Wow!

Author's Rating:

Pros: The DVD media, and this camera in particular, ROCKS in my opinion.

Cons: The stinking cradles that hold the media.

The Bottom Line: 
Best video camera available right now for the DVD 3" disk format, and not too high a price for a quality unit.

Author's Review
All you can say about this one is, WOW! It simply blows the doors off any of the DVD media type recorders offered by Sony right now.

The still photos are not as high a resolution as a current model digital still camera offers, but more than good enough for most anyone and perfect for emailing to family and friends. Use the flash card for stills to keep them off the DVD Ram disk(or R disk if that's what you want to use). Just plug the camera into an open USB slot, and you have access to the camera on your computer. Or pull the flash card out and stick it in a reader. The highest video quality(Xtra fine) is only available when using the 3" DVD Ram disks, but using the DVD-R disks on (Fine)still renders a video that you can stick right in your DVD player and play on the TV right away and the picture quality looks perfect. Low light video of fast action isn't quite as nice looking as the rest, but color is still good. I will probably be buying a light of some kind for really low light situations(like Christmas morning when the kids get up) and such, but the low light video works much better than the low light no flash stills.

Taking stills in low light situations is a problem without a flash attached to the camera though. But, there is a hot shoe for it. I was leary of the LCD display, knowing that Sony is known for great LCD displays that look perfect, even in direct sunlight, but I cannot tell the difference between them except in the direct sunlight, where the Sony doesn't wash out nearly as much. Then again, I have no trouble using the color viewfinder if need be in that case either, so I don't see it as a problem unless you are planning on reviewing what you just took while sitting in the direct sunlight.

It just doesn't really get any better than this video camera for using the 3" DVD's to record on. You are not going to make any "feature" movies with the video editing software included for your computer, but it is sufficient for most people's use. Sonic's DVD software works better, but I am just making home movies, so all that isn't an issue for me anyway. I don't need to try to "wow" people with fades and music and such nonsense. If you are trying to be a movie director on the cheap, you'll need to buy better software.

On the down side, if you ever used a "caddy" for your computer CD players, you'll already know about these. And you MUST purchase the DVD-R media in the roundish shaped holders because if you get them in the square shaped ones, you have to take the disk out and put it in a round holder to use it. I'd wager that eventually, you will not even need a holder and will just stick the 3" disk into a slot in these type cameras, but for now, you have to fool with the "caddy" for some reason on all of them. Other than that, I don't see how it can get any better than this.

I like the DVD Ram disks better than the Sony alternative DVD-RW disks just because of the ease of use in getting the video into the computer, but other's mileage may vary on that.

Really large handed people might have a little trouble with the controls, but it would be that way regardless of which DVD media type recorder they bought, so this is a none issue if you are looking for this type of camera. No motor noise that I can detect in the recordings, sound is great, picture quality is great, ease of use is fantastic...turn it on, wait for the beep, press the record button and that's it. To play back, either finalize the DVD-R and stick it in your DVD player, or, hook the camera into a SVHS port on your TV and use it for playback of either disk, or, hook the camera to your computer with the USB cable and play or download, or, some DVD players in computers will actually play the DVD Ram disk I guess also, though I cannot verify this. But, in any case, it beats the pants off the DV or 8mm format tapes that other camcorders are using today for ease of use. The LAST thing I want to record on is magnetic tape like the vast majority of camcorders still use...YUK.

Hat's off to Hitachi on this video camera!