One heck of a camera, that packs in some cool features and excellent picture quality. The first thing that strikes you when you pick up the camera is it’s small size and light weight, it’s pod shaped, and fits very comfortably into your right hand. It records in DV format, and has an SD card slot for storing still picture. The zoom is limited to 10x (optical), but it can zoom into 800x digitally. Picture quality is very good, thanks to it’s 3CCDs.
Pros:
A 3 CCD camera for this price is a steal. Most cameras in this price range have just a single CCD. Some excellent features: Skin detailing, allowing for a more flattering look for people; A partial manual control where you can set apperture, gain and focus, which can allow for some pretty creative shots; You can "grab" stills (640x480) while playing back tapes. The Software accompanying the camera allows for capturing footage using a USB 2.0 port, so you don’t need a firewire port on your computer. The only time you will need firewire is if edited footage has to be transferred back onto tape on the camera.
The camera has a still shots mode and a dedicated SD card slot for storing still pictures. The still camera is 2 Mega pixels plus.
Cons:
The lens does not zoom out wide enough, so shooting indoors (which can often mean shooting in confined areas, with lots of people rushing around) is not too much fun. But the fact is, this is a problem with most video cameras meant for home use. Manufacturers like Canon integrate a slide-in wide angle into the body to overcome this problem.
The other huge problem is the positioning of the joystick for menu access... it’s right next to the "record" button... it’s very uncomfortable on the thumb when you need to access the menu, unless you have a smaller thumb than mine :)