Yes, it’s true. Many new model point-and-shoot digital cameras are also movie cameras. Simply turn the dial on the top of your still camera to the movie camera icon. When you press the shutter release button, you will be shooting a movie with sound and everything. Granted, the quality of most of these recordings isn’t that great, but i’s a great option for those of us who haven’t bought a movie camera and have something they want to record.

This function will serve you better if you have a large memory card, such as a 1Gig memory card. This will allow you to take several movies and still have room for recording pictures before you download to your computer. I’ve used this function to record my daughter’s early walking and crawling. And i’s easy to send these movies to Grandma.

I’m not willing to commit to a video camera purchase right now because I think the technology is changing and I want to wait and see which format (DVD record, Mini DV tapes, or hard drive recording) will win the format battle. My suspicion is that hard drive recording will ultimately be the winner, but those cameras are super pricey right now. I can afford to wait a couple of years for that kind of purchase.

In the meantime, I’m making mini movies with my Canon PowerShot A70.