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Panasonic Palmcorder PV-DV203 Mini DV CamcorderCompact and versatile, the PV-DV203 Digital Palmcorder MultiCam? Camcorder from Panasonic offers features that produce high quality videos...
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Compact and versatile, the PV-DV203 Digital Palmcorder MultiCam? Camcorder from Panasonic offers features that produce high quality videos and stills. It combines a digital camcorder, digital still camera and teleconferencing Web camera capabilities, all in one easy-to-use camcorder. The Palmcorder offers several shooting options, digital effects, and quick and easy connection to a computer using either the IEEE 1394 (i.LINK) or USB interface. The progressive PhotoShot? mode eliminates fuzziness by digitally capturing the image data of a singular moment, and temporarily storing it in two field memories. The two images are then combined to produce a better quality picture. With the Picture-in-Picture mode you can insert a previously taken digital still image into the video you?re recording. Digital EIS (Electronic Image Stabilization) compensates for unintentional hand and camcorder movement to help stabilize your recordings. This feature reduces jitter when recording as a passenger in a car or while walking.
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23 Reviews from Shopping.com
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Nice solid quality in a small easy to handle package.
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Pros: Very handy size, easy to use its basic features right out of the box.
Cons: Low light performance, Digital zoom pixilation, still camera shot quality.
The Bottom Line:
If this is the price range you have narrowed it down to, this camera is the one!
This little digital camcorder (PV-DV203) is very typical Panasonic quality gear with a thoughtful, attractive and intuitive design incorporating rugged construction and loads of features for the price.
This unit undoubtedly takes far superior films compared to any of the previous non-digital format camcorders of yesteryear. I also found it extremely easy to use right out of the box. It has many features, some useful and some not so useful depending on your needs and creativeness.
The 10X zoom does a fine job of pulling in distant scenes but the 700X digital zoom is virtually worthless as it pixilated the image horribly above 20X (very typical of any digital zoom), the camera also does not take very crisp images when filming in low light conditions and the still image capture quality is in no way comparable to even an inexpensive (2.3MP) digital still camera (also typical of most all MiniDV camcorders).
The viewfinder is color and the 2.5” flip out LCD screen make it easy to follow your subject and to review the tape afterwards.
A couple of features that I have found myself longing for (that this camera does not offer) is the ability to capture Mpeg4 movies to an SD card and also an external Microphone jack.
I purchased my PV-DV203 at Costco in a package that included a nice little camera case, an 8MB SD card (for still image capture), a small leather SD card holder and a lens cloth for the price of $479.
The Lithium Ion (75Min) battery and charger are also included, I was able to pick up an additional 3hr battery on Ebay for about $25 including shipping along with a wireless remote (which is not included with the camera but a necessary accessory) for roughly $25 as well.
Once you purchase one of these cameras you’ll quickly be wanting to use your computer to edit the movies, a Firewire / IEEE 1394 PC Interface is required along with a fairly fast machine (1ghz CPU or faster) with plenty of RAM (512mb minimum) and a ton of hard drive space as a normal 60 minute tape recorded in SP can take up over 10 gigabytes of space when stored as a .avi file.
Then you will need to purchase a DVD +/- R/RW so that you can burn the films to DVD to play for your in-laws and store for later.
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