The HDR-TG1E is the world’s smallest, slimmest, and lightest HD camcorder* but how did it come about? To find out we first asked Dai Tanaka (Product Planning) and Keiji Osano (Project Leader) about the project’s planning objectives and concept.

D. Tanaka:

The market for camcorders has reached maturity. If one looks at how they are actually being used for a lot of the time, it’s mainly parents making home movies of their children, so there’s a need to inject fresh life into the market. When I started planning for the new HDR-TG1E, I had this idea that we didn’t just want to make it easier or more fun to take videos of children. I wanted people to use their Handycam® camcorder more, to discover the fun of making videos in a wide range of situations, including travel, yes, but also such everyday events as going for a walk or meeting friends.
This meant that we had to make the camcorder small, but I especially wanted to make it slim. And if people were to use the product on a daily basis, I wanted to give it the sort of elegance that would make people want to carry it about with them. Also, if it was going to be carried about it could suffer rough treatment, so I wanted to make it tough enough to withstand that. And to ensure that someone could just pull it out and enjoy taking video footage in a more intuitive and natural way, I wanted to make it easy to take high-quality footage without having to fiddle with any settings.

Osano:

When I heard Tanaka-san’s plan, I thought that we had no choice but to make the camcorder ultra-compact, something people could carry around – like a mobile phone or Cyber-shot – for fun, fuss-free video shooting. Because from now on we want people to use the Handycam® camcorer like that. But if Sony’s going to do it, then I wanted to make it the smallest and slimmest in the world! That’s the product design concept.

Designed to be the world’s smallest, slimmest, and lightest HD camcorder*, the HDR-TG1E has an upright style. We asked Noriaki Takagi, who worked on the design, to explain what led up to this design decision?

Takagi:

After the planning got underway, we started examining such questions as what sort of size it should be, and whether it should be horizontal or vertical. It was my opinion that an upright style was best in order to make the most of the characteristics of the slim, lightweight, compact body. So that’s what I proposed.
Having put together a number of design proposals, 3 basic patterns remained. What was finally adopted was the one with the least volume – what you might call the “slimmed-down” version.

Osano:

There have been upright models before now, but the HDR-TG1E was going to be the first to have a small, ultra-slim body so that the user could grip the camcorder firmly. Staff involved in planning, design and styling agreed unanimously to go for this design.

Takagi:

This design came about because we were intent on creating the smallest and slimmest camcorder. As a designer I like to have a degree of freedom with the shape of a product, so I asked Osano-san for a few extra millimetres to play with, but my request was firmly refused (laughs). Well, it’s true that there’s no point in doing that if it impairs usability. So we went forward with the design work giving precedence to the user’s perspective. For example, the body was made as slim as possible so that it would be easy for women to grip.

Titanium was chosen as a material for the body of the HDR-TG1E. Was this to meet the goal of creating the world’s smallest, slimmest, and lightest HD camcorder*, Or was this choice design-driven?

Oshima:

I was in charge of the external design of the HDR-TG1E. From the start I secretly wanted to use titanium, a material with an exclusive image, in order to create something that would look definitely upmarket and could be carried about all the time. Also, from past experience I knew that when making a product small and thin aluminium has proved to be lacking in strength, while stainless steel is too heavy. So from this point of view too, titanium was a particularly attractive material.
It was decided to employ titanium because of its dual qualities as a material that is both elegant and functional.
I think this was perhaps the first time that titanium has ever been used for a camcorder. For that reason alone we had quite a job on our hands, considering the characteristics of titanium, and the special processing technologies it requires. It was the first time for both Sony and the parts manufacturer to have a crack at this, but close collaboration led to success.

Takagi:

Titanium is quite a difficult material to work with from the design perspective, particularly because its colour is unique. We wanted to make use of that quality, but we had a hard time finding other colours for the grip, etc. that would go with it. Then we discovered that if we made the grip brown it would make a natural match for the titanium. I believe we succeeded in creating a colour design that makes the most of the elegant qualities of the titanium.

Oshima:

I discussed the colour and quality of the material with Takagi-san several times. Actually titanium comes in many varieties, and the colours vary with the properties of each. The titanium we picked was a tough challenge for the companies working the material and making the parts. It’s quite bright. On top of that we applied a colourless, transparent hard coating to further enhance the sense of sophistication.

*For consumer use