I made the transition from Hi-8 to Hard Drive Disk (HDD) after an intensive review of all available options. Consumer Reports recently reviewed this camcorder and placed it at the top of it's list.

Very good low light video...and excellent outdoor video.

The still photography is not that good when compared to the same megapixel resolution taken from my digital SLR camera (as expected). Some reviews led me to believe I was in for a treat when I used the camera for still photography.

Overall I am very pleased. I recorded an entire week of family vacation; and still have >50% hard drive space remaining. The one-touch DVD record button allowed for EASY transfer off all videos for the grandparent's copy.

Highly recommended.

I bought this camera because I was tired of lugging around both a camcorder and a hi resolution digital camera. I have had it for a month now, and it fits well for what I wanted. The photos are very sharp and the video is what you would expect from Sony. I do agree that not having a view finder is a disadvantage, but overall I am very happy with this camera. The best part about Sony products are the rechargable batteries. The camera tells you how much time you have left, and the batteries actually work for the amount of time you need them to. Other cameras I have owned have been nightmares due to poor battery performance.

We had a 5 or 6 year old camcorder that was heavy and out of date with todays camera technology.

Three weeks ago we were preparing to go on a two week cruise through the Panama Canal and I did my research and decided to purchase this camera for our trip. Let me tell you it was wonderful. We got the camera about 4 days before we left and my husband read up on the instructions. The camera is very easy to operate and we loved the fact that it took videos as well as digital pictures. The hard drive is so big there was plenty of room on the camera for all our pictures. We took over 400 pictures on our trip and only used less than 20% of the hard drive. The pictures are great and we came home and hooked the camera up to our 40 inch TV and watched all the pictures and they were great. Camera was light (about 3-4 lbs) and easy to carry around. Battery lasted at least an hour and a half while we videoed going through the Canal and stopped to charge it for 1/2 hour and had 55 minutes of battery to go back and film more of our trip through the Canal.

Amazon's price was also at least about $[...] less than everyone else.

We are very pleased with this camera and would recommend it to anyone who wants to upgrade and have both a video camera and digital camera.

I'm a Mac user and was having a hard time finding a hard disk camcorder that would work with Macs and Mac software. Long story short: Have an Intel based Mac, load the most current OSX software, (not necessarily Leopard) and invest in ILife 08. This Sony DCR-SR300 has worked seemlessly for me.

Also, in my opinion, all this negativity about IMOVIE 08 is (rhymes with "pull" and "Hit"). I'm finding it quite innovative and fun to use.

Pros: Easy to use, great pictures

Cons: over 3000 meters (9800 feet) can ruin camera. Can't drive the freeway west of Denver!! Owners manual is poor. Camera has no external microphone jack. Can't film from an airplane in turbulence or from a vehicle on a rough road without potentially damaging hard drive.

If all you want is to shoot lots of video around home, this is a great camera. However, it is not for the serious outdoors person, and none of the reviews I read talked about that before I bought the camera. Also, there is no map of the features in the owners manual. It has the picture and numbers, but no description! You have to search through the pages to find where that number is discussed.

I have enjoyed every minute of this camera, I never ever been even remotely frustrated with it after 8 months of flawless operation.

The first night I did a test recording of my dogs and in what is considered low light conditions. After I stopped recording, I placed the camera on its docking station and INSTANTLY transfered the video.

It was a great feeling being able to immediately watch and edit that video on my computer. Not only that, but the low light quality was great. It wasnt grainy or blurry.

The still shots this camera delivers are pretty incredible. I got a chance to take pictures( not even in macro mode) of a dragonfly. When it was downloaded to the computer, the picture was so clear I could see the most incredible detail of its wings and eyes. It was awesome.

I even got a chance to film HOURS of family video for my father in laws 60th birthday. We made a Roast event and comedy skits for him which we burned to DVD. It could have only been done so easily with this camera.

Summary:

1.) Rocording and transfering to computer is a breeze.

2.) Still Pictures are great.

3.) Hard Drive size gave me 8 hours of continuous recording in high quality mode.

4.) Fits easy in the hand and is not cumbersome.

Only downfalls:

1.) Once video has been removed from the camera, you cant put it back on.

2.) Stills taken while recording can be lower quality. The flash does not go off so make sure you have plenty of light.

