Panasonic HDC-SD9-S

I bought the Panasonic HDC-SD9 primarily for it's size and brand quality. The Leica lens was a name I've known for over 5 decades as a high quality optics producer. I was looking for a video camera that could be carried easily, used easily and with high quality results and this camera does just that. The operation of the camera is easy to understand, it's extremely light-weight, the battery life seems adequate as does the 8MG SD card memory. The only drawback I've noticed so far is that the camera's small size seems to make it harder to hold the camera steady during recording. My older Sony video camera used an eyepiece to view the shots and I realize that this feature acted as sort of a pivot point to help keep the camera steady. The Panasonic used just the viewing screen and therefore leaves the camera more susectible to movement. I had the camera out shooting video during a very windy day and you can immediately see the negetive results in the subsequent footage. This is in no way a fault of the camera, but rather of the operator. I just have to learn to hold the camera more steady, pan and zoom slower and things will be just fine. I take a lot of still photos and tend to produce MS Movie Maker presentations with them after each major event. I knew that digital video could be added to these presentations and I wanted to have a small, easy to use digital video camera along for those times when still photography just doesn't convey the action or significance of what's going on. For instance, some friends of mine witnessed a salmon run up a shallow creek in Alaska. He had a video camera and his wife had a still camera. She took nearly 20 shots and never got one that really showed the salmon flopping and flipping and splashing up the creek. The video, on the other hand, clearly showed the amazing sight wonderfully in about 10 seconds of footage. I carry my Nikon D-60 DSLR in a fanny-pack style camera bag and it had an extra pocket for a third lens. The Panasonic HDC-SD9 fits perfectly into that pocket, so now I'm all set no matter what comes up.