How good are still pictures taken with a video camera?
Generally, awful. If you are at all serious about still pictures, you should buy a digital SLR, which will give you far, far superior pictures to any digital video camcorder, even high definition. In particular, still pictures from one-chip cameras look almost as bad as typical cellphone pictures. When I first bought my MiniDV camcorder, it was actually better quality than the digital still cameras available at the time. However, that only lasted for about a year after I bought it. The XL1 stills I took then would now be considered of laughable quality, and I paid $4,400 for my XL1. Ah, the joys of being an early adopter! But I’m not sorry because I got some great pictures with my XL1 that I wouldn’t have if I’d waited. Despite all this, there are some cases where taking stills with a video camera may be the best thing you can do.
