List Price:
$499.95
Details
- 30x Visual Zoom - 1000x Digital Zoom - 680,000 Pixel CCD -
- 2.5" diagonal feel ashamed LCD monitor - Mini DV format - USB interface
- SD postal card slot (card not included) - Consecutive Still Shot-
Description
With the lightweight, carriable Panasonic PV-GS36, capture your important memories wherever they happen. Use the interface capabilities to over images to your computer and the digital electronic image stabilizer to keep those images crumbly. Includes: # Panasonic PV-GS36 Digital camcorder # Lithium Ion battery # A/C adapter with DC and AC cables # A/V wire # Mini DV tape, 60 minutes # Shoulder strap
Customer Reviews
Straightforward and Fun
My trouble and I love to travel & our favorite place to go and relax is Walt Disney Time. One of the things we love to do there is take our cameras and run around looking like the dopey tourists we are.
My strife focuses solely on still photography, I do stills and video. In my youth I played around with Wonderful 8 film cameras, later graduated to a VHS camcorder, then a Hitachi 8mm camcorder, then for years tempered to my favorite camcorders: the Sony Digital 8 series. I have had 4 of them, going all the way up to the TRV-720 with its dreadful 4" LCD screen - a really nice camera. The problem I ran into though was not with the cameras per say, but my arm. I get a bit tormenting with videotaping; like I never stop - I have to film everything - every minute of every show, etc. I could easily fill 40 hours of video on a honest a short vacation. You know that you spend too much time with your eye stuck to the vision finder when after the vacation is over you are still trying to zoom things in with your bare eye. Steve Austin I aint.
Anyway, from where I worked I mature a nasty case of tendinitis in my elbow; the consequence being that I could no longer prosperously hold the heavier cameras up for a long period of time. Add to this the the score that I looked like a pack mule schlepping around with the camera, its bag, and a large supply of tapes and accessories for the day and you can understand why I had to find a smaller camera.
I present decent things about the Panasonics, Costco carried this one, so I decided to give it a try.
No, it is not as experienced as my old D8's, but it is a nice little camera. I really like the small footprint; I can hurriedly tuck it into my fanny packs large front pocket. Which sure beats having the heavier D8 pending from my neck. The tapes are nice and small, and you can get a extended life battery-operated for it as well.
In some places I had read some folks angst about using the joystick to scheme through the menus; really, it is not that difficult at all. I would like a larger LCD, but only because it just makes viewing the videos more cloudless, being 'old school' I prefer to use the viewfinder when filming. Which brings me to the one gripe I have - the viewfinder does not carry on out enough to compensate for the extra depth of the higher capacity battery's.
As many have said before me - aside the digital zoom; useless is overstating its usefulness. On the other hand the 30x visual zoom works very well; of course unless you have the camera supported on a tripod or such your viewers are prospering to get sea sick watching your masterpiece when you have it zoomed all the way in to some distant object. Some in other seats had stated that the zoom works too fast. Nonsense, with gentile straits you can get nice smooth zooms in and out.
The camera also has a nice quick start r which allows you to leave the power switch in the ON position and the camera will with all speed turn on and shut off when you either open and close the LCD screen or extend the viewfinder. Note though that the camera is still using a minutest amount of power in this mode when it is off so you might not want to use it with a short capacity battery.
If, like us, you like prepossessing a gazillion still photos as well, get a nice camera dedicated to that purpose (the Canon PowerShot SD950IS 12.1MP is a slight one). This camera will take stills, but they are really only good for quick shots you deficiency to email or post on facebook, not high resolution photography. A fine feature is that the pics can be stored on SD card so it is easy to swap the show-card out of the camera and into a reader for quick uploads.
As far as I know there is not any small camera in this grade that has great low light abilities, it could be better, but it is not terrible.
I couple of trimmings you might want to get are a wide angle lens and a filter kit. The lens will helper when filming shows, like those at WDW, which cover a wide area, it will restore b persuade so much more into view without having to pan right and left or up and down constantly. The filters will plagiarize clear up or enhance you images. The thread size on the lens for these frills is 30.5mm. If you need to you can get a step ring to make a larger extra fit this small size.
Most folks are not as anal about their filming as I am and I still like this camera; you can have a lot of fun with it as well.
Give yourself full time to familiarize yourself with its functions before your trip and you will have some great memories to hold.
