Very pleased so far

Having owned a number of Sony camcorders over the last 20 years I have not been disappointed by the HDR-HC7.I selected an HDV model rather than an AVCHD as I believe that the footage is easier to edit and simpler to archive than its hard disk equivalent. It is also the medium currently chosen by professional industry.

I am used to using a number of manual controls when I need to, particularly exposure, white balance and focus and the manual overides provided on the HC7 have met all my needs so far. I have read quite a few reviews which critisize the touch screen menu's but I find them very easy to use and extremely flexible. Without this approach I think it would be hard to provide such a comprehensive and flexible interface to the camcorders facilities.

I have also found the manual control ring quite easy to use. I usually set it to exposure as the camcorder usually seems to focus quite accurately unless the lighting levels are very low or there is very little contrast. The Zebra facility is very useful as is AE shift. It is also useful to be able to manually set the recording sound levels instead of using AGC. The camera is easy and comfortable to use and the optical steady shot works much better than the electronic steady shot on some of my previous camcorders.The build quality is comparable to my other Sony camcorders which have all given me a sterling service over the years

Needless to say the picture and sound performance is excellent particularly in HDV. Battery life on the provided battery is quite good but I have also invested in an NP-FH100 for filming long events.

It would have been nice if the camcorder had a built in ND filter and had been provided with a seperate battery charging unit to allow batteries to be put on charge when the camera is being used. However these are very minor points. I would recommend it to anybody who is looking to capture high quality HD material without having to spend a couple of thousand pounds on a pro camcorder.

A fairly good tripod, suitable for most applications.

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Sony"M" Series Battery Charger

Having searched everywhere for one of these chargers, which in my opinion, should have been supplied with the camera, I was thrilled to have found one on Amazon. It works great, and allows me to charge one battery whilst I'm off filming with the camera. Not only that, you can use the charger as a spare power supply for the camera! Freedom at last... A must have for any"M" Series battery video camera. Comes complete with all the required cables. Best value for money this year!

Great Little Cam

If you want a great little camera that provides fantastic quality and good image control combined to a small discrete size, then you could do far worse. This is a great little camera.
Benefits from the 2 XLR inputs for excellent sound quality. White balance control is pretty good too. Chuck on a half decent InfraRed light and the night shoot is pretty good (the units own one is a bit weak).
1080i is good and the option of DVCAM is very useful.
Great in an underwater housing too as it's so controllable.

Not really quite a fully pro camera but very useful for a consumer, pro-summer, or pro.
I'd gone off Sony for a while until using this.. nice job.

MSX-M16GS Doesn't work with my Sony Camera

Bought this card hoping that I can use it with my brand new Sony T900 digital camera but was shocked that my camera wouldn't accept it, kept getting error message on my camera saying reinsert"memory stick" tried everything but no joy, that is suppose to be Mark 2 device which supports all the latest cameras, very disappointing.

huge capacity but big and heavy

It lasts for ages in our Sony digital8 camcorder. It's pretty big and heavy, and sticks out of the back quite a way, but it still gets 5 stars, because I knew about the size. That's the whole point. There's a whole lot of battery in there, and it lasts for ages!

No problems at all

I bought this to go in my Sony Ericsson S700i mobile phone and it works exactly as it should. You can also get an adapter (doesn't come with this, I got mine with my mobile phone but I think you can get them off Amazon) which you plug these into to turn them into a standard-sized Sony Memory Stick (which I use to plug this into my USB card reader as my reader doesn't take the Memory Stick Duo but does take standard Sony Memory Sticks - this works fine and I use it to transfer files such as MP3s to my phone - much quicker than using bluetooth). Overall I'm impressed!

its NOT what you think it is!!! BEWARE!!!

This auction is apparently for a SONY 4GB MEMORY STICK and NOT for the SONY LCS-TGB case for TG3E, TG7!! I fell this for apparent bargain and only got the news when the seller emailed me! not happy at all! this should be taken off! false advertising!

Sony NP-FS11 batteries have very poor lifetime

My 1 star rating is for Sony, NOT Amazon! In fact, I would have picked 0 stars, if this had been an option. I'm having to buy a new battery for my DSC505V even though I've not had the camera for more than 18 months. It seems that Sony have admitted that there is a problem with this battery when used with the DSC P1 camera (see their website), but they won't accept that the same problem exists with other cameras that use it. When charged, the camera reports a goodly number of minutes left for about a minute, but then suddenly shows 'low battery' on the display, shutting down shortly thereafter. I cannot believe that a modern NiMH battery is kaput after so short a life - the same technology is used on mobile phones, and look how long they last!! I'm sure it is to do with the (too clever, in my opinion) serial communication that the battery has with the camera. Now, I'm no cynic, but could it be that Sony have defined that the battery must not last longer than a certain number of charges, so as to boost their accessory sales? It wouldn't surprise me, given their off-handed response to this customer when I questioned their service guys. This is their problem, because the next Digi-cam I buy will NOT be made by Sony and I know I am not alone in feeling this.