Panasonic PV-DV53

I paid $290 for this camera in Oct, 2003 and for the price, I can't complain much. This was my first camcorder and so far it has worked great for me. I capture all of my video onto the computer with a firewire card. Picture quality is good, colors are accurate. In most lighting conditions, the camera without the light works fine (with some manual adjustment of the lighting mode in lower indoor lighting situations). For lighting situations darker than this, you can always depend on the built in light. The light does drain the battery quickly however, within 5 minutes or so if my memory serves me correctly. If you use the lcd sparingly, and use the viewfinder most of the time, the battery should last a good 90 minutes, with the lcd, maybe 30-40 minutes. The camera itself has some design oddities. For example, you have to have the LCD at least partway open to plug in the firewire card. You have to buy the separate serial cord and software to transfer pictures from the camera. (This isn't a big problem for me since I just take screen-shots of the video.) You can't run the camera and charge the battery at the same time. But if these issues don't bother you, then I would say get this camera. It's a pretty good deal.

Price, built-in light, features

Design oddities - see full review

Haven't needed to use customer service yet, camera works as expected.