Review on 📹 Sony DCR-DVD308 1MP Handycam Camcorder with 25x Optical Zoom (Discontinued by Manufacturer) - Improved SEO by Tim Blandin

Disneyland tickets are expensive, so much so that my wife decided I should record memories in the form of moving images rather than photos , the price of the camcorder almost certainly didn't matter. If recording the Disney Experience costs me less than the Disney Experience itself, then the camera can be placed in the "acceptable collateral damage" column of my planned budget. The price of this camcorder isn't bad, but I decided that camcorder prices in general are a dishonest racket. The battery that comes with this camcorder lasts less than an hour of recording. If you are going to Disneyland, 45 minutes is not enough. You have to buy a big battery (I had the biggest, 10 hours) and for that you pay almost a third the price of this camcorder (less at Revain but I didn't have the luxury of waiting a few weeks they said it would last to get the battery). You need to buy a camera bag. You need to buy a charger. You'll need to buy at least six DVDs (giving you just under three hours of standard recording time). By the time I bought everything needed for the camcorder, I had spent about half the cost of the camcorder myself. Allow at least $200 more than the camcorder's price for accessories if you intend to take it on vacation. The collateral damage to your budget will always outweigh the price of the camera. However, this camcorder performed very well. It's very easy to use, and after a bit of practice I learned to record events with one hand and watch those events play out before my eyes and not just on the screen. That said, as soon as I turned on the camera, I could sometimes start watching my kids and stop looking at the video camera screen. Big score for the stabilization feature. The onscreen menus are easy to navigate and the screen is touch responsive. I didn't have to press too hard, and it didn't respond to my finger moving down a key on my way to the next. The picture quality is very good. The zoom function is very smooth and the 25x optical zoom is more than enough to capture your children's shocked and hilarious expressions as they plant their feet on blessed solid ground. And if you have to go with them, well I've had enough of friends and family with my clip of scenery whizzing by while my kids spin our cup of tea as fast as the mechanism will allow. I shot in standard quality and it looks fine on a 32" HDTV. It looks grainy on a 42-inch screen. Autofocus works fairly well when the lens isn't zoomed. I used it at full magnification in a large auditorium last month while singing in my son's kindergarten class. I sat about 150 feet behind me and the room was dark. He went in and out of focus. I pulled back the zoom and the focus settled down. The audio was good but I got tired of hearing my own whisper to my wife as I played the video. I would have preferred the microphone to pick up more sound in front of the camera and less sound from behind. If I had to do it all over again, I'd probably buy a hard disk camcorder rather than a mini DVD. video camera. DVDs are just extra things to carry around in your bag, and you will most likely need to replace the DVD at the wrong time (e.g. when your daughter finds out how long and wet a giraffe's tongue is). . If you're a Mac owner like me, you'll find that Sony camcorders work pretty well with iDVD and iMovie. But my 4 year old iMac doesn't support this camcorder. The newer ones work (we're updating, so it doesn't matter to us). The video software provided with the camcorder is for Windows only; It only supports still images on Mac. (Update above: No, newer Macs DO NOT support this camcorder. Uploading video to iMovie requires your camcorder to have a FireWire port or create MPEG4 files. This camcorder does not have a FireWire port and records in MPEG2 format .Correction, what I found is a program (like Popcorn2) that converts MPEG2 to MPEG4.It's not elegant and very annoying but it gets the job done.If you are a Mac owner, using another camcorder makes life easier .) Overall, I like this camcorder. I wish it had a bigger battery, charger (you can charge the battery in camera but it takes a lot longer) and Mac compatible software. And if this touchscreen had a coating that wasn't so easily soiled.