit into that hole are worth much. Buy an A1, I know that makes for an expensive shoe but you do get other valuable and useful features.
Bob.

I was afraid of that. I don't think I can afford the A1.
Does anyone sell any kind of adapter? I don't need any power, these are self powered devices I simply want to attach to the camcorder.
Mark

There is no adaptor. Sorry....
The A1 really does have a much nicer feature set, as Bob alluded to. But...it's also more $$. You could always get a stand-off adaptor, that would give you a shoe off to the side.

Good idea, we just bought two of these and then drilled the holes out to 1/4" and fitted two 'unhot' shoes. Gaves us the ability to fit a light and a wireless receiver to the HC1. The problem with the HC1 is the popup flash takes the place of the shoe, when will Sony wakeup to the fact that no one uses a video camera to takes stills, do they?
Bob.

My A1 actually takes pretty nice stills. Yeah, I use it. Pictures from the still camera look quite a bit better than captured frames. One way to use a shotgun and other accessories on an HC1 is to use a Manfrotto Fig Rig.

As far as the buit in flash on the HC1 goes, I think it is kind of useless if you use a wide angle lense or a larger hood which would block the light.

Thanks all for the advice. I'm now thinking if I can extend my budget to the A1.

Mark

NAAA! Buy the Z1. That is why Sony designed the HC1 that way in the first place. Real good incentive to save a while longer and get something better designed. And have you seen the BATTERY arrangement? WOOO E! Smarts, not!

I gotta agree, Sony lost the plot on the HC1/A1, having to feed tape and batteries in at the bottom is plain dumb but then making the EVF non extendable so it's not practical to use a larger battery made matters even worse, what were they thinking.
My other really big gripe is with these touch screens, they might be OK in some parts of the world but we actually have sunlight down here and you cannot see the bleeding things in daylight. Surely it wouldn't have been too hard to come up with some form of built in hood.
Bob.

Bob, at a local Sony demo of the A1, I asked about the awkwardness of bottom loading and the "salesperson" said "Oh, they're not designed for tripod use", so I couldn't resist asking if the thread in the base was an oversight ...

Peter! Really . .you should know better! Tish Tish . . Look, the thread is there purely as a storage repository for a tripod. Once out in the field, shooting, you simply unscrew it from the camera. See? Couldn't be easier! Very useful function and underlines the foresight that went into the R&D. I'm ALWAYS misplacing my Miller and Hi-Rig Manfrotto sticks. In fact, oh yes, I may just be forced to purchase one of these cammies just to make use of this invaluable feature.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

Grazie

You could be onto something here, Grazie - lateral thinking - going back to the beginning of this "thread", the other "thread" - the 1/4" one in the base could be used for a bottom loaded mic - one at the top, one at the bottom - vertical stereo!!

Peter,
you are being naughty!
Here's the real laugh, someone once said to me they wouldn't waste money on the A1 just to get the XLR audio, plan was to bolt one of the bigger Beachtek units on the bottom, yeah right. So how many things is that you're going to unscrew to change a tape or battery I asked?
Let me see, unplug audio leads, take camera off tripod, take release plate off Beachtek, take Beachtek off camera, change tape and reverse procedure.
Bob.

Bob, nahhh ... just add a firestore. No more tape swapping!

I'm not a video professional; this is just a hobby for me. I do video and edit productions for my kids school, but as an amateur and a volunteer. So I have only so much budget I can justify spending... and I also want something small I can easily take on holiday etc. So the Z1 is not right for me.

The only reason I'm looking to buy now is I lost my old DV camcorder. I could just replace it with another DV one, but I'd like to be ready for the future and go to HDV now. I would also like to shoot in native widescreen.

So I'm really looking for a consumer/prosumer HDV camera, which brings me to the HC1/A1. For the school productions sound is important and I want to be able to mount my exernal mic, so that pushes me to the A1.

I understand bottom loading is a pain, but I'm used to that - my old Sony DV camcorder was also a bottom loader. I can live with that as a trade-off for small size. The battery is on the back, not the bottom? Though I do understand that with the largest battery the viewfinder is a problem; I'll be OK using the Q71 which fits.

Mark

With a bottom off-set, the tape loading isn't a pain at all. But it is an extra 20.00...