OK, maybe I got a bit carried away but I splashed out on a Sharp VLZ300ES camcorder whilst in Singapore. Its something my wife, Helen, has been after for a while so it was mainly for her benefit and I have been impressed with the results she has achieved with it so far. It's a pretty good first timers camcorder and although I'm sure it is missing loads of functions it has pretty much all the functions we required on it. The lowlight pictures are good, its light, compact, simple to use and the buttons are easy to operate with one hand, the optical zoom is terrific and the play back on the TV is easy to setup and excellent quality.