Sony Handycam DCR-HC36

Pros: 1- Very nice design (top side tape load); Colored viewfinder; Great touch screen; Video quality excelent and vivid colors; Resonable performance with low light

Cons: Lacks anolog inputs, specially a microfone jack

Summary: I bought this camera one week ago at Best Buy, paid $379 (plus taxes) and I'm very satisfied so far. With a good light environment it produces movies with brilhant color. With poor light its performance is good for home videos. In this case it presents some noise, but its ok, if you want great quality go for a professional camera. Sound is good too. You can dub you videos using digital input, mantaining the original sound. The stabilization engine lets you use the 20x zoom with almost no shaking. After practicing tou can do it perfectly. No zoom, no shake at all... About the software I didn't ply with it much. I'm going to use other softwares, and it has some relly good. Definitely you have to buy a firewire (1394) cable. Although they sell it for $20(!), or even $30 (!!) I bought a cable from ebay for 6 bucks and it works perfectly! I bough algo a sony case on amazon and paid only $15. For transfering the videos to computer I use the firewire cable and the WinDV software which is free, tiny, and works perfectly. To convert the movies from DV format to mpeg2 (DVD) I recommend CCE (Cinema Craft Softaware). Finally, I though the power switch a little trick, but thats ok. Sony could also make it a perfect camera by just putting a microfone jack on it... But I recommend this handycam for beginners and not so perfectionist hobbyists. The unique diferences between the lower price model (HC26) is the fact that the HC36 has a memory stick slot for VGA pictures and 320x240x30 mpeg1 video files (I like that). And the menu seems to be a little more, say, beautifull too. I rate this 9.5!