[Frank@UK]

I'm after a new HD camcorder, don't want to spend loads and was thinking..."Why not get one that'll take half decent still pictures? That way I'll be able to just bring one thing on family outings etc instead of two".
So, I've looked at Panasonic SD9, Sony SR10 and Canon HG10.
As for stills Panny has 2.1MP, Sony 4MP, Canon 3.1MP. I like the Panny because its really light and smaller, however the others have 40Gb hard drives (Sony only takes its own memory cards whereas Canon uses miniSD for photos) built in. Class 6 SDHC cards for the Panny are falling in price anyway so I'm not too hung up on that. I know its not all about Pixels but is 2.1 from the Panny OK for a normal photo print size?
As for price I don't want to go over 500 quid and I've seen all these cams for about that (Panny 407 from Amazon with free Panny 8Gb class6 card).
Please advise on any other cam that has half decent still picture capability and is atleast under 600 quid. Or any help in getting me to decide out of these three much appreciated.
I dunno....I'm such a bloke about these things...my missus would walk in to the shop and just say Ohhh that one looks nice and bosh, job done! (she'd more than likely pick a winner too....shhhh don't tell her).

[earlybath]

I have the SD5 (likely to be very similar to the SD9 and it's ok for snaps, very handy really, and I rather like the SD card, just pop it out, shove it into my laptop's SD reader and straight into Picassa, no messing with cables.

However picture quality is no match for a proper digital stills camera, even at wide angle it's prone to camera shake when taking stills, presumably a slower shutter speed.

I have a rather nice pic of the Gateshead Sage as my current desktop pic. At 1920x1080, the resolution it was taken at, I can see what look like jaggies along some window frames. Still I like the pic and I imagine it would look fine as a 6"x4" print.

[Frank@UK]

Thanks for the info. Thats really all I'm after just something thats handy yet good enough to grab the odd still which is OK at 6x4. Dirt cheap digital cameras are way ahead of these still capturing camcorders atm.....all I need is a camcorder, camera and phone (with highspeed internet) and I'll be sorted...Oh and it'll all have to fit in me pocket.

[redsox_mark]

Sony SR11 has very good stills for a camcorder - but it's over your budget.

[Bodger15]

If you could stretch your budget the SR11 @ 10.2 Mega Pixels does a very good job............