Camcorder Reviews

Mine did. When I could get Customer Service on the phone they couldn't find the unit. I have had to have it repaired three times in 6 months. Panasonic has been of almost no help until I brought my attorney into it.

This little camera here is perfect for everyday recording it does the job, but if u wanna make movies go for something better.not that the quality isnt great, but at high zoom, picture and stability isnt perfect.otherwise its a good reliable handy cam.I had it for a year and a half and its always done good.
I recommend u get a good battery with it tho, cuz the one that comes with it only last bout an hr.

THIS DIGITAL CAMCORDER, FOR THE PRICE, IS BY FAR THE BEST UNIT IN THE IDUSTRY. IF YOU ARE A VIDEO FILE LIKE MYSELF, YOU WILL REALLY ENJOY THE PV-DV851. LOOK AROUND AT THE 899.99 PRICE RANGE AND NOTHING COMPARES.

I want to love this gadget, but I can not. It tries to do too much, and ends up doing too little.

PROS:
- Super Small
- Large LCD
- Excellent Prodcut Design
- Many "Features"

CONS:
- You're finger easily gets in the way of the lens(1 in 3 shots are finger shots)
- The digital photos are VERY grainy in ALL light conditions (I would not even post the photos to my web site)
- No "Red Eye Reduction"
- The video quality is medium, definitel not a camcorder replacement
- Audio files need to be translated to some "native" format, using included software... no drag and drop here!

I will most likely return it, despite my desire to like all that it offers and how cool it looks. It just not deliver quality on the images and video.

This is a very cool gadget, but it has a very specific target audience - people who need a camera and a Dictaphone with them at all times. If that's not you, consider a Palm Zire 71, or maybe a camera phone.

Unlike many other combination devices, the D-Snap 50 doesn't try to do too much, just a few things fairly well. The MP3 player is as good as any other card-based unit, the voice recorder is on par with the most expensive Sony stand-alones, and the digital camera is good enough for small jobs and web work... but until you get used to using it, you'll think you need to cut off your index finger to take a decent picture. Also, I haven't yet decided whether including an 8 MB memory card with the unit was meant as an insult or a joke.

Most of the negatives associated with the D-Snap 50 can be cured with three things: patience, practice, and an extraordinarily large SD memory card. After you've taught yourself how to hold it, and jacked up all the settings to acceptable quality, you will wonder how you ever did without it. As for durability, we'll have to wait and see, but I trust the brand. Three and one-half stars.

I travel frequently and write as a hobby, and I have often wished I had camera or camcorder with me to capture an interesting scene to use in my writing. I normally carry a digital voice recorder, but usually do not have the ability to photograph because cameras are generally too bulky for everyday use. I therefore purchased this gadget in an effort to give me an 'all in one' recorder I could use to capture voice notes, still images and short movies. Here's what I found:

The Good:

- Small! Yet it has a good, solid weight to it.
- Easy-to-learn controls. I was using the gadget's full functionality within minutes, and didn't have to slog through the manual to learn each mode. Once I learned how to use one mode, the others were fairly intuitive.
- Versatility - I was able to hook the camcorder up to my DVD player and record a movie in MPEG-4 format for later watching. I then reversed the cables and played the same movie, outputting to my television. I took a few pictures, then made some voice memos, and the quality of the memos was better than on my old digital recorder. Very cool!

The Bad:

- The camcorder works well only when under strong light conditions. It lowers the shutter speed when it has insufficient light (and 'insufficient' here includes any indoor shooting), which means dropped frames and dark colors. There is a mode to compensate somewhat for low light, but this only brightens the images without speeding frame rate.
- I knew this going in, so I don't really think of this as a 'bad', but you may not know: MPEG-4 is NOT movie-quality! The best you can do on this device is 320x240 - half the normal resolution of your TV screen, which means half as good as your normal camcorder. Plus, it's compressed, which means some quality is lost. The movies this device makes are for posting on Websites, not sending copies to Grandma.
- The camera also does not work well indoors. It has an automatic flash, but the flash is somewhat underpowered and does not illuminate objects more than a few feet in front of the camera.
- Only 2.5 digital zoom on the camera. No optical zoom. This is, effectively, a simple point and click camera.
- Listening to the most recently recorded voice memo requires scrolling with the track ball, unlike normal voice recorders which allow you to listen to your most recent memo with ease - this is important, as you will often want to ensure you actually captured what you were saying.
- Short battery life - about an hour of recording. The battery is quite slim, so this is to be expected. However, an hour is significantly less than most one-use objects.
- No protective case! A leather holder is a must for this device. Instead, all you get is a neck strap (good, though it's almost too heavy for wearing around the neck) and a grey felt bag which could protect from scratches, but not dropping. Who the heck is going to carry this in a felt bag? It needs to be worn on the waist, like a cell phone.

