As for the digital stills, pictures taken outdoors look fine, but indoor pictures are VERY grainy and pixelated, even in a very bright room. In my opinion, the quality is just unacceptable. The Memory Stick with USB output is an incredible technology that makes downloading pictures to your computer so EASY, but this benefit can not make up for the bad pictures that it takes. (I did not try to capture stills from the tape because I do not have the ieee adaptor needed to do this, so I do not know if stills taken in this way may look better than those taken on the memory stick)

If you are just looking to take video, then this camcorder is probably fine, but I see no need to pay for the extra memory stick capabilities because they are not worth it.

Great Camera (Rating: 5.00)
Review : My fiance and I just purchased this camera and boy was I impressed! This is our first camcorder but not the first one I have used. It's light weight make it easy to handle. And the steadyshot works quite well. My hands are quite shaky but you could never tell by watching something I taped! The picture quality is good, but I am only using the standard A/V cables. Once I get the S-video cables I should see a dramatic upgrade in picture quality. The battery it comes with isn't the best, only about 90 minutes fully charged. I particularly liked the nightshot feature. Although the images come out in a green tone the picture quality is outstanding. I was fooling around with it in a pitch black room and you could see everything clear as day(green of coarse). The LCD is exceptionally smaller than the 530 but it is still big enough to fit most people's needs. Of coarse if you want to save battery power just don't use the LCD. The only thing I can't comment about is the still picture option. I just spent a large sum of money on a straight up digital camera so I don't need to use that option. So I am sorry I can't help you out there! Overall the camera is excellent and I would suggest it to anybody looking for a new camcorder.

Durability is terrible (Rating: 1.00)
Review : Bought this camera less than 2 years ago and I thought it was pretty good, except the digital part. Terrible pictures, it isn't worth the extra $$. However, the camera recently broke, despite extremely mild usage. The camera will no longer close with a cassette inside. I now know that this defect is fairly common, but an expensive repair. I'm looking for a different camera, different brand. Sony has a quality problem.

Good deal (Rating: 5.00)
Review : I've been looking around at prices and i'de say this is the best price I've found. I was checking out other cameras and found one for $500. It was not as good as this one and cost more. Its worth your cash and the specs are nice! Like the 25x optical zoom is crazy. The digital zoom doesn't really make a difference after u get over 200x zoom on that. So dont think that 700x zoom makes much of a difference. I'de say buy it asap.

good stuff (Rating: 5.00)
Review : i would like to purchase this product
i am from Bali - Indonesia, can give me lower price