Good value overall for new parents

Author's Rating:

Pros: Lots of digital effects, comfortable size, dual media for image/video capture.

Cons: Poor placement for dual/access buttons, can mistakenly turn off auto focus easily.

The Bottom Line: 
This is a good quality camera, with the right size and ability for the right price.

Author's Review
We purchased this from Ritz Camera a few months before our son was born. What appealed to me was the small size of the camera itself, the Mini-DV tapes, and that it can use a Multi Media SD card for digital still images or small video clips.
After some practice and many consultations with the owner's manual, we came to a comfortable control setting so we could simply pick up the camera and start recording the baby's antics before he would stop his performance.
Overall it has been a great little camera for the price. The SD digital card has been the best way so far to take small videos and email them to the grandparents far away. The still images are not the greatest, but they can still be printed decently at the local photo lab.
There are too many options and controls to really list; the best features are the nighttime mode, the digital effects, and it can automatically cue to each segment on tape.
The worst that I've noticed are the lack of a light, or a backlight feature for that matter, and the fade in-out effects have to be turned on each and every time to use them. The part we really can't stand is some of the controls are Alternate functions of external buttons and we sometimes press one and turn off the auto focus or lighting exposure.