The Ugly:

- It's very easy to place your finger over the lens when taking pictures. Panasonic tried to compensate for this by placing several small nubs on the front of the device so you could, by feel, know where to hold the camera. However, they're not enough, and Panasonic's 'fix' is a hard plastic bubble you're supposed to peel and stick to the front of the camera to prevent your finger from sliding up. Yes, that's right - instead of building a bump into the camera's case, you the consumer have to gum a piece of hard plastic to it. In the software industry, we call this a 'hack.'
- The 'Menu' button, which you will be using frequently, is difficult to push. It's tiny, and because of the camera's shape is difficult to push without grasping the camera with both hands. This is a device that wants to be used only with one hand.
- I'm concerned about durability. While most of the parts feel solid and durable, two spots feel like they are asking to break. One is a small roller ball that you use to traverse the menus; it's tiny and light, and if it goes, there's no way the gadget will work without professional service. The second is the plastic catch that keeps the LED screen in place when the camera is open. Since it's possible to force the camera to close without pushing in the latch, I can see this part wearing out quickly and preventing the LED from locking open.

Summary: Despite my grips, the SV-AV50 is definitely a keeper. It an excellent emergency memory preserver/party toy. It is well-engineered with a few minor flaws. It is NOT a camcorder replacement and NOT a digital camera replacement; if you buy expecting either of these you'll be mightily disappointed. 4/5 stars, but know what you are getting!

I bought this camera because of its size. It is a great camera to lug around. However the telephoto/wideangle button is clumsy at best. The one second hesitation on the playback mode is very distracting and annoying. I do not think the quality of the recording is as good as my old dcr-9.

I just got mine and I love it. BUT, this camera is not for everyone. This amazingly tiny camera actually does fit in the palm of your hand and is surprisingly easy to use. The index function allws you to automatically jump to any scene on the tape using tiny thumbnail icons. (it's like jumping to scenes on your dvd) However, because the images are recorded as MPEG files, they are treated as such, seperate files. This makes loading footage into your computer and editing a dream, but, when playing back the tape on your TV, there is about a one second pause between each clip and I must admit, it's pretty annoying. I believe the best camera is whatever you will actually use. You will definately use this one, but if you intend on shooting video, dubbing to vhs and whatching, you may be unhappy with the results. If you want an amazing tool which can capture images to be manipulated in your computer, this is the camera for you.

I have owned a lot of camcorders. VHS, 8mm, Hi8, 3chip. . .I love this one! It actually fits my pocket! It takes good video for a single chip camera. It has a great lens, Super Steady Shot, and has a great battery. {especially if you use the view finder} It fits my big hand better than many larger camcorders. The DCR-PS11 takes a much better digital still, but is a little larger ie. a little less convenient to carry. The DCR-PS5 is to carry. The 640x480 stills look great on my computer's screen and make great slide shows the 10x lens lets you shoot over the crowd and get great closeups. I have other camera's for high quality stills. A camera in your pocket is much more useful then the one at home or in your car's trunk!

This Sony software is actually made by Pinnacle Systems, and thus Sony's helpdesk will refer you to Pinnacle. Boy did I need help! The software came without a serial # required to install it, and it took me almost 8 hours with email, fax and phone with Pinnacle to get a serial #. The FireWire card supplied did not include the promised installation instructions, so I had ...[to] guess. Once I got the serial #, the installation went well, but Pinnacle's help desk is not an impressive outfit. Once installed, my Win XP PC instantly recognized my Sony Mini DV camcorder, and I downloaded my tape onto my hard drive with good intuitive controls.

First off... I have not tried this!!!!

BUT! When I got here, my first thought was.... OK... what is this, since amazon does not seem to supply ANY information about it at all. So I went hunting, and I figure I'd share my finds with you.

