Lowepro Apex 100AW Shoulder Bag For Digital Cameras/Camcorders - Arctic Blue

December 22, 2007 | By Doug In Digital Camcorder |

Lowepro Apex 100AW Shoulder Bag For Digital Cameras/Camcorders - Arctic Blue

Panasonic - SDR-H20 - HDD and SD Camcorder
Powerful 32x Optical Zoom
Amazon Price: ?249.99

Panasonic NV-GS320EB-S Mini DV Digital Camcorder (3 x CCD, 10 x Optical ,3.1 MP Stills, SD Slot) 2.7″ LCD
Amazon Price: ?276.12
Customer Review: great performance-indifferent design
My old panasonic mini dv camcorder finally gave up the ghost after 5 years faithful service so I did a fair bit of internet trawling looking for a replacement. It came down to this panasonic and a sony model (dcr hc 47) The sony was a far sexier piece of kit, looks wise, but performance didn’t measure up to the panasonic. The panasonic has a very good optical image stabiliser (not electronic like sony) which is important since camera shake on these small camcorders can be a problem. It also interfaces very smoothly via firewire with my existing editing software (ulead video studio 10 plus) It also helps that I already had a spare SD card from my digital stills camera whereas the sony takes a MMC card. The pictures from the panasonic are excellent - video image is superb and even the still pictures are OK. The zoom is a bit measly (x10) but the digital zoom up to x25 is actually very good. The usability of the camera is also very good-menus are well laid out and easily navigated via a mini joystick and the instruction manual is straightforward. The buttons are all easily reached although I wouldn’t want my hands to be much smaller as the zoom slider does sit quite high up. It offers a very easy point and shoot experience and has enough manual functions to keep a ‘fiddler’ like me happy. The downsides-It is not pretty (very well finished and well laid out)but no looker. You will not get envious glances from other parents when filming the school nativity play but if you rate performance over show-off appeal this is a great camera.