I once read an art history book about the public's reaction to Leonardo Da Vinci's mural The Last Supper. Painted in 1495, the image had such a realistic sense of space and intensity of detail that after viewing it, no one wanted to "settle" for the status quo anymore. Da Vinci had raised the bar for rendering realistic images. I was reminded of this when I first studied, on an HDTV monitor, the hi-def video footage I captured with the Sony HDR-HC3 HDV 1080i Handycam camcorder ($1,499.95 direct). The quality of the video blew standard definition footage out of the water. Simply put, the HC3 sets a new standard in the consumer camcorder arena.