Home > Consumer Reviews > Panasonic PVGS200 3CCD MiniDV Camcorder w/10x Optical Zoom

I've owned Sony Hi8 cameras before and finally decided to jump to MiniDV with this Panasonic GS200.

While this Panasonic really delivers great picture quality and colour, my real gripe is the stability of the image when hand-held ... it's awful compared to a Sony (yes, I did have image stability turned on!) It really needs to be used with a tripod.

Other features of the camera are impressive although it has too many things crammed into menu's. Some things are difficult to find - especially when adding titles. I really miss the thumb-wheel navigation that a Sony has.

Also impressed with the digital stills, although when compared with a digital stills camera, the images are fuzzy around sharp edges.

Overall, it serves my purposes as I need good picture quality and colour. The 3CCD's are excellent and battery life is reasonable.

The Digital Zoom is just useless for most camera! It is just a marketing sick joke. Turn off that stupid Digital Zoomm then your EIS will work a lot better ( try not to zoom all the way to 10X). If you need to get closer to the object then try to use a telephoto lense converter ( may be around $99 for a decent one). Over all I think this camera is doing very well! I would definately recommend it! Video quality is superb! Still camera is not bad if you need a quick shot at something. The user manual is a real joke though but the menu is very easy to use. Thing you may need beside the camcorder:
- IEEE cable
- Adobe Premier
You will not be disappointed! At lest i didn't.
The new PV-GS250 has the Optical I.S. so you may want to look at it as well. But to me, the PV-GS200 is very good you just have to get use to it.

This is a tourist-camera body with a professional output! I use this camera for commercial video and public access cable TV. I've taken this camera on vacation all over the world. On a flat panel TV, people always remark how incredibly good the resolution is on this camera, in all sorts of lighting environs. One of the standouts is the excellent lens and the sharp autofocus. It also rocks with a steadicam. My next camera is going to be a lot less fun because it is more bulky.

I won't go into all the technical specs of this camera because the other reviewers have already done an excellent job of doing that. I bought my pv-gs200 2 years ago and it's really an amazing and value packed product. They're a little tough to find new now but I would imagine a refurb would be of equal quality. The #1 reason why I purchased the gs200 is because it has a manual focus ring. I can use it for stills and full motion video. This is a huge benefit, especially in low light shots. The color reproduction on the GS200 is spot on. I recently shot a family reunion at a beach in Long Island NY and discovered that if you capture the video in an uncompressed format using an app like Sony Vegas, you get results comparable to that of a higher end broadcast quality camera. For me, figuring this out was like unlocking the cameras true potential. I highly recommend this camera for the steady handed. It's ideal for tripod use too! Check out a video of my nephew picking his nose with both fingers, filmed with the GS200 and rendered as a an mpeg layer 2 file. http://www.robdrew.us/thepick.mpg Here's a link to a still I took with the GS200. It's a pic of the sun using no filters. http://www.robdrew.com/gallery/IMGA0502.JPG

The Panasonic PV-GS200 is a great camera as all the other reviewers have mentioned. Don't buy this camera for the computer program, DV Studio3. I have Win XP Home and installed the software that was included with the camera. I have yet to find out how it works as the program freezes as soon as you start it. I get the splash screen and that's it. I usually have to use the task manager to shut down the program. I contacted Panasonic via their website and after two weeks, have not received a response (not even an acknowledgement that they received my question). Camera is great but the program is the pits. -- Update: Finally got a response from Panasonic (three weeks). They recommended I use Windows Movie Maker to download the video. That worked. -- Update (again): The one thing that is not mentioned by anyone, including Panasonic tech support is the firewire cable. This is essential and is not included with the PV-GS200. Since this is a neccessary accessory, you'd think Panasonic would have mentioned this somewhere in their manual (and included one with the camera). Make sure you have one if you're using this camera.