Hello Diana, Welcome to the list. Lot's of useful answers have preceded this one, so I'll be brief.
I've owned an Xacti HD1A for about one month. Though it is at the top of the price range for small sized recorders (86,000 yen), I've heard that the price is already dropping. Perhaps this is becase Sanyo announced the HDA2 at the recent CES. I am too much of a novice to speak with authority as to it's image quality other than to say that it is good enough for me. In addition to it's compact size and use of memory card instead of tape, I was compelled to purchase it over the lesser-priced Xacti models for two reasons. One is it is designed to allow optional wide-angle and telephoto lenses, and two, it has a microphone input. The camera comes with an adaptor wire that steps down a 1/8" micro-connector to whatever smaller sized input the camera has. I use an audio-technica lavalier microphone when I want to record my voice in the field. This is crucial because the onboard stereo mic elements are on the back-face of the pop-up display screen. If I'm watching myself with the display screen swiveled in the same direction as the len, the microphone elements are facing away from me. My apologies for not being brief, as I promised. Overall, I give it high marks and would recommend it. Good luck. respectfully, Scott Lockman http://tokyocalling.org [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
