Great family video camera!

We were looking for a video recorder that we would use for family/school events. After much research we chose the Sony CCD TRV 128. I still have much to learn as this has tons of features! The fades, lights settings and night shot are just a few of many features this camera has to offer. It was fairly easy to operate after going through the book. It is not a camera that you pull out of the box and use - you definately need to read through the manual to really get all you can from video recording. It does have an EASY button for those who don't want to get to know the features and just get right to taping. I haven't used this button as I am about playing with all the gadgets.

Taping is very easy and I love the options of using the side screen or the eye piece. When viewing through the eye piece, it is black and white versus color when using the side panel. This has not been a big deal to us but may bother some people. I use the eye piece instead of the side screen when filming the same area (where you are not moving the camera around). This helps eliminate hand-shake, which has been a problem when using the side panel.

Picture quality is great although I have a hard time with bright background lights washing the subjects a bit. I have learned to angle and move the camera around to rectify this. The zoom takes a bit of getting used to but once you are acclimated it is fine.

It holds very nicely in your right palm with all the important buttons (zoom, on/off) easily in range of your right thumb. Easy, Battery Info, Light, Fader, back light and focus on located on the left side exterior. All other feature buttons are under the side screen, although nightshot is located on the top of the recorder.

It has the ability to connect with your pc (which we don't use). And the way I read the manual - there is a way to capture stills on your computer with the right software. If this is important I would double check with the Sony website just to be sure!

Things we purchased after to make life easier were the extended battery and a tripod. This has been a great camera and the only thing I would do different if I had to buy it again is get the next model up which has hand-shake elimination.