I'm thinking of buying the Sony HDR-SR11 Handycam

I spent a good portion of my month off blogging researching gadgets for ghost hunts and what not, the most substantial of which was the Sony HDR-SR11 AVCHD 60GB Handycam. I haven't got it yet, I'm waiting for all the good Christmas interest free deals so I can hire purchase the camera without any added cost, some of these terms may be NZ specific, sorry. I imagine I'll order it in a week or two.

I already have a digital SLR still camera that takes video, but its main purpose is that of a still camera and I've realized I enjoy taking video way more than I do taking photos, so I may sell my old camera to go towards purchasing the HDR-SR11. It doesn't mean I'll be without a decent still camera, the HDR-SR11 from the reviews I've read is one of the best camcorders around for taking still photos, though from the examples I've seen the results look varied. With the deals we got going on down here the HDR-SR11 comes with a free Cybershot T2 anyway, nice and pocket sized, unlike my old lumbering camera.

So what makes me so interested in the Sony HDR-SR11 note: link to SR12, but they're the same, well the 60GB hard drive for one, most of the other High-Def cameras out there use tapes, DVDs, memory cards and I'm so sick of fiddling with all that stuff, though the HDR-SR11 does come with memory card slots as well. The only problem with the HDD option is its sensitivity, one good bang and I could loose hours of footage or loose the HDD for storage, though if that happened I could alternatively use memory cards.

Another reason is because it's High-Definition, I'll be able to watch my home movies in great detail, maybe even make a movie and release it on DVD, as for ghost hunting and sky watching I imagine High-Def would be very useful. Given that, the HDR-SR11 has options to film in Standard-Definition as well, this means hours upon hours of recording time on the HDD and if I'm just shooting videos for Youtube, well I don't really need High-Def do I.

And one last reason why I'm so interested in this camcorder, it supposedly has very good low-light recording capabilities and night shot modes, ghost hunting here I come.

FYI:
The HDR-SR12 and HDR-SR11 are exactly the same apart from the HDD size, the HDR-SR10, the little brother is a striped down version of the 12 and 11 and not as feature rich or powerful.