8 out of 8 people found this review helpful.
A good first mini DV camcorder
Date of Review: Jun 21, 2005
The Bottom Line: I would recommend this for the average user looking to capture memories...it's not that expensive for a first unit and is worth the money
My wife finally pushed hard enough to get me to upgrade from our Hi8 big camcorder to a new Mini DV camcorder. I did quite a bit of research...looked at Sony, Canon, JVC and Pansonic primarily. Decided I didn't like the Sony's because of the touch screen and also the proprietary memory stick.
The Canon's for some reason didn't appeal to me...not quite sure why, but it just didn't feel right in the hand and when looking through the lens.
I liked the JVC's especially since the price was right...but ultimately, I decided on this Panasonic PVGS31. I tested it out at Best Buy before buying online at Crutchfield for 379-20 referral coupon.
When I first got the unit, I immediately tried taking video of my kids at home. Through the LCD, everything looked great...crisp, good color. But when I actually played it back on TV, things seemed muddied and noisy. In reading through the reviews, I figured it had to do with the lower level of light in the house...I was hoping this was the case and not a defective unit.
The next thing I did was take the camcorder outside on a bright sunny day and took some more video of my kids. When I watched this video back on TV, I was shocked at the awesome quality...it really was night and day what this unit could do with good light.
In talking to some friends with similarly priced units, the consensus basically was the same that for the price, low-er light levels wouldn't be that great, but that the video would be great outside. And from other reviews, apparently the Panasonic was better than most in low light.
Anyways, I've now taken video at Disney, and all over the place and I am satisfied with the quality. Obviously can't compete with higher-priced models, but good enough for the price I paid.
I have to say that one of the best features I found was the "Photo Shot" button that you can use to take pictures *while* you are shooting video. That is, you can do both at the same time and I found that, while the photo quality isn't the greatest, it's still better than nothing, and comes in handy when you don't have four hands to use both a camcorder and a digital camera at the same time. I got a lot of good pictures that I otherwise wouldn't have gotten had it not been for this feature. Don't underestimate the value of this. I figure the quality of the photos would be good enough to print out nice 3x5's...probably not 4x6s though.
There are alot of features that I still haven't used, but for me, this camcorder has provided everything that I have needed in a nice compact design
