Sony DCR-SR300 Digital Handycam 40GB HDD Camcorder, 1/2.9" 16:9 CMOS Sensor, Optical Image Stabilization, Carl Zeiss T Lens, 2.7" LCD Screen

Comments about Sony DCR-SR300 Digital Camcorder:

Easy to use; quality video and takes excellent pictures.

Comments about Sony DCR-SR300 Digital Camcorder:

I have used this camcorder to shoot a couple of videos while walking down the streets of newyork.Tee videos have come good.

The best thing in this camera is that you don't need to familiarize your self with any of combinations.Its as simple as a point and shoot camera.Press the button and its starts recording.

The things not so great are
1) the picture quality:I was not happy with the picture quality .I had taken a few snaps in the evening of the CN towers.What I found out that the photo was dull.I am yet to figure out why did it happen.
The second observation I had was the focus in easy mode.When I was shooting a few videos of orca whales in Marineland aquarium, the whales appeared fine in the video but the background was blured.
Probably some tweaking somewhere would help me.

Comments about Sony DCR-SR300 Digital Camcorder:

Good camera for the casual user who still wants good quality.

Comments about Sony DCR-SR300 Digital Camcorder:

We just started using it and I am still learning how to get the most out of it. So far, it seems like a great camcorder.
I didn't realize it was a touch screen even after reading the manual. I found the manual confusing and still find it difficult to understand.

Comments about Sony DCR-SR300 Digital Camcorder:

The product is great. The video clarity is very good. Also, the sound recording quality is brilliant. [...] Overall, the whole experience of buying and using has been great !!!

Comments about Sony DCR-SR300 Digital Camcorder:

At first , I found the camera was using the mpeg-2 format. In order to load it to your pc. You will need editing software that recognizes this format. I have found that the new pinnacle studio 11 editing software does this.

Expertise: Video editing movies for Internet

Problems Encountered: The only problem I encountered is I would like for the camcorder to have a mic in input instead of from the smart shoe.

Previous Equivalent Item Owned: Sony hdr-hc1 camcorder

Items I Recommend: purchase or upgrade to Pinnacle studio 11 software

Comments about Sony DCR-SR300 Digital Camcorder:

The DCR-SR300 camera has a lot of benefits, but a fewdrawbacks that I didn't expect. I purchased this camerabecause of three main features:1) The 40 GB internal hard disk, and the presumed ease ofediting that would come along with it.2) The native 16:9 sensor and high image quality.3) Good low-light performance.The camera itself is perfectly easy to use, and required nomore than 10 minutes or so to find all the settings andadjust them the way I wanted them. It's surprisingly smalland lightweight, and totally silent in operation. Ergonomically it's easy to hold and record, although thezoom button is very touchy. The zoom has two modes: slow,and very fast. If you're ok with really fast zooms, thiswill not bother you, but I find it difficult to produce thevery gentle level of force necessary to make it go slowly. Amore analog control would have been better, but this istolerable; plus, you can work around it by using thealways-slow zoom controls next to the LCD display.The picture quality is quite good, and I love the nativewide-screen sensor. The low light performance is about whatI expected, although in Nightshot mode, it sometimes losesautofocus and wanders around for a while trying to find thesubject. This is an all automated use camera -- it doeshave some manual controls, but they are buried away underthe touch screen menu, so aren't much value in real time.The camera does use interlaced images, of which I am no fan. Although for anything in the consumer price range, thisseems to be on par.One feature Sony touts on this camera is their smooth slowrecording which takes 3 seconds of video, and stretches itto 12 seconds for a slow effect. It does record slow andsmooth, but what they don't tell you is that it degrades thepicture quality while it does it. It's still an interestingfeature that has its uses, but it does not perform at fullquality. For most purposes, I expect slow motion is betterdone in post production to maintain image quality.Audio quality is good for the person using the camera tonarrate, but the mic is unidirectional, and there is no jackto add an external (non Sony proprietary) microphone. Themicrophone points up from the top of the camera, so it picksup a lot of ambient noise, and not a lot of the subject. Asimple mic input jack would make all the difference here,but unfortunately there is none. Again, in its price range,I don't think this is so unusual or bad, just less than whatI hoped for.The internal hard disk is really quite cool. Even set tothe highest quality mode, it holds something like 10 hoursof data -- way more than I would ever need for a singleproject. Moving the files to a computer is no trouble atall: just plug the camera into the included dock, attach USBcable from the dock to your computer. The camera shows upjust like any other hard disk. But once you have the filestransferred is where the pain starts for Mac users.The DCR-SR300 uses MPEG2 compression (I learned in thecourse of troubleshooting), which is not natively supportedon Mac OSX. Apple is kind enough to sell an MPEG2 decoderon their website for $20 which allows you to see the video,but unfortunately not hear the audio as well. I dug aroundthe net and found a decent and free tool to help with thiscalled Streamclip, and it seems to be the only workaroundfor this problem. Streamclip allows you to convert theMPEG2 files into an MPEG4 file that iMovie can understand,as well as deinterlace, etc. It's not a terrible solution-- it's actually pretty good, but it's far from the ease ofuse that I was hoping for.Overall I'm happy with the camera -- particularly the imagequality, but was displeased with the difficulty convertingthe file format to something the Mac would understand.