This camera is an "excellent" piece of equipment. It produces amazing images and will do for the beginner. Sound quality is good when using the internal microphone and better when using a high quality external microphone. Wind noise is easier to control with an external microphone. Taking nature shots in a quiet place is a problem with the sound. Will be discussed in the user manual. The camera picks up machine noise on-camera when there isn't enough noise to transport it off-camera. This also happens with a good non-Canon external microphone attached to the camera's shoe. A mini boom for attaching an external microphone can be a solution that makes the camera quieter and lets the birds chirp. This is a great camera and I would recommend it to anyone. It keeps hours of video at the highest resolution (1080p) and highest frame rate (30fps). I wonder if VIXIA flash drive models without a mechanical hard drive have machine noise when recording in a quiet environment? This won't be important to everyone, but if it's important to you, check your flash drives. The compromise would be 32 GB flash for a 60 GB hard drive.