Order Sony HDR-CX100 AVCHD HD Camcorder with Smile Shutter & 10x Optical Zoom (Black)

I purchased this camera on Amazon for $325 on sale. I was impressed with it's small size and it's great quality in good lighting.

I ended up sending the camcorder back for a full refund because:

1. TERRIBLE in low light - and I mean terrible. It would not even register the signal where my old Digital 8 Sony camera would show a picture

2. There is no setting to improve the low light. No nightshot setting at all. You will NOT be able to film around a campfire with any decent result or fireworks, etc

3. The so called 2.3 Megapixel stills while shooting video are useless. The smile shutter got some GREAT shots but the quality is so low that you can not use them.

4. There is no ability to add ANY accessories. That means no light, no mic, no headphone, nothing. Take what you get with this camera and that is it.

5. The HD Compression on this camera can not be edited by your regular editing software. I use Premiere Pro (high end software) and even it will not accept the HD signal for editing. So you need to convert down to MPEG which means you are not getting final HD quality anyways. This is a problem with many current HD Camcorders so I can't say this is just unique to this camera. However, you will need to spend additional $$ to get software if you want to edit.

To sum up I will agree that for around $350 you get a decent camcorder here. However if you, like me, would like to keep your camcorder for many years to capture many memories in many different situations, look somewhere else. While this camcorder offers some good features and great quality under perfect lighting conditions (outdoors), it fails to be a great camera "all around".

I have no low price camcorder to recommend as I have decided to save up and budget more for my purchase. You get what you pay for I guess...

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