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Panasonic NV-GS80 Mini DV Camcorder Camcorder Best Buys
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Price - £162.99 Correct as of 03/04/08
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2 Reviews for Panasonic NV-GS80 Mini DV Camcorder
NV-GS80. Very Good Budget Camcorder. - 06 Feb 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful.
The NV-GS80 is a great budget camcorder, with fantastic zoom and optical image stabilizer (OIS) (which reduces camera shake). OIS is much preferred to Electronic Image Stablilsation (on most competitor models) as it occurs before the image reaches the CCD.
The NV-GS80 has a single, 800k pixel CCD sensor, which is par for the course at this price point. Note, however, that the effective pixel count reduces to 540k pixels when shooting in 16:9 now standard widescreen mode.
One niggle is that to transfer video to your PC, you must first disconnect the battery to get access to the mini USB2 or Firewire ports. You also have to plug in the power supply, which is a problem if you are looking to edit footage on the go. (Note: Image quality will also suffer when transferred via USB. This is common to USB transfer, and why firewire is preferred.)
Also Panasonic are launching the NV-GS90 with upgraded spec (eg 42x zoom), and Image Stablizer, amongst other things. Might be better to wait until March when this comes out as it is likely to be at the same price point online (i.e. under £200).
You may also find that the NV-GS80 can be picked up at a bargain from March 2008 as the model is replaced and shops look to dump the old stock in favour of the NV-GS90.
Great Camcorder - 22 Jun 2007
38 out of 38 found this review helpful.
I own this camcorder for a couple of weeks now and have been putting it through its paces to get to know it. I'm really pleased with it and found only one problem I need to solve: wind spoils my outdoor sound-recordings. So far I haven't found the solution.
The picture quality is great. The images are sharp and the colours are true. I've processed them using Pinnacle Studio 10 and the pictures look true to life when viewed from a DVD.
The autofocus works quite quickly, but sometimes needs a little help when the zoom is on. By zooming back a bit the focus gets sharp immediately, so I'm usually ready within a second or two.
The zoom is great. I chose this camcorder because of this capability, and I have to say its great. But I cannot film without a tripod when the zoom gets beyond 13-14x, so a tripod is essential.
The sound is fine, when recording inside, or outside without wind. But if there's any wind you'll get interference from it. I've tried the wind-noise reduction function, but this is no help. In fact I didn't notice any difference with this function on or off. This is the reason I gave only four stars; it advertizes with a wind-noise reduction function, but it doesn't work well enough for me (still, all other camcorders I've worke with had similar problems.) Now I'll have to glue some fake-fur to the front of my camcorder to reduce wind-noise. Hopefully I'll find a fashionable pattern...
I've bought an additional battery to allow me to film longer than the hour or so the standard battery can handle. The one I chose is the 2100mha one. When I stick it to the back of the camcorder it protrudes further back than the seeker in its extended position. At first I was shocked and expected this to inhibit filming, but in fact it doesn't, I now happily use the seeker with the fat battery on. No problems here.
New for me is the joystick that's used to access the different menues. My old camcorder used a touchscreen and I wasn't happy about that (because it fouled up the screen). But I was unsure if a joystick this small would work. Now that I have a couple of weeks practice I can safely say it works great. I wouldn't go back to touchscreen anymore. (In fact this didn't take me weeks to work out, this was clear within seconds of trying it.)
So despite the drawback with the wind-noise I'm still very pleased with the NV-GS80. The pictures are great, sound is great as long as there's no wind and the camcorder is very easy to use. And the 32x zoom is incredible...