Daddy’s Got A Brand New Toy!

This past Christmas, I was lucky enough to receive something I’ve wanted for a very long time: a camcorder. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always wanted a camcorder of my own. I remember how I’d used to take my miniature toy T-Rexes and my miniature toy cars that came with plastic roads, and have the T-Rexes “terrorize” the city, crushing and demolishing every car in its path (ahh, the joys of being a kid!). That’s when I always wished that I had a camcorder of some sort, so that I could create “Godzilla-like” movies. But, that never happened. Since then, up until the past couple of years, my interest in camcorders sort of waned. But when the YouTube phenomenon began a couple of years back, and creating and posting videos became the thing to do, my interest in camcorders sparked again. I’ve watched numerous videos become famous on the internet, and I’ve always thought to myself, “Hey, I can do that!” After dropping a few (thousand) subtle hints to my family about what I’d like for Christmas, my mother and grandmother… uh, *ahehm* I mean Santa Claus came through and got me a JVC Everio GZ-MG155! I think I’m in love!

So, of course, over the past couple of weeks since Christmas, I did what basically anyone else who has just gotten a new camcorder would do; shoot hundreds of thousands of random, pointless videos! This thing comes with a 30GB hard drive and up to 37 hours of recording, so I’m taking full advantage baby! I’m not really too fond of the quality of the videos it creates in dark settings though. It comes with a light that you can easily switch on, but that only helps a little. Maybe if I play around with the settings a little bit, I can figure something out. So far, I’ve just been running it on auto (where all settings self-adjust themselves when appropriate while recording), and I have yet to run it on manual. The videos play pretty well on my computer, except in Windows Media Player. For some reason, the videos kept coming out extremely choppy for me in WMP. So I downloaded Media Player Classic and the videos came out perfect. I’ve read that a lot of people have problems playing the videos on their computer due to the fact that the videos are .MOD files when they are transferred onto a computer from the camcorder’s hard drive. This can easily be fixed by just renaming the .MOD extension to .MPG. I haven’t had this problem though. My video files already have the .MPG extension when I transfer them from the camcorder. The Everio GZ-MG155 is also capable of taking pictures, although I haven’t too much experimented with that part yet. We have about a gajillion digital cameras in the house, so another one really isn’t a big deal to me.

As for physical traits, the JVC Everio GZ-MG155 is extremely small and extremely lightweight. It fits in the palm of my hand and weighs about that of a can of pop.

All of the buttons and toggles and switches are located in easy to reach places (as if it were even possible to put one in a hard to reach place as small as the camcorder is).

Did I also mention how sexy it is? Yep, if this camcorder was human, it would be right up there with Halle Berry. (Mommy is gonna kill me for saying that.)

So overall, it’s a pretty damn decent camcorder! I’d recommend it to the Moms and Dads out there who want to capture those very special moments of your children’s lives. As for my current plans for it, I couldn’t have gotten this thing at a better time! Boogie is due in four months and that’s when the camcorder will definitely be used to its full potential. I also would like to start incorporating videos into my posts here at Mommy Daddy Blog, so be sure to look out for those!

So, what’s the one gift you received this past Christmas that you are just totally in love with? I’d love to know!

Tagged as: camcorder, christmas, holiday, jvc camcorder, JVC Everio GZ-MG155, Reviews