camera buying advice? Panasonic PV-GS200

[lordsmurf]

Anybody have any comments on this one:
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/panasonic-pv-gs200-camcorder-review.htm

Thanks.

Trying to help somebody.

[wolfer]

I just picked up this cam about 2 months ago. So far I really like it and love the Color with the 3 ccd. The Only really bad thing I have to say is the night shot mode. there are two options
1. just recording with available light...it's off about 35-50% of what the human eyes see. the picture is like a bad stop motion recording with video trails.

2. flip the display screen and it turns into a light (basically a white LCD screen) this does help to bring out the color and brightness of close subjects, but does nothing for frame rate..same as above.

I mostly just leave it in normal recording mode and it handles fairly well in dim areas.

hope this helps.

[shaynew]

I have a GS-200 and like it a lot. The size is very convenient, not too small to grip and operate, but really compact and light. The controls make sense. The manual is below average, but not incomprehensible. If I had one beef it would be that I can't get the webcam mode to work though my router. That and the LCD display does solaraize at a pretty narrow angle.

After looking at a lot of forums and deep in the camcorder info site it seems anyone would be hard pressed to get better color repesentation in decent to good light from a mini-DV cam costing under $1000 and and there's no competition at $700-$800 (the gs200's street price).

I think the gs200's colors look great. Though somebody did complain once how his closeup of a deep red flower looked. And another guy writing about the gs400 said his violet pool cover looked blue until he found the right manual settings. And you do get moments where the color is not so great because of Auto White Balance catching up to changing conditions, but the pro reviewers who should know say that happens no more than with other cameras of its class.

Also all the pros say no moderately priced DV cam gives great color rendition in low light. So expect a bluish cast in fairly low light. though if you're willing to put up with some video grain, manual gain can remove some of the color cast. The 0 Lux Magic Pix mode is almost black and white and only for close-up motionless scenes because of the reduced frame rate.

Most consumer users don't seem to find much use for the wired zoom controller+mic (something the 200 has and the 120 doesn't) but the pros say the zoom control is very useful if you shoot from tripods. I haven't tried the mic, but some who have say it's audio is more "hot" and easier to get distortion than they expected. Though learning how far away to hold it or using earphones connected to the cam while taping will fix that. If you want better sound than the cam itself can provide, the wired mic if used right should be an improvement over the built-in mic.

As for the on-camera mic, people seem to like the fact that it focuses the mic's pickup more forward as they zoom in.

For people who want to use the manual focus ring (which makes manual focusing a lot faster/easier) or to record MPEG4 ASF (not AVI ) movies straight to SD card (or encode DV tape->MPEG4 ASF file in camera) they should get the GS-200. Budget an extra $50-80 or so for a larger SD card than the throwaway 8MB one that comes with the camera. You can see some samples of ASFs made from DV tape at

http://www.angelfire.com/film/shayne/

Unless you really need to take stills with your video camera don't bother. The stills from my gs200 stink compased with those from my cannon A70. So the fact that the 200 does higher resolution stills than the 120 is a non-issue.

Strict Point-and-shooters should get the GS-120. Which also has great color representation, and costs less.

Pros/Prosumers who are full-time manual control users who will be setting manual white balance and other settings all the time and who want to know when their shot is overexposed in manual mode will want the Zebra feature taht shows all the overexposed parts. That's a feature not on the gs200 but is on the gs400 which costs a few hundred more and has higer specs on the CCD and much easier access to manual controls.

For those who fall in between, and just want good focus control and some control over apeture and shutter speed, get the gs200.

[lugnuttz]

After looking at a lot of forums and deep in the camcorder info site it seems anyone would be hard pressed to get better color repesentation in decent to good light from a mini-DV cam costing under $1000 and and there's no competition at $700-$800 (the gs200's street price).

I bought that Canon Optura 40, which is very similar to the GS200 and believe it to be a better camera, and better priced if you look around. So there IS competition..... Its not a 3ccd, but canon cam out with the RGB color filter in it, and the color looks great. Again the low light isnt the best, but I believe it to be comparable to the panasonic. One thing that sold me on this cam, was the ability to manually set the mic levels. I film concerts and found this option to be priceless! Good luck in your search

[lordsmurf]

These are all helping. Thank you.

[shaynew]

An update on the GS200 as a web cam.

I'm curently working on the problem and have decided based on some expert opinion in this thread

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/bbs/t105985.html

that web camming with it using USB won't work. Although supposedly video conferencing with MS-messenger does work if you hook up the camera USING FIREWIRE, but I have yet to test that myself.

I have determined that the computer can see through the gs-200 camera real time on the machine its connected to with either USB or Firewire. And it looks so much better than a $50 webcam it's incredible. But the programs that communicate witht the camera prefer USB (comcast video email) or firewire (MS-Messenger/netmeeting).

Also, people using cameras who have trouble with sending video through Linksys 4 port routers have to be willing to either manually open certain ports or make the router UPnP enabled and maybe update its firmware if they got the router a while ago. So if other people can't see you across the internet it may not be the camera's fault.

Some info on that is available at

http://linksys.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/linksys.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=614&p_...bmdlcg**&p_li=

and the support page at Microsoft for Windows Messenger says something similar.

Note that some people think that enabling UPnP is unwise for security reasons.

http://grc.com/UnPnP/UnPnP.htm

So if you're considering enabling UPnP, and its a business computer. Weigh the risks and benefits first.