Quick Review Camcorders : Panasonic PV-GS15

The PV-GS15 ships with a 1/6-inch CCD with 680K pixels, which is a common imager size for camcorders in this price range and size. Only Samsungs have bigger CCDs, though that still doesn’t seem to help their low-light performance. The PV-GS15 also contains a 24x optical zoom, which is nice, although somewhat slow in the larger levels of zoom. It also includes a digitally enhanced zoom of up to 800x, which is quite ridiculous. The lens has a focal distance of 2.1–50.4 mm, with a filter diameter of 27mm. The camcorder ships with a 2.5-inch fold-out LCD screen and a color viewfinder. Unfortunately, the viewfinder is immobile and the LCD solarizes when viewed from an angle.

Among the manual controls on the PV-GS15 are manual focus, exposure, shutter speed, and white balance. Focus is adjusted with a small slider under the LCD which, although not as convenient as a focus ring, is a pretty smart feature for such a cheap camcorder, in that it allows focus to be adjusted on the fly. AE (or automatic exposure) presets are available for sports, portrait, low light, spotlight, and surf & snow modes. Conversely, exposure can be operated completely manually, with adjustment spanning F12 to F2.0 F stops and gain levels of 0dB to 18dB. The inclusion of manual gain on a camera this cheap and small is nice, although it should be used sparingly. White balance options are available for auto and manual, with indoor and outdoor presets.

The PV-GS15 takes still photos to the included 8MB SD card at a resolution of 640 x 480 and at three different qualities, or file sizes. Its audio system records at 12 bit and 16 bit rates, and the built-in stereo microphone includes functions for zooming and wind cut, which are nice options for a small camcorder. Many other picture options exist for the PV-GS15, including Magic Pix (low light enhancer), Soft Skin (skin tone enhancer), Multi/P-in-P (overlap and playback options), and a Quick Start option for on the fly recording. The PV-GS15 includes the following wealth of ports: FireWire, USB, Audio/Video/Mic outputs, headphone, S-Video output, and DC input. This unfortunately doesn't allow for analog-to-digital passthrough. There is even a digitally enhanced 16:9 widescreen effect, and the camcorder can be used as a webcam.

You might say at this juncture, “This is quite possibly the best camcorder in the known universe.” And you, my child, would be wrong, oh so dead wrong. Wrong in that you have neglected to remember, as mentioned above, that the PV-GS15 has a 1/6-inch CCD with only 680K pixels, and this makes video and low light performance suffer. While by and large, at 3000 lux and other bright light levels, the PV-GS15 performs well, there is some washing and blurring of color borders and all colors seem equally desaturated. At 60 lux, saturation seems a bit better and noise/grain levels, while increased, aren’t a big problem. At 15 lux, however, the image is pretty bad. While significantly darker than 60 lux, the 15 lux image also includes a dramatic increase of noise which, when coupled with the overall lack of luminance of the spectrum, creates a problem.

All in all, the PV-GS15 is a good camcorder for your money if you aren’t planning any low-light forays into uncharted jungle, and you’re willing to trade low ease of use for superior manual control and options.

Panasonic PV-GS15 Compared to the...