Key Features:

- Add titles, narration, special effects and more
- Capture one hour of DV tape in 150 MB of disk space with SmartCapture feature
- Create DV tapes, MPEG files, AVI clips, or RealVideo files for web-streaming
- The perfect companion to your DV or Digital8 camcorder

Package includes

2-Sony DVM60PR MiniDV Tapes
1-IEEE 1394 PCI Board
Pinnacle Systems Studio DV Editing Software
Instruction Guide to Movie Making
1-IEEE 1394 (Firewire/i.link) 6-Pin x 4-Pin cable

There was a note on the same page that I found all this saying that this only supports NTSC, NOT PAL version...

overall, this looks like a pretty good deal for those who want to transfer their MiniDV's to their computers, only gave it 4 stars since A) I personally haven't used it, and B) When it comes to video editing, I'm more a type A personality, and I think I'd like more control than this product would give me. but thats just me :)

hope this helps

I have just bought this "audio editing package" as a part of my first video camera kit. I found it great because it contains all do you need to begin working on your digital videos, the software interface its very intuitive and very easy to use and you can be making things on broadcast quality very soon.

The only complaint that I have, and the reason why I only assign 4 stars to this product, it's that the documentation is very poor (actually doesn't mention anything about the PCI card setup) and also I didn't find any help on-line to accomplish this task (neither in the websites of Sony and Pinnacle) .

If you have a medium knowledge on setting up a PCI device within your PC and you are interested in begin video edition this product is for you. (By the way the only difference between this package and the D8 labeled it's the media tapes they have inside).

I have the PVL-858. I like the camera, loaded with features, but we live on the east coast, and every summer that I try to use the camera, I get the message "Dew Detected" and the thing shuts off automatically. The days are humid here, and I can't use it in the least humidity. What good is a camcorder that is so unreliable? Missed our vacation to Bermuda, and our summers at home and at the beach. ARGH!!!!!!!!!

Nice camcorder, but the 750 model is *very, very* similar. The750 is also $ . . . cheaper.

However, if you want to spend a littlemore for a slightly more powerful cam, get this one.

Theres no point spending money on the 850 when the 750 is the same thing cheaper

The camcorder does not have the built-in SD drive, nor the digital still photo capabilities that are listed as included features in the product description.

It's all that except the picture in picture and image capture feature.

The PV-L424 is a pretty cool piece of gear. (With virtually no reviews)

We just got it yesterday for $419. It can be found a little cheaper, but check store reviews...

We almost bought the PCV-L552 for its big view finder and 27x optical zoom, but after a lot of digging on obscure web sites, we found that older camera suffers from a dew detector light that goes off too easily, shutting down the camera for hours. The PV-L424 just came out in 2004.

The 20x PV-L424 optical zoom is amazing. Things still look good at 40x digital, can read a UPC bar code from across the room. Things look tolerable at 120x, but ridiculous at 750k. There a single digit from the bar code fills the screen and is almost unreadable due to pixilation.

It's kind of slim, better looking than the photo.

Menus and controls seem intelligently laid out. What's used most seems to have a single button for it.

I like the way the LCD screen swivels around so that you could actually dictate into it and see yourself. It's smart enough to know to flip the image right side up when I do that.

I can't say anything yet for the durability.

We chose this VHS-C thing because I think all playback equipment for formats other than this and DVD will be difficult to find in 50 years. And the DVDs suffer from $10 disk costs (for 30 minutes) and the resolution won't match the MiniDVs until they change the image format to MPEG2. The PV-L424 seems like a great inexpensive holdover until the DVDs mature.

I liked the size and the quality of pictures. The digital pictures were good also. The problem is getting the pictures to play back. Seems the clogged head syndrome appeared. The picture was distorted and now after 1 month, I have to return the camera for repairs. For the cost of this camera, one would expect to use it more than once every month. I think the price of this camera should reflect that of one that has a manufacturers rebuild. Recent research shows we will be waiting for parts to get it fixed.

This one, and others break. They break without warning, and you are out 500 to 800 dollars.

Buy the camcorder from a store that is authorized by Mack Video (they do all camera, and video repair)

You can get a 4 year video warranty for about $50 and it's a good warranty.

Just got my sharp minidv and is a beauty, very simple to use, did not have to look at the manual at all, menu's are very clear and logical,is light and small, just a little bigger than my fuji digital camera, video recordings are excellent and sound is very good to excellent, depending on what mode you choose.
IMHO a very good buy, I'd like to have a screen protector and I think the smart media card should be included.

look i got camera, use camera and i tape with it sometimes i zoom in and out then go in car can take video of animals! i used tapes before not these tapes. good tapes i use them and they tape in colors like 9 colors i have to say good tapes

In the back of the tape says: Hi* digital8 NTSC LP(240 min.)
I did this with my GV-D800 Sony. and it didn't work.Only 120m.
Thanks.

These tapes shoot at pretty good quality and they can be used in both high8 as well as digital8 camcorders. You can't get a better camcorder tape from sony than this at this price.