The DCR Sr300 replaces my Sony Digital 8 and has not disappointed. The HDD uploads via USB cable at impressive speed ( 2 minutes for one hour of video). The file format is recognized by DVD authoring software ( another real time saver). The supplied software is very user friendly and intuitive to use. Video quality is superb. The supplied NP FH60 battery affords 100 minutes recording time; spend the extra $$$ and purchase the NP FH70;however it only supplies 170 minutes of recording time, not the 6 hours stated on the promo (to be fair to Sony, the DCR SR 300 manual clearly makes this point). Have not tested all the fancy features yet, but initial impressions are very positive. Am glad to be unburdened by buying/converting/storing endless tapes. Highly recommend this Camcorder at first blush

This is a great camera. I absolutely love it. The still pictures it takes in photo mode are fantastic and the video as well as the audio quality is very good. It has trouble in lower light situations. Gives a grainy image in low light, which is to say in the house in the morning when some lights should be on but aren't or at dusk. I bought the light that goes with it so that isn't a problem anymore. Battery lasts a long time and the cradle is such a good idea. When the camera is in the cradle it is charging and hooked up to the computer. Instant viewing of videos just shot or make a dvd right after shooting.
You can take pictures while shooting video but they are not nearly as good of quality as when you have it in photo mode.
The only improvement I could think of that they could do is have the light built into the camera.
Here's a heads up---- I got a battery off of Ebay for $23. The NPH100 equivalent. It had a dumb cord that had to plug into the camera and then I found out that the camera wouldn't charge that battery at all ???? Sent it back and got a reasonably priced SONY battery off of Amazon.com which worked great.

Work have like to run on my mac out of box,but main problem is cannot find option to remove date/time
stamp from played back movies,very annoying to see this so large on all playback with seconds changing.
Would like to be able to just add date at beginning on video then remove like on my old vhs camcorders. Dennis

This purchase my first try at a digital video camera (our last was a VHS camera nearly 20 years ago). So after reviewing options about digital tape and mini-dvd, it seemed that the disk drive camera would be the better option. This has proved to be the case. This camera is easy to use. I am able to record quickly with virtually no waiting. File transfer was easy (home XP), and I created a dvd on my computer very easily. I have no regrets on this purchase. Quality of the image is great. I would have liked an eyepiece option, but the screen works fine.

after 6 months usage this in outdoor trips and capturing my new baby's moments ,it is great as video cam,great sound capturing ,high performance in sun ,light days ,and good in night.

the downloading of pictures is great and fast ,but the software is not that helpful "download the videos in folder under the day of download not capturing,but u can life with that .

the only thing we didn't feel completely satisfied is the still photos quality "come blur and full of noise""and change the true color saturation of dark or rich colors,so it doesn't give a picture with a true 8 mega pixel ,it's worse than a 3MP still digital photo canon camera,although it's better than other digital sony still picture cam "with a friend".

it also takes a few second to focus if moved fast during recording becuse of the auto focus feature"it's less in panasonic video cameras with manual focus"
we compared this one with a lot of other, and it was the best 4 price under 1000$ with hard disc that save time in downloading,and great size capacity i did't even format it after 6 months usage.good shape and size even with my small hands.

This is our first camcorder. We spent a lot of time researching and reading reviews before making our selection. We want to thank each of you who took the time to write a review on this site, believe me when I say it greatly influenced our decision. The camera is light weight and easy to hold. The screen size is very good for "old eyes" and we really like the touch screen feature. Do take the time to download and read the owners manual. We actually printed ours out and put it in a ring binder. This camera will do a lot of really neat things if you know how to use it. If you are going to a lot of still shots with this camera you need something other than the basic program that comes with it. Get a good photo program to handle the still shots, we use adobe, but there are many out there. I think this camera takes as good a still shot as my Kodak 5mp still camera and am very pleased with the shots I am getting with it. For movies we use the Windows movie maker, I'm sure there are better programs out there but it is simple to use and already on the computer. We also use a "smart cards" for still photos, easier to download to the computer as it has a card slot. Don't know why sony elected to make their cards so you have to use an adaptor, we just use the standard size, same cards we use for our Kodak. We have had our share of messed up video and still shots, but not once has it been the camera's fault. We really used the camera a lot over the holidays, and can see a real improvement over the course of several weeks. This is a great camera, we anticipate many years of use and enjoyment. Highly recommend.

