I purchased this camcorder on March 22 as a replacement to my Sony DCR-TRV8 Digital8 camcorder that I had for 9 years. My first impression when the box arrived (ordered it from a website) was how small the package was. I thought maybe they sent the wrong item or something. When I opened the shipping box, inside was the Sony retail box. When I opened the Sony box, I was amazed at how small the camcorder was compared to my original Hi8 camcorder I had been used to. My how technology has changed in 9 years. My DCR camcorder was almost the same price back in 1999 as the SR12 is today at about 1/2 the size with HiDef capabilities. What kind of technology will we have 9 years from now:) I have been playing around with the camcorder for a couple of days now and am still learning the camcorder. These are my impressions of it so far:

Love the touch screen menu options. Instead of trying to scroll through options with a flywheel or buttons, you lightly touch the screen. The menu options seem intiative and easy to use. The downside to this is that I'm afraid you might damage the screen. Also, if you have large fingers, you might have a problem with this (a stylet would be great but there isn't one with this). Don't know how durable this screen is. Right now I'm handling it with kid gloves. The other downside to this is that you have to have the screen on in order to go through menus which uses up battery life. Suppose there really wasn't any other way of designing this and still keep the same size.

Don't like the fact there is no over the shoulder strap for this. You have a hand strap and the camcorder is small enough for the smallest hands to hold on to but I always liked the idea of having a "backup" shoulder strap around my shoulders in case the camcorder slipped out of my hands it wouldn't drop on the ground. After all, this is a $1400 toy.

When holding the camcorder with the hand strap, it seems ackward to turn on and off the camcorder with my thumb. You have to rotate the switch to "on" and then press the red center button to start recording. I seems easier to use my other hand to do this task which isn't convenient. I don't know, maybe it's just me.

When filming in low light situations, the camcorder has a very difficult time autofocusing. This is the most negative thing about the camcorder. This I noticed right away and was very disappointed at how long it took to focus. I had to continue to zoom in and out couple of times in order for it to focus. Of course you can bypass the autofocus and manually focus but you have to go through the menu options on the screen to do this. It doesn't seem like you can over ride the autofocus by turning the focus button. Not exactly convient if you are going for a spontaneous quick shot of something. But on the other hand, it focuses very fast and accurate in adequate lighting.

Like the docking station that comes with this. You set the camcorder on top of the it and plug the docking station to your computer with the supplied USB cable and with the installed software instantly download what you have on your HDD or memory card. No going through menu options on the camcorder or anything. This is quick and easy which is nice.

Like the hybrid option of recording to the hard drive or memory stick. Tried both out works great. You have to go through the menu options on the touchscreen to "tell" the camcorder what you want to record to.

The photos it takes are outstanding. The video is HD quality. Experimenting around with it, the face detection technology even works with faces on the TV screen. But for some reason it doesn't work on cats:)

Really haven't tried out the software yet or tried to burn the videos or photos to CD's so I can't comment on this yet.

All in all a great little camcorder. I still have a lot to experiment around with but think I will enjoy this as an upgrade to my previously beloved DCR camcorder.

I'll keep this short and sweet... After "purchasing" and "returng" camcorders to different stores in my area; FINALLY I found what I was looking for in a video camera... I just cannot begin to explain how crystal clear this camera shoots... Everyone I show the previews on the screen to want to either buy one or jokingly tell me if they can have my camera... The kicker is that it behaves extremely well in low-light situations... the best I've seen so far (and the reason why I returned so many camcorders after trying them out for a couple of days)... This is a no-brainer... The Sony HDR-SR12 is THE camcorder to get... Recording in space saving SP is incredible but when I switch to the highest setting (FH) the picture details became almost three dimensional... The fact that it has a Carl Zeiss lens doesn't hurt either... Beware who you buy online from as I did get burned by a New York based internet company (who shall remain unnamed... NOT AMAZON mind you)... They played a major bait and switch where I ended up paying at least $200 overprice... but oh well, live and learn... buy it here on Amazon and play it safe... 5 Star Camcorder and I can't even imagine how much any company can improve on image quality in the future after seeing what the SR12 can do!

You will like this camera a lot until you hook it up to your computer, and then you'll be looking for new software. If you're already into AVCHD compatible software then it shouldn't be a problem. Figure out the software options and feel good about that before you buy, and you will probably love the camera. If you do figure out the best software option please post it so I'll know. You can find the manuals for this camera online to get more information before you buy. Google Sony esupport.

