Popular but flawed

When this camera came out it was a flawed camera that was still revolutionary. It looked like the ultimate tool for professionals with limited budgets- i.e. event videographers, independent journalists industrial video producers etc...
This was a small relatively light camera that had a lot of prosumer advantages including XLR inputs for professional microphones, lots of manual functions and HDV !!!
Everyone complained about it's weight, about the lack of user friendliness. It seemed everything was placed in the wrong place and hard to find from the firewire connector to the hiding headphone jack.
Unlike Sony's previous cameras which are generally very intuitive- this one isn't. They wanted to place a lot of buttons, but placed many of them in menues with signs that need a manual to understand.
The lens is heavy which cause the camera to always tilt forward when it's in handheld making it a nightmare for those who need to run and grab images on the fly.
Still, when it was released and relatively for the price, it was the only true option for documentary filmmakers, journalists and others in the media world with small budgets and an appetite for near true high def qualities.
Smaller production companies and freelances had an opportunity to deliver images to broadcasters images in high def video and yet do it on a shoestring budget.
It seems like it was in ages ago, but it's been only a few years ago that the options of HD were limited. It was either shoot with cameras that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or shoot in regular DV.
This camera was one of the first to allow the option of combining the size of DV with some of the crisp look of HD even if this was only the poor man's version of it.
The camera is heavy so plan on shooting most things on a tripod unless you have very strong arms.

In HDV mode it needs a lot of lights, so take that into account.

The camera looks like a prosumer camera, but it's actually a professional camera. HDV is a very tricky format so take that into account as well.
Editing HDV is a real nightmare thought it's also a popular one. On the tape the sound and picture are not exactly connected to make sure when editing your material's sound and image stay synced, cause it can be a true nightmare to figure out what went wrong later.

This camera might look like a regular DV camera but it's not. It has a lot of options and even pros need the manual the first few times using this camera.

It's a SONY CAMERA - which means that the construction is generally good, sturdy and relibable- but if anything goes wrong- service in many Sony Service stations both in the US and around the world will be awful. Maybe even worst than awful.
Since it's a SONY it'll also be expensive. Sometimes even very expensive.

The lense are great. They're sharp and create a a generally pleasing picture. Their color proccessing is great and for most practical purposes will give strong vivid colors.
That said, as mentioned before, the camera isn't balanced. The weight is on the lense which means it'll always tip forward while you shoot handheld. So it takes time to get used to.

The LCD screen is high rather than connected to the body which creates not only an annoyance but also there's a feeling the LCD screen isn't sturdy and could fall off at any moment.

What are the advantages of this camera:
It can shoot both DVCAM and HDV and:
BOTH PAL AND NTSC which means for European journalists working in the US they can shoot both in the European system and in the US broadcasting system.

Today there are a lot of better and newer cameras with many more advantages both from SONY and it's competitors.

But this camera is still popular with documentarians and journalists because of the combined PAL/NTSC option which doesn't exist in other cameras.