Hello everyone.

I've never owned any camcorders of any sort and I don't want to spend more than $300 +/- so I'll buy a real clean used camera, I was looking at a Sony HDR-SR1 and I 'think'? this would be fine for me. I want to take some films of the grandkids on Christmas etc.

1. I'd like the camcorder to function well in low light as I hate seeing films where things are dark but then again I don't want to flood the room with unnatural spotlights like we did in the old days. Is this camera OK for this purpose?

2. The camera I'm looking at doesn't have a remote but I've noticed that you can buy a remote for $30, are all HDR-SR1's remote ready? What exactly does the remote work?

3. Can I watch what I'm filming on my laptop and/or TV while I'm filming as that will help me see if my quality is good.

Thanks in Advance

PS: I know how the search functions work and I realize that all my answers are probably in the cache somewhere but I may buy a camera today and I hoped to get these questions answered before I stepped off the cliff.

Thanks again

Did you buy that used camcorder yet???

I'm not sure I'd spend $300 on a used camcorder. What about some of the new stuff that records to a memory cards instead of a HDD? Sanyo has some HD camcorders in the $270 - $450 range.

I am also a beginner and am very new to this and it seems like the newbie threads go ignored for the most part, like none of the really experienced guys want to waste their time with stupid newbie bs, also Ive noticed that the who's got the best camcorder threads go ignored as well. I'm just gonna pick a pretty one.