Sure, it's not perfect, but for the price, you simply cannot beat this. Pick up a couple of 8GB memorycards and you are good to go (they are cheap!).Pluses:
-Optical Image Stabilizer
-HD!!!! (1920x1080i) Good Quality in daylight/normal light indoors
-SDHC cards (cheap and high capacity)
-DVD burner if you want to make Standard Def captures and burn for regular dvd playback. (can also be used to store HD content, but needs special players for playback)
-Battery Capacity is very good
-Nice LCD Screen
-Prerec, if activated, it continously records the last 3 seconds, so when you hit record, it will remember and store the previous 3 seconds as well. Good if you are a bit slow to start recording..
Minuses:
-A bit large and clumsy (partly due to inclusion of dvd burner and large capacity battery!)
-Noisy picture in low light situations
Note: Works well with PS3, if you have the 80GB version, stick the SDHC card in directly, if you own the 40GB version, buy a cheap USB adapter that supports SDHC.
Pros:
HD Camcorder with 3 CCD and O.I.S. (prevents blurry images)
2 Good and inexpensive media options (mini DVD and SDHC)
AVCHD Should have a long future ahead with Blu-Ray winning the HD war
Easy to use
All the features I need and more
Crisp vivid footage outside and in bright lighting
Price (About half that of similar camcorders)
Cons
Not the best HD image in low to standard indoor situations (Even in low light it is much better than my standard def camcorder but not 'crisp')
Not as 'cute' as some other smaller camcorders
AVCHD is all but impossible to edit easily with today's h/w and s/w. (I anticipate this will get better)
You need a Blu-Ray player to play AVCHD. (You can use the camcorder to play the movies until the ps3 or blu-ray players prices drop.. or if new DVD players get the codex for AVCHD)
Over all I am quite happy. Once I get a Blu-ray player and a better PC to edit the video it will be great. But for now the picture is great and the remote that comes in the box makes using the camcorder as the player easy. I figure could wait for the prices to drop on blu-ray and better AVCHD editing to come out... but I might miss a couple of years of HD family movies so I'll deal with some inconvenience today for better video for tomorrow.I have been playing with this camcorder for a day and I am impressed!! The image stabilizer makes my shots look like the camera was on a mount. After a few sec. of playing around with it or a few min. of reading the manual its a sinch to use. Very user friendly and definatly worth the money. I have previewed many other camcorders and this fits the bill.
The only down side is you have to buy SD cards and Miny disks. If it had an internal hard drive It would be an A++ But then again the price would be alot higher and there would be a lot of noise. This thing is SILENT! Its small and there are plenty of thing you can buy to go along with it. For the price and Arating you wont beet it!! PS.Get the 8GB card with it. You are going to buy it any way so why wate?I've owned this item for 2 years now and it has been really great.
I use it to shoot music videos and the quality of the sequences shot outdoors is very good and the colours are quite nice.
The battery life is excellent. Very easy to edit in Final Cut Express software.
The only cons are:
The depth of field is a bit tricky and not great even when you do get it to work. You could probably buy a lens for this.
It shoots very grainy in low light and requires professional lighting after sundown.
You can't move the camera fast at (eg. to do a sweeping landscape shot)otherwise the images are grainy.
This camera works great and has spectacular HD quality. Low-light shooting is a bit of an issue with auto-focus, but overall it was an excellent buy for the price.
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