Panasonic PV-GS400 review

For those who want a cinematic look, the PV-GS400 offers both letterboxed and anamorphic (squeezed) wide-screen modes, as well as Pro Cinema mode, a pseudo-24P look that gives the image a filmlike motion quality. Unfortunately, Pro Cinema is available only when shooting in anamorphic wide-screen format.

For the less ambitious user, the PV-GS400 also features the usual variety of automatic options, including a fully automatic mode and a number of autoexposure modes, such as Sports, Portrait, Low Light, Surf and Snow, and Spotlight.

The PV-GS400 offers a full range of consumer-oriented digital effects, which are mostly tucked out of the way in the easily navigable menus. The effects include 700x and 30x digital zoom, TeleMacro (for extreme close-ups), SoftSkin (which reduces wrinkles), Fader, MultiMode (which takes nine small pictures in a row and saves them to tape), Picture-in-Picture, Strobe, Mix, Mosaic, Mirror, Stretch, Slim, Trailing Effect, Wipe, Negative, Sepia, Black and White, and Solarisation. A couple of low-light modes are also offered: MagicPix, in which the shutter speed is slowed down, and Advanced MagicPix, in which the LCD is turned forward to serve as an illuminator.

The Quick Start mode falls into the miscellaneous category. It reduces the camera's start-up time from almost five seconds to less than two but exacts a penalty in battery life. Another battery-draining feature is the Power LCD button, which doubles the brightness of the flip-out LCD for viewing in bright conditions.

At least on paper, the PV-GS400 has impressive photo capabilities. Through pixel-shift technology, the three megapixel chips can output stills with up to 4-megapixel resolution. While the camera is recording video to tape, it can simultaneously record stills of up to 1 megapixel to SD card. The PV-GS400 also has several flash modes, a self-timer, red-eye reduction and burst modes. Finally, it is PictBridge enabled, so you can directly connect it to compatible printers.

The Panasonic PV-GS400 comes with MotionDV Studio LE editing software for Windows and ArcSoft PhotoSuite (both Windows and Mac) for editing stills.

Performance
In general, the Panasonic PV-GS400's automatic systems are adequate but not spectacular. Autofocus performance can be sluggish. Autoexposure and white balance, while accurate, are slow to respond. On a lower-end camcorder intended for point-and-shoot operation, this mediocre automation would be a serious problem, but the PV-GS400 has clearly been optimised for the more advanced user who wants to take manual control over the camera.
 

Battery life is fairly mediocre -- the small included battery powers the camera for only about an hour of real-world use

 
Fortunately, the manual controls exhibit a much greater responsiveness. While the Multi Manual Ring may seem awkward to someone used to pro gear, it's about the best control system we've ever seen on a consumer camera. Similarly, the zoom slider may be small by pro standards, but it's gargantuan compared to some consumer controls. All essential manual adjustments can be made quickly and instinctively, without the need to navigate menus.

The flip-out LCD is big, bright and sharp. The viewfinder is adequate, but will probably be neglected in favour of the LCD.

Sound performance with the built-in mic is typical: good when near the subject in a quiet environment, but less acceptable in more challenging conditions. On the plus side, the mic doesn't pick up much camera noise and the GS400 can accommodate an external mic and headphones -- which are the keys to recording high-quality sound.

Image quality
When it comes to capturing video in well lit situations, the Panasonic PV-GS400 is a consumer MiniDV camera that offers state-of-the-art image quality, approaching professional standards. No doubt due to the PV-GS400's three CCD chips, video is bright, colourful, accurate and detailed. And because they're megapixel chips, the 16:9 mode is superb, with no noticeable loss in sharpness.

In low light, the images still look good, considering they come from a consumer camera, but by professional quality standards, they're noisy and somewhat muted.

Still-image quality is also middling: good for a video camera, but competitive, with the quality of only the lowest tier of dedicated still cameras.

Edited by Aimee Baldridge
Additional editing by Nick Hide