Pros:-
Delivered ontime and in perfect condition.
Easy to use touch screen interface.
Hard disk makes tapes and dvd's unnessesary.
Good picture in night mode.
Egonomically the camcorder is very nice. Comfortable to hold.
Records in standard mpeg format so transfering and playing files is easy.
Supplied software cataloges all media in monitored folders and shows them in calender format. Very nice to finding the files you want.

Cons:-
Low light shooting isnt as good as with my old sony 405 dvd camcorder.
Picture isnt as good as with the sony 405 dvd camcorder. Its still a good picture though.


Minor Annoyances:-
Now view finder so you have to use the screen to record.

The battery that comes with the camcorder only lasts about 90 mins. This doesnt sound to bad but when recording your kids opening presents on christmas day beleive me you wish you had more battery life.

You need the supplied docking station to charge the camcorder and to connect to the pc to transfer file off.

Very light weight, easy to use. I was a little surprized that I would have to turn a knob in order to do still photos, (and hence exit video mode,) but otherwise, it's been good. Haven't really tested the still photo feature since it is somewhat inconvenient, and I haven't gotten used to it yet. Am having difficulty with the auto focus feature, not focusing all the time in the "easy" mode. Sound is good, though I noticed that if people turn their head away from the camera, they can't be heard nearly as well, and in some cases, can't be heard at all if they are "soft spoken." Rechargeable battery is rather large (more box shaped than rectangular, therefore, less easy to stow away in a camera bag) but gives a good 90 minutes of use before needing recharge. I like that it segments each video whenever the pause button/record mode button is pushed..as this allows me to delete the not-so-great parts.

The still images the camera takes look very nice, but I have problems with the movies it records. I finally got past the mpeg2 problem by buying the mpeg 2 quicktime plugin from Apple ($20) although iMovie 08 could import them too. No matter what I do the image quality of the movies is very grainy when run at full screen. I thought it was the conversion that imoview was doing so thats why i bought the quicktime plugin. Now there is no conversion at all, i can play the movies directly in quicktime. when i play the movie at a size suitable for web pages they look great, but if i play them at full screen, they look horrible.

SAVE YOUR MONEY AND BUY A minDV recorder! the image quality on those recorders is SO MUCH BETTER.

The camera takes nice, sharp video and can survive a 60-70mph downhill skiing journey at 10 degrees F (not sure what the windchill was, but it was cold!) and still function like a champ. If I had to choose one feature to complain about, it would be the auto-focus...blurs the image too often and takes 10-45 seconds to clear up in some situations. Our video of Xmas morning was quite blurry at times (as were my eyes : )...but overall I truly am more than pleased with the camera in manual mode. The touchscreen LCD panel is an awesome touch : ) and is easy to use.

I recommend purchasing a tripod/lense/cleaner kit as well if you don't already have the equipment, especially the carrying bag...don't want anything to happen to my new favorite camera.

After viewing a few camcord information, I found the Sony DCR-SR300 a wonderfull video camara. As soon I got it in my hands, I started doing some films. The picture cuality is very very good. This video camara gives you good films even without light. I love it I recomend this 100%

I have had this camera for over four months. I bought it primarily to record my daughter's various performances. I was concerned about recording in low light, the sound quality and ease of downloading, as well as the actual quality of the video. I would give it 5 stars for everything, except the sound quality, which is good, but not great. I don't think you can expect the quality to be great without separate recording equipment. "High quality" footage is surprisingly filmlike. The camera is very easy to use - I've only had to refer to the documentation a couple of times, for instance to download. Making a DVD is a snap. I like the touchscreen and don't mind the docking station. I'd rather have the camera be as small as it is so I can throw it in my purse. And it is light enough to shoot a two hour show without a tripod if you have a steady enough hand. I never thought it would substitute for my point and shoot digital, but the pictures are good enough to do that, as well. I would definitely spend the money again, if I had it to do over.

Camera is easy to use. Takes great pics and video. Pics during filiming are not as clear as choosing to take pics only. The 6.1 pix pics look great. Shutter speed is good. Transfers media easily to the computer. I have not used the camera DVD burn option yet. The software the comes with the camers looks like it will make the burning easy.

Excellent choice
Video - great
still photos - very good
40GB Hard Disk - Cool
Display, Touch Screen - nice...
Battery could have given which can last bit more. Currently it lasts for 100 - 120 mins