It was a toss up between the Sony TRV22/TRV33 or something a lot cheaper that just does the job.
I settled for the Panasonic NVGS11b which offered all the basic features eg stability, windcut, photo to tape, colour night shot, dv out for computer editing and the best thing was the 24 x optical zoom..
At first glance the camcorder is small and easy to hold even for my wife who has small hands. It has a colour LCD screen which opens out and can rotate to the front, black and white view finder and the tape loading mechanism is at the top so if you use a tripod you don't need to undo the camcorder whilst changing tapes. The zoom is easily operated using your first or second finger and can be locked at 24 X optical, 60 X digital or 800 X digital.
In my opinion the zoom was useless after 170 because everything became pixelated but the 24 X optical zoom was amazing for picture quality and clarity.
In a quiet room the mic can pick up the whirring of the motor as it drives the tape. Outside in heavy wind you can hear the wind noise as it rushes past the mic which is located on the front.
The detail and colour of the videos taken when reviewed and transferred to tape are amazing. Even scenes shot in the night under the normal street lighting was good. In a dim room with no lights the camera didn't pick up anything even though you could see quite clearly in the room. The camera luckily has a torch on the front which when turned on increases the gain so that it looks pretty bright compared to how it actually is when you record or the second option is to just have the torch on with no gain and you will get pretty much the real life dark experience. The colour night shot works well but as with all camcorders that can record in colour under almost zero light conditions it is jerky start and stop action.
The stability system is great even when zooming in and out. When zooming in to 20 + on close objects, due to the magnification it became very shaky however when reviewed on tape it was not as bad as initially thought. On distant objects it was not even noticable.
The camera has many other features which include the standard editing features eg sound dubbing, fading and some special effects. It has an infrared remote control for using when you are in front of the camera or a free style remote which plugs into the camcorder for use when you are behind or using a tripod for distant steady shots.
Connection wise it has AV out and super video for transferring to tv or video, USB for downloading the photos from tape and DV out for transferring the video to computer for editing.
Battery life is also good. The camcorder comes with a one hour battery but if used constantly you can get nearly 2 and a bit hours from it using the black and white view finder. With a mixture of start stop shooting with the LCD panel I managed 1.5 hours.
You can also take photos which are transfered to tape. The next model up, Panasonic NVGS15b has a built in 0.8mega pixel camera which can record images onto an SD card for storing photos but I didn't see the point as I plan to buy a proper digital camera with 4mega pixels or above to get decent quality and decent sized prints.
All in all the camcorder is easy to use and so self explanatory that you can use it straight out of the box without trawling through the user manual.
Ideal for someone who just wants to record and copy to tape or edit on computer and all for a budget price.
It's definitely worth shopping around. I bought this from the internet and have seen them selling with a difference of over £150 in shops..
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![Panasonic NV-GS11B Digital Camcorder [24 x Optical , DV out]](http://picnica.ciao.com/uk/78264510.jpg "Panasonic NV-GS11B Digital Camcorder [24 x Optical , DV out]")
Jun 18th, 2004
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