'You press and hold the center button to select the dial's operation: manual focus, exposure compensation, aperture or shutter, mic level and automatic gain control limit--which caps the signal boosting in low light to minimize visual noise. '
'The new touchscreen system is intuitive and good for beginners, but we did find it a bit frustrating for navigating the camcorder's long menu system.'
'the display is clear and viewable even in quite bright conditions.'
'Ultimately it's slow to scroll through menus and all-too easy to 'select' items when you mean to sweep them.
'
'The bad: Annoying menu system; no wind filter or meaningful audio controls; relatively big and heavy; expensive; defaults to low resolution, not-full-HD video quality; cumbersome touch-screen interface. '
'The CX550V has a nice array of features including manual focus, aperture and shutter control, and multi-channel audio recording. '
'I’ve seen other camcorders that are built more user-friendly than the HDC-HS300, which has some hard-to-press buttons and a main zoom toggle that’s too small to use comfortably.'
'The 1/8-inch CCD sensor is substantially smaller and lower resolution than the 1/4-inch Exmor R CMOS found elsewhere in the Sony lineup.'
'sharp, high-resolution images'
elecreview.com
'The convenient touch panel allows easy access to menus and additional functionality such as spot focus and spot meteringA built-in 120GB hard disk drive can record and store up to 91 hours of video footage in LP mode.'
', unfortunately, the camera uses Sony's tiny, proprietary MicroMV videotapes, which are incompatible with nearly all video-editing programs--a big drawback.'
'The ultra-compact design of the DCR-IP55 includes a new swing-down handgrip that makes it even easier and more comfortable to take video and high quality 1.0 megapixel still images.'
eamonhickey.com
'Sony's innovative new DCR-IP55 camcorder is amazingly small, and its swing-down handle, reminiscent of old-school 8mm movie cameras, is way retro-cool—you can easily imagine James Bond using it to film Dr.'
'With Instant AF enabled, the autofocus works quickly, and the Push AF, which activates an Instant AF override in manual-focus mode, speeds manual focus considerably.'