Sony HVR-HD1000U Professional Digital HDV Camcorder + .45x Wide Angle Lens + 2X Telephoto Zoom Lens

I just received my kit last week. Everything I've ordered from Amazon has arrived early or on time, and this was at my home a day early.

I bought the kit mainly because of the 3 year warranty, it was cheaper on Amazon as a kit with the warranty than it was at B&H and other websites I visited. I used the camera to do some filming of a singer performing outside at the beach. The footage was really good. It was also nice to see that the venue we were perfoming at had 4 of these cameras as well. They were shooting a live beach sport (footvolly soccer and vollyball combined) that was airing in Brazil.

The camera is really nice. But there are a few things to consider. You have to buy an XLR adapter because there isn't a connector. But less than $5 on Amazon. The second is that when you buy Sony you should make sure you have an iLink or Firewire connection to the computer you are going to edit on. You cannot get the HD footage on anything but iLink/Firewire...my laptop doesn't have this so I have to download to my home CPU then save to my external hard drive. Kind of a pain in the butt.

I have only used it for one event so far, but I'm impressed with how easy it is to use and how good the footage looks. It only has one manual control (you can set it to do what you want, but only one thing at a time), so it would be nice to have more, but I don't need more. I just use it to zoom or focus mannually.

It would be hard to find a better camera for under $2000-$2500.

I haven't used the extra lenses or filters yet, but they are the cheap ones you see on Amazon. Also the tri-pod is useless. This is a $10 tripod, they say it's titanium, but 95% cheap plastic. The extra battery is a must! The battery that comes with the camera will not last long especially if you use the LCD monitor (you can turn it off to save power). The longer lasting battery worked for me very well. I am going to have to buy one or two more batteries.

I also suggest you purchase a separate battery charger. You can only charge the battery that is in the camera. A secondary charger is a must.