Sony HDR-SR12 10.2MP 120GB High Definition Hard Drive Handycam Camcorder with 12x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom

I've now had this camera for about a month now and I couldn't be happier. The video quality is STUNNING as well as the recording sounds. It comes with a base and proprietary power and video cords (both component-HD and composite, which means that they are not interchangable with over the counter video cords), but thats ok. It also has the software for transferring the videos and photos to your CPU. Back to the picture and sound... amazing really. The sound records in 5.1 surround which is so cool, plus you have many options on the video such as night vision, black and white, sepia, old movie mold, etc and some of them you can combine (I did night vision with black and white to make a short zombie movie, it looks wicked). There are so many possibilities with this cam. The play back is all touch screen, which the screen can get smeared by fingerprints (easy to wipe out), but I suggest buying a stylus. Of course if you hook it to your television, it does come with a remote control, and you can do everything with that remote except for deleting images. But that is a positive because you don't want to accidentally delete your images. And it does ask for you to confirm deleting so it's hard to do that accidentally.Plus, it's a great photography camera. With the flick of a thumb you can change from filming to photographer easy and it takes crystal clear pictures in 10.5 mega pixel. Although I do find it a bit awkward to reach the photo button. Now it takes better picture in photo mode, then it do in filming mode (While filming you can snap a picture also),Another word on the night vision, I had all the lights off and it films in that greenish color sort of like the movie Cloverfield. But even filming at night without the night vision on, it picks up everything. I had a buddy drive at night, while I was shooting and the only lights were coming from headlights and streetlamps (when we passed them) and you saw everything on the camera that you could see with you naked eye and I even thought it was better than my eye.Now when you film and take pictures, it organizes the images according to date and when you film several scenes it will play them one after another without a bit of a pause. The camera also has little doors on the back and the side so you can hook up your cords without the base, which is good. Also inside of one of the doors are an hdmi output, a headphones output and a mic input. I ran my iPod through the mic input to make a music video and it turned out great (although be sure not to have your iPod any louder than half).The camera also has a one touch DVD burning button on the camera and the base, but I haven't used it yet.The only real negative is that the battery only last 90 minutes, but I bought a bigger battery, which last 14 hours. That battery weighs as much or more than the camera (the camera is really light) and it sticks out the back some but that isn't really that big of a deal.The software is pretty smart. You hook the camcorder with the use of the provided usb cable (after loading the software) and it finds the camcorder and asks if you want to transfer all the items to your computer. But the cool thing is that you can keep those images on your camcorder after transfer, film other stuff, hook you camera back up to the computer and it will only transfer items that haven't been transferred yet. This is good because you don't have to try to figure out what has or haven't been transfer and you don't get dup copies, or that annoying message about whether you want to overwrite a file. And it organizes by date and you can do a total calendar view and see what dates you filmed on. When it organized and transfer to your CPU, it organized by date filmed, not date transfer, which is extremely helpful, especially if you visit multiple locations during multiple dates.This is really the last camcorder you will possibly buy for many many years. The only thing is that it has so many cool accessories you can buy, like wide-angle lenses, telescopic lenses, attachable lights, and underwater case etc that you may eventually end up with a $2500-3000 total purchase when you are done. The accessories are not a necessity but they do look like a lot of fun.Auto focusing can be a pain at times, but it does have a manual focus, which you can set to infinity and if you zoom, set it up on a tripod.Oh and one last thing, I actually filmed something for 5 minutes that was playing on my plasma in HD and it look as if its the movie itself.

Received camera with battery installed, but camera was in the “on” position and therefore battery is dead. Charger was supposed to be included, but nothing else was in the box, so I do not know if the battery is good or not. A small piece of cardboard was taped to the lens with blue painters tape as there was no lens cap. I feel like I have been ripped off as I paid $280 for this and I can’t even tell if it works. Buyer beware.

