That's all well and good, but it ASSUMES I have the intent of editing most/all of my SR12 footage. I don't! I do enough editing in my job and for my fun footage I don't begin to approach this the same way. I want the best picture quality out of the box. I know how to adjust the camera and don't need a 'book' to tell me how. I've been using Sony cams for a long long time and know my way around them...some don't. For me I'm more than satisfied to simply attach the cam to my Pioneer and hit the play button. Frankly I don't have the time to sit down and edit all my material. Perhaps when I'm retired I will, but not now. Too many other things going on in my life.

So your basic assumptions of my shooting/editing requirements are simply wrong. You might also want to tone down your rhetoric Steve, using words like "babbling" and such does nothing to get your point across.

Steve, it's not too much to ask for even a consumer camcorder to get the automatic white balance reasonably correct much of the time, and to get a manual white balance correct all of the time (presuming a good reference).

There are plenty of users who don't mind manipulating their footage for some projects but would still prefer to have the source good enough to use as-is. I want to color-correct because I want to, not because I have to. Mistakes happen, but every time? Come on.

I don't need perfect for $650, but I do need believable. If I have to clean up after every shot then it's not worth it.

You hit the nail on the head Rich! Steve seems to imply that if you don't edit your footage, don't CC your footage or don't manipulate it in some way, you are a rank amateur. He just can't imagine a prosumer who knows how to use the camera, simply sitting down and watching RAW FOOTAGE! My God, that's heresy! He can't imagine a consumer cam whose color is so close out of the box that much of the time there's no need for it to be CC'd. For me watching directly from the cam to the plasma is a way of life with much of my 'fun' footage and I feel no need to apologize for that. As I've said before, I spend a considerable amount of time editing footage in my job and I have no desire or time to do so on weekends. I just want to watch the footage and enjoy! Further, despite some claims, there is little need to do so with the SR11/12. If the color looks natural and doesn't call attention to itself, then that's the way it should be. The footage should not cry out for CC. If it does, you bought the wrong camera. Such was not the case with my HF10. I knew that to be satisfied with that cam, I would NEED to CC frequently and I did not want to be put in that position. So it's not a question of being 'lazy', it's not a question of 'settling', it's a question of a camera being capable enough to produce believable color the vast majority of time. I don't think you and I are in a minority by any stretch of the imagination. There are many prosumers who seek out high quality, great looking footage with a minimum of computer intervention.

Additionally, Steve ignored most of the key points I made in my post. Issues such as the tremendous variation in human skin tones, the inability of the human memory to 'remember' precisely what any given skin tone looked like hours or days later and how all of this ties to an 'error' of a camera's AWB by 10-15% or whatever # you'd like to assign to that error and the fact that even AFTER you CC your footage, a consumer cam will never ever have 'perfect' color (nor will a pro cam...but it will be better). The fact is that many high quality consumer cameras DO get the skin tones right or close to right most of the time. Yes indeedy, there are times you'll need to go further into the cam's WB to pull out the most you can under certain lighting conditions. But as long as the cam is willing to let you do that, there should be minimal need to CC.

By the way, slightly off-topic, the footage posted by Chris (great job Chris & Austin!!!) of the new HF11, looks very promising! I've only looked at a few clips, but I'm encouraged by the 'look' of the high bitrate footage. I had a great test that was the result of me misreading the clips. I mistakenly thought the 17mbps clip was the 24mbps clip and I couldn't understand why it didn't look as sharp and clear during the pan of the sprinkler as the 17mbps clip! To me that was very impressive since the mind can always play tricks on you when you 'know' that a give clip is 'supposed to' look better. You often convince yourself it is even though it may not be so. I'm also encouraged, even though it was a cloudy day, by the color displayed in that footage. It seemed to be more akin to the color balance of the HV20/30. I'm anxious to see this cam when it comes out.

There are a few words being tossed around in this thread that really disturb me:

"nonsense -- babbling -- fantasy -- silly -- intentionally misleading -- your problem"

Please folks, let's keep things elevated, academic, technical, and above all: professional.

If I wanted a soap opera, there's plenty of them on the internet already. We're all better than that.

Let's please treat each other as if we were all in the same room together. Business casual.

I know for a fact that some of the words being used here would not be uttered face to face; at least not without losing all credibility. Mutual respect is the key. And yes, this is how threads get closed around here. Be nice, or be gone, I say. End of discussion.