just learned that it's not this particular camera that is dark, it's the size of the mini camcorders' lenses and the imaging chip array systems that make most of them take dark video. not enough light comes through the lens and the chips are expensive parts. though, reviews say the creative labs vado mini camcorder takes bright video.
for outdoors when it's bright out, it's not too bad, but indoors with normal, even somewhat bright lighting, it's almost a useless camera! The pictures/video come out soo dark. There's no flash of course for stills. (i don't understand how a 30$ cell phone has flash and these $200 camcorders don't. I don't understand how a cam with such good specs (full HD, 8MP stills, image stabilizer, etc) would take such dark photos. I googled this and found other had the same problem-could be a defective batch? I got it 'cause it was a good deal ($45 like new from eBay). Right now there are tons being sold for even less and it sounds like a great deal, so just giving the heads up.

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