Having wended my way steadily through the years via Standard 8 (remember that anyone?), Hi8 and Digital 8 video, we last owned a Canon DV camcorder. This was an improvement so far as weight was concerned over the Sony Digi8, but the Canon still weighed half a kilogram, and having dropped it on a wet beach (with entirely predictable results, nacht), and as I am suffering advancing wrist arthritis, something lighter still was called for next time around.

It was not that I was intending to use the thing as a cricket ball, you understand, but life being something that happens when you are planning other things, minimising the possibilities has advantages. The Canon eventually failed in its tape-loading, and I have to say that looking at the wickedly complex internals of the thing made me sympathetic to systems which had a minimum of moving parts. Indeed I began to wonder just how it had managed to survive in working order at all. In retrospect, when mechanisms can be jammed literally by a single sand particle, beach-work seemed a tad unwise.

This particular model, it must be emphasised, is not high definition. I wasn't interested in HD for two reasons: we don't need it for family shots and, as a rock-bottom minimum, HD doubles the price. It also produces planet-sized files, and frankly I have better things to do than wait ages while the things load, are edited, and then rendered, quite apart from all the other upgrades necessary to play and view them. They also hoover up hard-disc space like you wouldn't believe. If you decide to go HD fine, but just be prepared, in my considered opinion, to endure a lot more hassle and also to spend a lot more wonga.

This panel has to be opened to switch the camcorder on, done with a five position wheel, and when this wheel is covered by the panel it is nigh-on impossible to turn the thing on accidentally. Full marks for that one, Panasonic. Close beside this wheel is the operation LED, red for on and pulsing green for standby. Again, more on this in a moment.

The LCD panel can be controlled both for total brightness and contrast, which is an essential when the camcorder is used in bright sunlight. A cover at the rear of the camcorder conceals a power socket (for battery charging), a proprietry A/V port and a mini-USB port. Another cover underneath opens to reveal the battery and the SD card. Also underneath is an access LED which lights up when the SD card is being accessed, and the manual says that on no account should either the battery or card be disturbed if the light is on. Seems a no-brainer to me.

Focussing seems good, but it will not work nearer than about 10cm on wide-angle, and this stretches to about a metre in x10 zoom. So long as you are not into macro it is adequate. There is a digital zoom, which, candidly you can take or leave. I have only ever found one digital zoom to be of the remotest use - on an HP still camera - and the digital zoom here is a utter waste of menu-space, frankly. I have never understood why the manufacturers make such a issue of them.

It is tempting to drop the camcorder into a pocket when not in use, which is fine provided you don't bend over (if it's in a shirt pocket), and you don't sit on it (when it's in a back pocket, and as I did to a digital compact some years ago when I slipped on some rocks - it survived, amazingly, but perhaps a health warning is in order here). Probably the best compromise is a belt-mounted case worn at one's side.

No remote controller is supplied, but in view of the download options this may not be a problem. It isn't for me.

Technical stuff
If you install the Panasonic software, which I suppose most people will, you are at the mercy of the company and what it thinks you should (and shouldn't) do. I haven't gone down that road, so I cannot comment on Panasonic's efforts in that direction. I do know that Canon's software is the despair of many, and frankly I was not about to risk our already fragile Windows setup when I could probably do better without proprietry programming.

Transferring the clips to the PC is a vastly quicker process than having to play the videos out into an editor, which is required by any tape system. HD and DVD-based camcorders also usually score well here, of course. The clips are all separate files, rather like ordinary still-picture files (although very much larger) so all the chopping up of the video, usually done by the video editor, will be a thing of the past. The video clips are dated and timed, so the software should have no problem sorting them out, although you may have to do some judicious prodding to achieve this. Having imported the files into the editor you will need to drag and drop them onto the time-line, but this is hardly PhD stuff, let's face it.

However, for the record, I have transferred (4:3) .MOD files direct to a Laptop hard drive under Windows XP, imported them into Ulead (don't buy this, it's awful) and then edited them quite happily, eventually cutting a normal DVD. So there would appear to be no intrinsic problems here.

One other minor point concerns the SD cards themselves. ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS (got me?) reformat the card when you have transferred the current clips to the PC. I simply cannot over-emphasise the importance of this. This strong recommendation applies to all storage cards used on any digital system, even the ubiquitous memory pens. Sooner or later, if you don't do this, the card capacity reduces and you will start to lose clips, eventually ending up with a holiday-full card which cannot be accessed. The explanation for this is a little arcane, so I won't try to do it here. Just reformat yer card, cobber.