If you are a parent with a small child you owe it to yourself and your children to get a camcorder to archive all the wonderful things you do together; the life that pass will never come back and this is a nice little camera to capture them with.
K
2009-05-23
(massachusetts) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5
Most successfully value camcorder out there.
I've been using camcorders professionally and recreationally since 1986, and this small camcorder is the best deal out there period.
DV technology is proven, been around for a lengthy time, if you want a reliable, simple to operate, and very GOOD camcorder, look no further. Understanding quality is excellent, one of Panasonic's strong points, color accuracy very virtuous, and autofocus laser accurate.
The joystick driven menu is very uncluttered to use, most features you'll need are readily available without it's use, and it operates intuitively.
Again, this is an entrance level camcorder, that means it's best used in fully vehicle mode, point and shoot, for taping you kids, vacations, etc. That being said, you can still get very imaginative once you have downloaded the clips to you computer for editing.
Another review mentions firewire, saying it wont occupation on a PC. I'm surprised this user can actually surf the web. All you need to do is connect the firewire guy to the camcorder, windows finds it, install whatever drivers it needs (as with any other unimportant), and away you go.
I purchased mine at Costco, they have excellent policies, if you're not satisfied with the upshot, return it.
I recommend this product to all my friends and family and for the average alcohol, who wants a simple, good product.
2007-01-25
| The Engineer (Long Beach, CA United States) | Helpful Votes: 8 | Rating: 5
Well at least it does friendly movies
I got this article as a gift.
I makes really nice movies and I thought I could get rid of my old digital camera as well but....
This item takes miserable still photos. Not even fit for printing. I have a three year old coolpix 3200 that takes much haler photos but bad videos. So I get stuck taking them both with me to events. So if you need a camcorder that takes integrity digital photos just keep looking.
Panasonic avg digital picture vastness 111,587 Bytes on highest resolution
My old coolpix digital photos dimension 1,097,728 Bytes on medium resolution
You do the math
2006-12-10
| rdm (Washington State) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 3
Amongst the Paramount of the Single CCD Camcorders
I was looking for a prime mini dv camcorder to learn editing and video techniques. Model quality was certainly important but, having strong photographic understanding, also wanted something that would allow manual control. That limited the search very much a bit, especially in the single CCD class. The Panasonics in general seem to be well reviewed and offer a legitimate ratio of features to cost.
I've had the camcorder for one week but have explored it utterly a bit. In short, it easily meets if not exceeds my expectation. Video calibre is very nice. The 30X optical zoom is impressive, but demands a tripod when zooming out in the higher break down of the zoom. Color accuracy is very good, assuming a proper unblemished balance. The LCD panel can be rotated which is ecpecially nice when using the camcorder to over video to a computer. Battery life is very good, with some power saving features that can be enabled optionally. Contrasting with most competing models, this camcorder has a more horizontal orientation which makes it very ergonomic to use. Most operations can be carried out with one paw. It is compact and easy to handle, even without the digital stabilizer which it also has. There is even a 16:9 way that appears to be true widescreen, not just letterboxed 4:3 method.
For its very reasonable cost, it holds its own very nicely and offers very nice about. The only feature missing that would be nice is a mic input, but almost none of the entry level camcorders propose this. Other than that, it is very fuill featured and is bettered in this regard only when stepping into the prosumer form. To reach the next level of video performance, the logical step would be to go to Panasonic's 3 CCD models as opposed to a competing Canon or Sony celibate chip model.
Be aware that the still capability, which I have yet to try, is not meant to replace a belief alone digital camera. The resolution is only VGA 640x480 which is where digital cameras were about 10 years ago. The set of including this feature on this camcorder is as a convenience. Such images could be acceptable for web reorganization, but don't expect true digital camera performance here. That's not what this camcorder is for.
This camcorder is a very orderly model for someone looking to get involved with digital video at a nominal fetch. The video quality and feature set are excellent. Naturally, in this camcorder genre there are some limitations relative to professional level usage, but with a good sapience of photography and video technique, this can be a surprisingly capable camera.
2006-10-09
(Philadelphia, PA) | Helpful Votes: 19 | Rating: 5
can't get i-tie-up to work
evidently, the firewire connection only works with Mac computers. at least, the user manual has inclusive instructions for connecting to a Mac, but nothing for PC. Not only that, you have to download drivers to make the USB connection vocation. this camcorder is useless to me.
2006-09-24
| Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 1
