Highly Desirable (Panasonic e.cam NV-GS5)

Member Name: sideards

Product:	Panasonic e.cam NV-GS5
Date:	30/08/03 (550 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: small, high quality, turns peoples heads even at posh resorts

Disadvantages: battery life could be better, should have come with a case, charger is bulky

I have owned several camcorders in my years and used many more including digital ones.
When I went into the shop i was just looking around for what sort camcorders were available with no real intent to purchase one there and then.

This wonderfully compact camcorder sits in the palm of your hand with ease, an adjustable hand strap to make sure that you do not drop it.
It is a very lightweight bit of kit, it even fits in my jacket pocket comfortably.

On holiday (see Ocho-Rios opinion), I found that even the richest americans were impressed by my camcorder, particularly the size and the obvious quality that can be seen by just looking at it. I went to a wildlife park and it had wildlife photographers questioning me about it's ability and price. Everywhere I take this camera people are drawn to it, this makes it a little bit of a security risk in as much as it is a highly desirable very small item that would be easy to make off with in a crowd.

The camcorder itself is crammed full of features including on the spot special effects.
It can be set to be fully automatic focus/white balance/lighting etc. Although if you plan your filming well much better results can be acheived with the manual settings.

The little flip out screen is also reversible which I found very handy whilst making a video diary on the Costa Del Sol a few weeks ago. It can be set to display a mirror image whilst reversed making self filming a far easier task because we are all used to looking in mirrors at some point already. Use of this little screen though seems to drain the battery very fast indeed and I have found that you can get much more use out of the battery if you use the viewfinder instead.

The digital camera function is excellent and I have already taken literally thousands of pictures with it. These are easily transferred to your PC via a USB cable (supplied).
The quality of these pictures depends on the settings once again. T
he memory use is also affected by the settings you use. I tend to go for the best quality as I also bought a 256 meg SD memory card to replace the 8 meg one supplied with the camcorder.

The memory card, as I just mentioned, is SD (secure digital) which is extremely compact and is getting cheaper all the time. Barely larger that a postage stamp SD memory is brilliantly small yet fast access.

You can record photograohs, mpeg4 video clips (low quality but good for email, websites, etc.), andvoice recordings (the voice recordings for some reason are not PC compatible and there are no plans to make software capable of reading them either)

There are a lot of settings and menus controlled by buttons and dial aplenty and as such I would not advise this camcorder for technophobics, people with awkward or restricted movement, people with large fingers and thumbs or people who are easily confused.

Having said that I have given the camcorder to people to take photographs or record film for me and they have all found the basics very easy to understand.

The video can be edited using firewire card (if your PC is capable), and a firewire cable(also supplied). Or you can transfer from the camcorder directly to your video machine via a different cable (again supplied). Or even simpler still you can display them straight to your television via the same cable.

The battery life seems a little limited but doesnt take too long to recharge them. Unfortunatly you cannot run the camcorder from the mains source at the same time as charging the battery which can be a little inconvenient if you dont have a spare battery to use whilst charging.

With all the included software and features and cables i was somewhat surprised to note that there was no case for the camcorder. At the price I paid I would expectthat at least. However there are plenty of generic camera cases that can be bought fairly inexpensivley that house the camcorder v
ery well indeeed (mine is made by lowepro).

So get your latest panasonic toy and set your digital zoom to 500x and see how far away you can really be from something....The Papparazzi will love this !!!!!!!!

Fantastic machine far better than any other camcorder i could find for less than a grand (not much less I know).

Get one, go mad, no matter how broke I get I will never part with this amazing machine.

Summary: