[Richard_T]

I've been in search of a good Mini DV camcorder for a while now. It started with the Samsung SCD-71. An alright cam but unfortunately, poor in low light and slim on features. Just recently, I bought a Canon Optura 300 camcorder. I have a few problems with it. First, though it has a 2 Megapixel digital camera built in, the pictures don't look half as good as the ones I take with my Kodak 2 meg digital camera. Second, it's also bad in normal to low light. I know I can set it to low light conditions but this slows the shutter speed such that the video stutters and is totally unwatchable.

I know there are allot of site out there that review these things but I'm looking for some first hand experience. Does anyone own a Mini DV camera that is good in normal to low (indoor) light? Let me know because I'm desperate.

[Daren Welsh]

I bought the Sony DCR-PC105 a couple months ago. I took it with me to Mardi Gras I decided to go with Mini DV over Micro DV for image quality, but with that in mind, I still wanted a really small camera for portability. I've read the Canon counterpart to my camera (not sure if it's the 300, but it's about the same price) has slightly better image quality, but doesn't do nearly as well in low-light. Since I know I'll shoot at night and in cloudy or indoor situations, I went with Sony. I've been really impressed with it so far, but then I might be biased based on the content of my recordings

For reference, I've found a couple sites that I like:

DV Spot
Camcorder Info

Not to thread-hijack, but now that I've got the camera, I have to learn the ropes for producing DVDs. It takes a lot more work than I anticipated, but once I get it down ... well, you can imagine where this is leading

[Drew Bethel]

Quite happy with my Panny GS-70...it has more manual controls than I care to even bother with.

[Scott Merryfield]

I own a Sony TRV22 that works very well in low light. It has an excellent lens and produces a high quality video recording. Like Daren's model, mine is quite compact so it is easy to carry around.

[Eric Samonte]

Got to camcorderinfo.com. Lots of reviews, user or otherwise. Help me out quite a bit when I was researching for one last year.