Panasonic NV-GS250

My dad bought this camera earlier this year from Jessops at the Metro centre for £999.(I think it has come down in price since then) My mam is not the greatest photographer so we wanted a video camera with a LCD monitor so that my mam could take video footage that is good enough to watch! She has actually managed really well with it and is getting very proficient at it now.

The LCD screen is 2.5inches and it is very good. There is a brightness adjustment for sunny conditions which works quite well. It can be turned round 320, which allows you to photograph yourself as well as over walls, and round corners.

There is a colour viewfinder but is quite small and you get the feeling it's sitting on your eyeball, after a while you get quite used to it. It has got a manual adjustment for focusing which is really good if you wear glasses (like my dad and me!)

There is a night setting and night view. This gets fantastic results but I highly recommend you use a tripod.

The camera comes with two remote controls. One is for operating the camera and playback mode. The second one is a microphone, which has a built in remote control.

We bought a larger battery so that it lasts longer (a couple of hours - this is reduced by about 45% when using the LCD screen) but this catches your face when recording.

It turns on and off easily, the button just slides along. When the camera is turned on you can press the quick start button which allows a quick start up after switching on.

There is a 3ccd image sensor, which means there is three sensors, one for each colour spectrum. This gives fantastic, sharp, clear results.

The video card has 3million pixels. You get very good results in natural daylight but built in flash is not so good.

There is a manual position for focusing which is very good.

The zoom is only small (0-10times) but as a keen photographer I find this is still adequate because with larger zooms you tend to get camera shake and have to use a tripod.

A good point of camera is that you can also put a memory card into the camera, playback your video, pause it and a grab a picture onto your memory card. I use the memory card quite a lot to save taking two cameras out with us. The camera does not come with a memory card, we bought a 512MB one.

I would definately recommend this camcorder. Thanks for reading. bluejules xx