Polaroid CAA-03040S 3.0 MP Digital Video Camera

This camer is ok for a beginner. I had an old JVC vhs camcorder which is lower quality than this one, so I'm happy with this product. I needed an inexpensive DV recorder, plus this one takes great pictures too. The lighting is KEY with this camera. The night shot is useless as it does help with the brightness for the video, but it's really really jerky. Don't even bother shooting in dark environments. The still like I said are great, but again.. darkness is an issue. It does have a flash though, so that helps a little. Price for this camera was the key selling point. If the camera was terrible, I didn't lose much, but I'm happy with it. I have recorded about 5 minutes of video and taken 11 stills since I changed the batteries so far and it still says full battery. You will want to get a couple pairs of good rechargables though. AA's was another key point. I prefer it over Lithium Batters with A/C charger. If you forgot to charge your cam you're out of luck, but AA's can be bought at any convienience store in a pinch! The zoom on this is digital, so when you're zooming in during a video, it does have a little herky jerky motion, but all in all it's ok. The mic is placed on the TOP of the camera.. that's a small issue. It will pick the camera man up very well if/when they speak, but the subjects will be muffled/hard to hear. You'll want to tell your subjects to speak louder than normal to get them nice and clear. There is an small power button under the LCD enclosure. If the camera is on, just tap the power button and it turns on the Video Light (not much help, but it's there.) The polariod website says this cam can only read up to a 1gb SD card. This is false. You can use a 2gb which gives about 40 minutes of video. Transfering the files to the computer is a no brainer. Although the camera is a little slow to transfer them to the cpu. You may want a good SD card reader if transfer time is an issue for you unless your tower has one built in already. 80mb video file took about 2 minutes to transfer over for me directly from the camera. The videos the camera does make are relativley large in size, so you'll want a good video editing software to compress them and whatnot. I have not yet transfered my videos to DVD, but i'm sure I'll get what I paid for. Definitly a beginner's camera.. A pro would not be very happy with quality / function. I'd recommend this to anyone that needs a beginner camera and doesn't want to spend hundreds on a bigger model.