| I'm definitely a video amateur, but I dig this camera. It's small, lightweight and comfortable to hold. I haven't used it for extended periods of time, but the battery life seems acceptable compared to other models in this price range. The digital effects are pretty cheesy, but there are some that are kind of neat. I'm a big sepia-tone fan. I plan to do editing on a computer, so these seem like useless gimmicks that I'll never use, as I'll do coloring and fading in a powerful environment. It comes with a serial cable hookup for your computer, which is cool because every PC has a serial cable and not cool because serial is stupid slow. There is an optional USB cable (woo) and a DV (FireWire) cable (woo hoo!). The stabilizer and the night shot are both pretty lame. In fact, I'd say useless. They make everything choppy. I just bought a tripod ($20 Ambico) so that should solve at least one of those problems. This also has a light which is sweet and two microphones set up in a nice little stereo pair. Things I wish this had: microphone in (I have a pair of sweet mics for my MD recorder), color viewfinder (I've seen quit a few that skimp on this feature too), still camera mode (this has a cheap knockoff of still pictures, also pretty much worthless). Basically, if you just want to make movies of your cats and maybe a dirty flick or two, this is a good buy. |
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