I've had this camera now for about 2 weeks. I love it. It's small, light and the battery it comes with lasts long enough for me. However I did buy a Sony case which came with a smaller battery. The other day I was at an outsite restaruant with a perosn singing and playing guitar. Since it was at night the light was very low. The video and audio came out awesome. This camera does very well in low light. The software it came with is okay for simple viewing and some small edits (can crop lenght only I think, can't murge files). I was able to find a plug for Adobe Premeier however I have not yet had a chance to test it. It's a great camera with a nice feel of quality. If you have an older Sony camera and purchaced the optional lenses, they should fit.The only negative I have found so far is that you can not send video into this camera, such as another camera or VCR. I have an older Canon minidv camera which has inputs so you can back up old analog tapes to digital. For example, older 8mm tapes. I still have the Canon so this in not really an issue for me.I'm heading to France next week with my wife and I'm looking forward to taking this every where I go.

I moved from a Sony Hi-8 camera that we had for 5 years prior to this, and the first word out of my mouth was "Wow!"The tape-based camera was great for an NTSC camera. The video and audio quality were great for home movies and the occasional training videos that I used it for at work. Aside from the fact that it was a standard def picture, the biggest complaint was for the need for tapes. Needless to say, that old camera is now gathering dust.No tapes, no memory cards means that you can take hours and hours of video without having to worry about missing anything (except when your battery runs out, so keep a spare).The 1080i video from this camera is great. For those who are looking for professional quality video, I doubt that any consumer model is going to do it, but this camera comes very close. People choose point-and-shoot cameras for convenience, and DSLRs for quality. To expect otherwise is to fool yourself. However, I have not been disappointed by this camera for shooting video. The size and weight are great. It's not too small or too light to give you shaky videos, and it's small enough to fit into a small camera bag.The low light shots are still good, but a little grainy - as expected. You can use night shot mode, but then you get that eery effect. The daytime shots are better than anything that I've seen on my satellite HD channels. AVCHD still looks better than that super-compressed MPEG4 video that they're transmitting on satellite. The colors are vibrant, and the video is quite realistic. We recently used this to record a cooking demonstration at work, and the closeups, even on a cheap 720p 32" television were clear and detailed so that people 20' away could easily see what was going on. The camera's LCD display even had better picture quality than the television itself! I like the touch screen display to keep the camera's looks clean, without cluttering it with tons of buttons.Although I prefer to use a DSLR to take still photos, the HDR-SR12 takes really nice pictures. The flash is quite bright, and the photos come out very crisp and vibrant. The Sony software utilities even allow you to take hi-res still shots out of the video, which is quite nice. Sometimes, during video, you see a shot that would make a great still shot, and you can easily extract it.The Sony utilities are a nice way to download the videos and stills from the camera. It's a nice way to browse your collection, and supports converting files to other formats. It's a little slow, but fortunately, the latest version of Adobe Premier Elements handles AVCHD natively. However, you will need at least a dual-core processor to handle video editing at HD. Even then, it's very processor intensive, and you'll notice skips in audio and video as you try to work with the clips. Of course, converting to MPEG2 resolves those problems completely, but who wants low-res video except for on the Internet?The standard battery that comes with it is good for about 1.5 hours of recording. I bought a second one that gets me almost 2.5 hours of recording. With just 2 batteries, you can handle most tasks.I did have a problem with static using a Sony wireless mic, but I think that it's the mic's fault, and not the camera's.A feature that at first seemed gimmicky to me was the face recognition. It recognizes faces, and indexes them so that you can quickly view clips that have that person in them. It's nice to be able to go through lots of video on the camera, find a family member, and play a specific clip of them.Although this is a great camera, I do have a few reservations that keep me from giving it 5 stars:1) I had to get a separate battery charger to avoid carrying around a huge AC adapter.2) What happens when the hard drive fails? We all know that it will some time, but if you don't back up, you'll lose everything. It doesn't seem like a user-serviceable part either.3) I had to buy the mini HDMI cable separately.4) My computer's hardware is barely able to work with AVCHD video. That means that I'd have to consider going to a quad-core one to get better performance (assuming that the software can handle the extra processors). This isn't necessarily the camera's fault, but hi-def video is just cpu-intensive.5) No easy way to make hi-def videos for friends and families who don't have a computer, Blu-ray players or memory card readers for their TVs.6) Trying to the videos on a Mac (or an older PC) was a nightmare because you have to convert to MPEG2 before doing anything... There may be affordable software for the Mac that can support AVCHD by now.Overall, this is the camera that I wanted, and still would buy again if I had the choice. I've had it for 7 months, and have not regretted it.