My advice to sub $1000 camcorder buyers

As I had written earlier, I am looking for buying a new camcorder. I never thought I will buy one, but I guess I am going to. Earlier when I was debating between a DSLR and a camcorder and I had done some camcorder research and had come up with this choice of Panasonic PV-GS70 3CCD camcorder (That was the first prosumer 3CCD camcorder ever). Even after a year later, panasonic seems to be the best choice to me. There was a time when Sony used to make really great camcorders. Even now they do, just that I hate the touch screen controls. Having to have the LCD view finder open and doing touch screen operations to adjust anything seems "yuck" to me. Don't know why sony doesn't understand this.

I did my gadget R&D, foucussed on camcorders this time again and here are my choices... Panasonic PV-GS250 or PV-GS150. I do not want to go down to PV-GS65 because I am quite particular about the lenses and of course Leica is anytime better than a Panasonic video lens.

Here's how they look and according to my aesthetics they look a lot cooler than anything else in the market in this range.
Panasonic PV-GS250 (Images from CNET.com) Panasonic PV-GS150






You could read detailed reviews of PV-GS250 and PV-GS150 at camcorderinfo.com.

Now if you don't care much about having a manual focus ring and an optical image stablilizer (which is indeed a great thing to have, though that has made this camcorder considerably larger than the other), you are definitely better off with a Panasonic PV-GS150. So that's my choice.

A particular reason why I love these Panasonic camcorders is that I am a manual control freak and these offer ALLOT of it, which no other in this category or price range can match. And the 3CCDs definitely make them stand apart in picture quality and color saturation. Panasonic has also worked on their low light shooting capabilities a lot from their initial models. What else could you ask for at this price range. But I would have loved to see the manual focus ring which the earlier (now not in production) PV-GS70.

Hope that helps someone around there.

Ultra zoom camcorder from Panasonic - PV-GS35

I love researching about the latest electronic gadgets more than buying them. Recently I came back to researching about camcorders and stumbled across this small ultra zoom camcorder PV-GS35 from Panasonic. I had been always a fan of Panasonic for making 3CCD camcorders available to low budget consumers from the time they released the PV-GS70. PV-GS35 is not a 3CCD camcorder like most of the other PV-GSs. But it's extraordinary optical range is what impressed me. I am sure this would be great to shoot something like "Birds in my backyard".

Read the CNET Review of Panasonic PV-GS70, 30x optical zoom camcorder.

The CNET editor's take is:
The Panasonic PV-GS35 is an ordinary MiniDV video camcorder with an extraordinary optical-zoom range.

Also, according to the CNET editor, Here are the goods:
"Superb zoom reach; solid video quality; excellent battery life; simple controls."
and the bads:
"Poor still quality; obscure icons for manual settings; odd shifting effect from image stabilization."