OK, here's the second of two clips showing sugar gliders jumping / gliding between people. It's a good example of Sony's slow motion mode in action. The full clips are three seconds long. These are edited down to contain only the jump or other interesting glider motion.

YouTube - Sugar Gliders Spartacus and Xena Jumping in Slow Motion - Spartacus and Xena, 3 Jan 2010 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-USoN_T5wA)

makes me want the camera, and the glider... nice vid! :)

It's a fine cam, in my opinion, and I'm very pleased with it. If you're approaching any kind of buying decision, though, Sony has made its CES announcements of the 2010 lineup, according to a different website. It sounds like things people have complained about have been addressed (in their whole line) - increased bitrate, better manual dial on the CX, and maybe even a viewfinder. So if you're looking, check out the new announcements.

You kind of win either way. Either you like the new cams best, or you wait a bit and get the 2009 cams at a nice discount. So far, the higher bit rate and so forth don't really count as deciding factors for me. But it will be fun to see people have to find different things to beat up the Sonys on.

And I think the "new stabilization" is what the CX5xxs already have.

Link to sony style page with new cameras listed:
High Definition Video Camcorders | Sony | Sony Style USA (http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&categoryId=3556&N=4294966231)

A couple new "top of the line" announcements with the CX550V and the XR550V - big 3.5" LCD, viewfinder, and a few other minor "improvements". The CX550V returns the dial to the front as well... not sure about higher bitrates - those are definitely in the NX5 and AX2000, and certainly would have been nice to have seen in the "consumer" end as well.

Looks like they took the opportunity to introduce yet another "new" battery series as well... the "FV50" instead of the current FH series... hmmm, hope the FH are forward compatible, but prolly not!

The CX550V certainly looks interesting, but unless there have been some drastic firmware upgrades and tuning of the hardware and software, looks to me like the current XR500V/520V and CX500V/520V will remain pretty viable competitors, utilizing the same sensor blocks as the "new" cams, and pretty close to the same technology - I wouldn't be surprised to see them remian in the lineup for another year (although I see the old tape based HC9 is officially discontinued...). Will take a lot more than a slightly bigger LCD to get me to upgrade an XR500V, although the viewfinder on the CX550V might justify an upgrade...

The other interesting thing I noticed while reviewing the "news" is that aparently Sony will now start to support SD/microSD cards as well as MS Pro Duos. THAT could be a money saver! Not sure I believe it, although there have been microSD to MSDuo adapters on eBay for a while (not that that says much about either quality or usability).

makes me want the camera, and the glider... nice vid! :)

I love our gliders but I will say they are not low-maintenance pets in the sense that most rodents might be. That is, these are colony animals and you need to (a) invest a lot of time in bonding with them and then (b) they will thrive on attention from you and you would be really unkind not to give it to them. One vet likened them to dogs in that sense, though of course you don't have to walk the gliders in 20 degree weather.

This isn't quite as time-consuming as I make it sound in one sense. A lot of the bonding and "give me attention" process is literally having them sleep on you in a bonding pouch, a pocket, or between two shirts. They are nocturnal, so if you pull them out of their cage during the day and pouch them or pocket them, they'll usually curl right up and sleep there for hours. Or they'll crawl around between shirts if you go that route, have some fun exercise, and then they'll go to sleep. They love to play but mostly they just want to be on you and you don't have to do anything special with them during that period.

The videos on YouTube from the woman in the green blouse affiliated with "ExpertCircle" are total junk, so if you look into this, please make sure you watch the ones done by the vet instead or at least to counteract the woman's misinformation. If you watched only her video, you'd be worried about having a filthy smelly house, spending hours a day catering to their food needs, being attacked and having any existing pets disembowelled by the gliders, etc. Just amazing stuff. I watched very carefully to see if the presenter was being satirical but I think not - I think she really believes everything she says. All I can say is I feel really sorry for her gliders...Maybe 1/10th of what she says is correct but you'll have no chance of figuring out which 10th unless you've had a glider for a while.

My wife and I would like to prepare a follow-on video to that series on YouTube. It would show the gliders picking their cage lock at night, sneaking out; drinking, smoking and gambling; running around the house chewing on things and knocking stuff over on the cats; stabbing the cats with little pitchforks; stealing money from our wallets and ordering pizza; going out hunting a Doberman to bully; and just generally being "bad gliders" in the most entertaining scenarios we could construct. That's a film we'd like to see!

Interesting to see how well sugar gliders get on with humans.

We are lucky enough to have sugar gliders living wild on our property and I have a lot of both time and respect for them. As natural tree hollows are now rare I have installed about 15 nest boxes over 10 acres that I check monthly. I usually note about 15 on each census. One of these boxes has been built against a window and I have constructed a double camera mount inside the house and use infrared lights to record the activities of the inhabitants through the window. The gliders produce twins and are very sociable, my window box colony recently had three sets of twins at different stages and the three nursing females – so at times it was chaos. Getting shots in the wild is difficult as they emerge at dusk when the light is rapidly fading and although they are used to me I still can’t get them to repeat their performance on request. Nevertheless I have a bit of material and I am starting to edit and hope to be able to post something in few months.

Interesting to see how well sugar gliders get on with humans.

We are lucky enough to have sugar gliders living wild on our property and I have a lot of both time and respect for them. As natural tree hollows are now rare I have installed about 15 nest boxes over 10 acres that I check monthly. I usually note about 15 on each census. One of these boxes has been built against a window and I have constructed a double camera mount inside the house and use infrared lights to record the activities of the inhabitants through the window. The gliders produce twins and are very sociable, my window box colony recently had three sets of twins at different stages and the three nursing females – so at times it was chaos. Getting shots in the wild is difficult as they emerge at dusk when the light is rapidly fading and although they are used to me I still can’t get them to repeat their performance on request. Nevertheless I have a bit of material and I am starting to edit and hope to be able to post something in few months.

That is extremely cool - my wife just expressed jealousy. I bought the CX500V in October because I needed the indoors low-light capability for these animals where I didn't ever film much indoors otherwise. So I guess one advantage of them being pet members of the household is that you can roust them out periodically for pictures! But they still have their own nocturnal rhythm regardless. They will hide in your shirt and sleep if you bring them out most of the time, up until about 11 pm. From then on through about 7:30 in the morning, if you bring them out, you'd better be ready to play. That gives you the best filming opportunities, though, and they will happily be active in regular lighting once they're bonded to you.

Gliders seem to get along with most animals except snakes, assuming you bring them in when they're at the right age. The bonding process needs to start no later than shortly after they're weaned. It can take hours in exceptional cases or months at the other end. But they get along great with humans if they're bonded and treated well. They become very affectionate. They'll lick you, they'll groom you, and I understand they'll bark to get your attention if you leave them alone too much. They are colony animals and they're not very discriminating about what other species are part of the colony!

For the first month after we got our gliders, the female would run right into the cage when active as it was her "safe place". If she was near it and not night-active, she'd go there whether we wanted her to or not. Once she bonded, it's the other way around. She loves to come out, she loves to be on us, and it can be difficult unhooking her and getting her back into the cage. The male has always been more adventurous and never really wants to go back into the cage.

Anyway, to keep this on thread more, they present some filming challenges as a consequence. They also seem to be very interested in cameras. There's more than one clip on YouTube where the glider jumps right onto the camcorder. That happened to me as well.