So far, great experience with this camera. The resolutions are a little misleading if you are an HD techo-babble fan. It says it supports 1920x1080i on the side of the camera, but there's no such resolution. 1080i content is 1440x1080, while 1080p is 1920x1080. If you don't care or don't know the difference then don't sweat it, but if you are looking for 1080p using h.264 then this camera isn't it.

Back to the topic at hand. The information pages for this camera don't specifically say it is supported by Macs but I can confirm that it works with my Leopard install and that iMovie '08 detects the camera and offers to import the clips. This is all without having to download or install any software or drivers from Sony. If you are interested, the camera shows up as a mounted external drive and can be navigated like any other drive.

iMovie cross-converts the .mts files to .mov files and puts them on your local harddrive. .mts files are super compressed and for a variety of technical reasons most video editing software can't handle them in that format so they have to be converted. This conversion ends up increasing the file size by about 5x.

I've read elsewhere that the converted files can be up to 10x as big but the ones I converted this afternoon all came off the HD and onto mine in the new format 5x bigger in about 20 minutes. I'm on an 8 core macpro with 8 gig of ram so your conversion rates may vary, I have no idea how much hardware iMovie actually can take advantage of.

If you have final cut pro you can also obviously edit with these newly converted files. It wouldn't even let me drop the .mts files into a FCP timeline as it will with some other flavors of h.264.

The camera itself is a little off in its auto-white balance and its shutter is constantly a little too dark for my tastes but for the normal consumer I doubt you'll have any real complaints in there areas. The camera also has a built-in down convert to SD resolution with a simple RCA cable out of the camera and into your ancient tube TV.

This camcorder is phenomenal! The shots are beautiful and clear - the auto focus is very intuitive. The sound is fantastic. I love this camcorder. This takes very high grade professional videos in HD. I love that it shoots in widescreen.

I haven't had any problems with the software it came with; but if you don't like it then you can rest assured that you don't have to use it much. The only thing I've used the software for is to open the videos; you can immediately and easily convert them to a different file type (using the software); then you can use any software you want to work with them.

I've seen a lot of people give bad reviews for items because they didn't like the software it came with. In my opinion that's a bit like saying you hate a cereal because you didn't like your free toy surprise. The software is a bonus; it's the company's way of insuring that the buyer is able to use every part of their new device. The free software discs aren't generally intended to be your primary video editing software - they're just included for convenience.

This camera so far is excellent; I'm beginning my career as a filmmaker and I bought this camera to help me make a high quality film portfolio for grad school. I was absolutely right to do so - this camera will definitely help me make high quality films. (I actually bought two because it's almost impossible to do an entire film with one camera, even with a dolly.) Both cameras work great!

This is truly a awesome and perfect camera. Being my first camcorder it is perfect because it is easy to use. All the functions are self explanatory and there are very few buttons to confuse you. I thought taking stills by just pressing one button was pretty cool. I didn't need to switch to camera mode. I also can barely even hear the hard drive, it's as if they put 120gig onto a flash memory. They have added the USB port onto the camcorder making the docking station an option now. Which I thought was the best upgrade from the SR11. It almost seems like they took all the bad reviews they had with the SR11 and fixed them with this model (SR12). I am very satisfied with this camcorder. Sony has came through once again.

Just took this on a three week foreign tour and it does a lot of things amazingly well. I did a lot of research and am quite knowledgeable, and was originally going to buy one of the new units that runs on flash cards because I liked their size. But they made too many compromise -- one of the worst of them being a lack of a viewfinder. I've never seen an LCD screen that wasn't washed out in sunlight (and this unit, while better than most, is no exception), so you NEED a viewfinder. Besides which, you get a lot less jiggling holding the camera up to your eye than holding it at arm's length to view an LCD screen.

The main caveat is its use of AVCHD as its recording format. This is another case of the hardware being ahead of the software. After extensive reading of the reviews of all the programs that currently exist, I've concluded that no one has yet come out with software to make editing this new format a simple affair. Sony's Vegas 8 (which costs $[...]+) seems, from the reviews and my limited testing, to come closest, but my expensive high-powered desktop (2 1/2 years old) stutters and chokes. AVCHD is highly compressed and requires a ton of CPU power. So, for now, I've decided to just show my raw footage to friends by connecting the camera directly to my HDTV, and wait until better software emerges or I'm ready to buy a new computer.

The quality and versatility of the camera are great, however, and I'm glad I didn't compromise to get a smaller unit. The hard drive helps give you a good solid grip using one hand, and I loved being able to stop worrying about running out of space (120gb is a huge amount of shooting).