Sony has today announced two new high definition video cameras that build upon the features of the already available HDRSR1E and will be released in New Zealand in June.

The HDRSR5E will retail for $1999 and features a 4.0 megapixel CMOS sensor for still shots plus a 40GB hard drive that will record up to 15 hours of high definition video. The even fancier HDSR7E, which costs $2499, will capture almost 23 hours of high def footage on its 60GB drive and shoot stills of 6.1 megapixels.

Both cameras feature Super SteadyShot optical image stabilisation technology and a 10X optical zoom lens and both use the AVC/H.264 MPEG4 format for high def recording and 5.1 Dolby Digital for audio recording.

Unsurprisingly there’s a whole raft of other high end sounding features too such as a high speed capture setting that shoots four times faster than normal to create super smooth slow motion video and dual recording that allows you to snap still pictures even while recording video. Face detection technology creates an index of faces that allows you to easily search your footage for a particular shot.

We’ll nab a review unit as soon as we can so stay tuned for a full run down in the coming weeks.