Digital Trends

Panasonic PV-GS300 January 3rd, 2007 | by David Elrich

Performance

This camcorder is good to go in about three seconds, a relatively quick time when compared to many DVD-based models. As DigitalTrends’ readers know, I start in Auto then move to the manual options (video and still). Turning the mode dial to video, it was time to walk through the initial menu screens. For the most part, they are easy to read and fairly understandable. You simply use the joystick to navigate through them. In Auto you’re blocked from making many adjustments--which is a good thing for the vast majority of point-and-forget users. Still you can adjust the flash level and mode, OIS on/off, type of fade and other settings. Where things get squirrelly is something as important as the LCD brightness and contrast. Here you have to go into Setup, go to page 2 of 3, find LCD Set, hit Yes then make the adjustments. This is way too deep into the menu system. Once there, the adjustments are good, but Panasonic software designers need to bring this important function to the fore not aft.

You can also switch between 4:3 and 16:9 recording and the LCD automatically changes to the proper aspect ratio for easy framing and composition. This is a three-CCD camcorder which is a very good thing as you can tell by our review of the Panasonic VDR-D300 . With this system, the primary colors (red, green, blue) are handled by individual sensors resulting in more accurate colors on your TV. In the case of the PV-GS300, it features a trio of 800K pixel chips and it records 640K x 3 video in the 4:3 mode. When you go to 16:9, resolution drops to 540K x 3 since it’s cropping the image rather than using the full width of the sensor like many competitors (Canon, Sony). That said if you’re serious about widescreen video, definitely consider the much more expensive PV-GS500 that uses three 1.07MP chips for 700K x 3 video in 4:3 and 730K x 3 in 16:9. The numbers tell the story as well as your eyes. Then again you can go high-def which is another tale entirely. Back to the GS300…

I found this camcorder very easy to operate with the controls in readily accessible position (zoom and record buttons). The zoom has a nice feel and the LCD held up for the most part, although I would’ve preferred more pixels for enhanced detail. The camcorder had little problem grabbing focus—even through windows--and the optical image stabilizer eliminated most of the hand shake. OIS is a true Godsend and you should always look for it—no matter which brand you choose.

Moving to Manual takes a simple flick of the switch in the LCD compartment. Once in this setting you have access to many adjustments including multiple Scene modes (there are five them such as sports, portrait). Most are pretty self explanatory but you need the Owner’s Manual to decipher a few of them such as Spotlight and Surf & Snow. Fortunately, when you toggle through the manual options a brief description of the setting is displayed so you can decide if that’s what you’d like to do. You’ll find options for white balance, iris, to engage Magic Pix (a low-light shooting mode), soft skin mode and others. Once you’ve fiddled with these settings you can move to manual focus and tweak the setting by moving the joystick left or right. It’s here the limitations of the LCD panel again show themselves.

After shooting video indoors and out, it was time to play them back on my Toshiba TV via the A/V out and to download to the PC via FireWire. Since the supplied A/V cable has an S-out, I used that connection and the jog dial to fast forward, playback and so on. The results onscreen were quite good with a minimum amount of noise and jagged edges. Video was quite smooth and colors were fairly accurate but a touch washed-out indoors. That said, you can really see the benefits of the three-chip system and OIS, compared to the competition.

All camcorders take stills and the PV-GS300 is no exception; here it takes 3MP images, definitely nothing to write home about. I took many shots. The photos taken with the flash were good and sharp but those in dim light looked like noisy low-quality stills. Outdoors in bright sunlight they were O.K. too but I wouldn’t try an 8x10; 4x6 snapshots should be fine.

The supplied editing software is good for beginners and I had no problems downloading video to my Dell.