Sony Handycam DCR-DVD105E Camcorder

Our first camcorder was a JVC vhs-c format camcorder. I loved it; it worked great for us and was so easy to use. Then along came a couple of 4 year old curious hands, and the camcorder was destroyed! I was sickened because our camcorder was only 4 years old and was perfect.

We took off to Circuit City and Best Buy one night to find an identical replacement. When we got to Best Buy, we were shocked at how many advancements had been made to camcorder technology just in 4 years! Our wonderful vhs-c camcorder was practically obsolete...they had ONE model available! We thought since things were advancing so fast that maybe we should go ahead and advance, too. As bad as I hated to spend more than we had planned, we were really intrigued by the mini dv camcorders the salesman showed us.

So..long story short...we bought it. We bought the DCR-DVD105 model and some blank mini dv's to use in it for recording. Holy cow...and I thought our JVC was easy to use..this thing sounds and looks complicated but it really isn't! It takes a little more work since you are using mini dvd's but it's not hard at all. (You have to prepare the disk before using and finalize it afterward, but it just literally takes seconds to do). I always say that if I can figure something out, anyone can! And I figured this out right away.

When your disk is ready to start recording, just turn the camcorder to "on" , open up the LCD screen and push the record button. When you want to stop, just push the record button again. (the record button is labeled "start/stop"). Simple.

You can actually do a lot of functions by touching your LCD screen..how cool is that! When you first power on your camcorder and open up the LCD screen, you'll see different options on it; for instance, the menu button. Touch that and all the options come up on the screen. When you want to review what has been recorded, you will see several different still images of "scenes" (visual index) showing on the display. Each scene will take a turn "playing" while still showing the other still scenes. You can chose a scene or go to the top, choose the first one and it will play every scene in order.

You can start shooting again any time you desire. You don't have to rewind before starting, since recorded images are stored on empty areas of the disk. You won't accidentally "record over" your precious images! :)

When you want to play back your images, you can finalize the disk and play it back on your regular dvd player on your tv or play it back on your computer screen. The disks may not be compatible with all CD-roms or all DVD players, but they were compatible with ours. Or if you're not ready to finalize your disk, you can just use the supplied cord to attach the camcorder to your tv/vcr and play it back that way without ever removing the disk.

On our old camcorder, we had to remove the battery and put it on a charger to charge..not this one! All you do is plug the power cord in, plug the other end into an outlet and you're ready to charge it up. You don't have to remove the battery from the camcorder.

This camcorder features a Carl Zeiss lens, which (according to my manual) was developed jointly by Carl Zeiss in Germany and Sony Corporation and produces superior images.

Each disk gives you up to 60 minutes of recording time. If you use the double sided disks, you can record up to 60 minutes on each side.

We have now had this camcorder over a year, and I use it ALL the time and have absolutely no complaints about it whatsoever. If a couple of curious 4 year old hands ever get ahold of this one, I'll be looking for an identical replacement!