Sony Bloggie Touch MHS-TS20/S 1080p HD Camcorder | Black

I've had this camera for about a week now and have been loving it ever since. I've used another "flip" camcorder and the Bloggie Touch puts it to shame.Pros:1. Love the quick on and record. Great for spontaneous videos of the little one.2. The touch screen interface makes it both useful and fun to use the big screen.3. The still pictures come out brilliant, when the lighting and focus is good.4. The battery charges up super fast and stays with you for a whole day of shooting.5. The image stabilization is good. You can take decent video while walking around and panning too. Note that it is not optical, but electronic SteadyShot stabilization.6. The lens is very good quality and the pictures are crisp.7. Really like the "snap picture while recording" feature. I find myself using that feature the most. The video doesn't stall while the picture (full 12M resolution) is being taken and since the focus and exposure are usually locked well while you're in the middle of the video, the pictures come out great.Cons:1. In low lighting, there is quite a bit of graininess and using the digital zoom makes it much worse.2. While the lens is good quality, the auto-focus mechanism is really very slow. If you move around the camera too much before focus has locked on, the auto-focus will almost never lock.3. What I really miss with this camera is a flash. Even a tiny one would help with low light pictures.4. Minor annoyance: to preview a picture right after you take it, you have to go through at least two clicks. Sony could have designed it so that it always goes to the last picture taken by default, instead of the thumbnail list of all pictures/video on the device.I decided to purchase this camera over a still camera that can do video because:1. This one is dead simple. One button to turn on, one to take video and one to take stills. This makes it both easy and quick to use.2. This one can do 1080p video and 720p at 60fps.3. Its under $200 and is smaller than your phone.4. Its got internal flash and USB connector - no more SD cards or cables. 8GB is enough to get you through the day before you can come back to your laptop to dump the pictures.I decided to purchase this camera over other ones in the same category because:1. Its got a big display and the touch screen is fun to use.2. Its got a better lens system than the others.3. Its got (some) image stabilization.

Initial impressions very positive:Sleek designLight weightCompact for pocketsTouchscreen commandsIntegrated with Facebook and Picassa for quick uploadingVery good video in sunlit or very well-lighted indoorsDeal breaker: Indoor video will make the Bloggie auto-focus churn repeatedly if lighting is not bright. Upon replay of video on your computer, you will hear a loud clicking from the auto-focus mechanism throughout the video. I initially thought it was defective. However, after reading other consumers have the same problem, I see that it's an engineering flaw.So, as long as you take video in sun or well-lighted indoor settings, the Bloggie is a nice product. However, the clicking noise will make your average indoor video unusable.

A pro photographer friend recommended this device to me after extensively asking me about my uses as a podcaster. Since I needed a better camera than what's on my cell phone and has a better battery, I need stills and video capability. I worked using the stills mode over the weekend and the shutter speed is awful. From the time I push the button there is 2 seconds delay before the picture is actually snapped. There's no way to capture people without them looking elsewhere by that time or getting decent candids. Out of about 20 photos, 3 were too blurry to even post.There was also almost no instructions whatsoever. I plugged the device into my pc hoping a digital set of instructions would come up but instead I got to an app for SONY that wants my credit card information for billing me for some account I don't want. The information makes it sound like it's so easy to share images and files but it isn't at all. I didn't want to give my credit card information even for a certain amount of "free" storage so I didn't get to test the uploading out. Just trying to make an album was awkward in that software and then changing a name on one of the built in contact lists didn't let me go much further; I changed the name of "My Best Friend" distribution list, then what? There was nothing to enter their email address, cell phone number for texting an image, nothing. It's a clumsy tool.I also couldn't find any way to make the camera front-facing which would be especially useful for people looking to essentially have a better version of what cell phones offer these days.I had bigger expectations for this overall. It's compact so I can use it easily but the features and ease of use are seriously lacking for a SONY product.