My first camcorder, and it's a keeper

Author's Rating:

Pros: Great features, easy to use

Cons: Battery life, power adapter/charger unit

The Bottom Line: 
I am very happy with this camera. It has all the features that I need, is easy to use, and quite affordable for a camera of this type.

Author's Review
After having my third child, I caved to the pressure from the grandparents (all of whom live abroad) and got a camcorder. I looked at a variety of JVC, Sony, Canon, Sharp and Panasonic models before settling on this one.

What's in the box
Often it's hard to find out what is in the box without buying or opening one. Here's what was in mine.
- The camera
- Lens cap and strap
- AC adapter with cables
- USB cable
- 8MB memory card
- 800mAh battery pack
- Shoulder Strap
- AV cable
- Mono Audio adapter
- IR Remote Control
- CD-ROM with drivers and ArcSoft software

Look and feel
The PVDV702 feels comfortable and light in the hand, and all the most frequently needed buttons are located within easy reach of the thumb and forefinger. It can be a bit of a stretch for me to reach the menu button, but all the others are well placed.

The Display
The 3.5 inch LCD display is bright and sharp. It flips out from the left side and can be tilted 90 degrees down, or up 180 degrees so that you can film yourself. When doing this there is an option to mirror the display. The display is a battery hog so I use it only for playback. The camera includes a black and white viewfinder which switches off when the LCD is active.

In and out
On the top of the unit, just to the right of the microphone, is a jack for an external microphone.
Under the Power and Record switches is a jack for headphone or AV out (cable included).
Opening the LCD display reveals a Firewire port (cable NOT included). There is no AV input. DV input via Firewire is probably possible, but I have not tried it.
Just below the Firewire port is a USB port (cable included). This lets you access the SD/Multimedia card, and read up to 30 seconds of video. According to the manual, it takes 30-50 seconds to transfer 1 second of video.

Picture Quality
As with most DV cameras, the picture quality is excellent. So far I have had no problems with contrast, focus or color balance. The camera has handled every scene I've thrown at it, and done so very well.

See in the dark
If you want to take pictures of a 2-day-old infant with his eyes open, this camera has a solution. Taking advantage of the CCD's ability to pick up infrared, most of the Panasonic DV cameras have a feature called MagicVU that lets you film objects up to 5 feet away in complete darkness, by illuminating the scene in infrared. The picture comes out black and white. It's a bit like those military night vision scopes, but with limited range.

Zoom
The camera has a 10x optical zoom and will go up to 700x digitally. Of course at 700x the zoom is unusable since it is interpolating an area of 18x14 pixels; however, the digital zoom is useful up to about 25x where the interpolation begins to kick in.

Still pictures
In good lighting conditions, this camera also functions well as a still camera. It can take 640x480 or 1280x960 stills. It also does 1600x1200 by digitally interpolating from 1280x960. There is no flash on this unit (you have to pay nearly twice as much to get that).

Tape loading
The camera uses the dinky little 60 or 80 minute DV tapes. Many of the cameras I tried had loading mechanisms that exposed various guts of the camera with lots of stickers saying where you should not push. Not so with the Panasonic cameras - Just push on the door, it's hard to find a wrong place. The tape loads on the left hand side, where the LCD folds in. It can be loaded/unloaded while the camera is on a tripod, unlike the idiotic design used by one other manufacturer.

Flash memory
Cunningly hidden on the right hand side of the camera is a door that reveals a slot for a MultiMedia or SD card. This is where all your still pictures go. The box includes an 8MB card, which is pretty worthless. One of the first things I did was go out and get a 128MB card.

Power, or lack of it
Now we get to the main weakness of the camera. It includes a battery that lasts 1.25 hours in record mode, and an AC adapter. The adapter can either charge a battery or power the camera - not both at the same time. I find this very annoying - you might want to buy a second one. Furthermore it is not possible to power the camera from the adapter and have a battery on there at the same time. So, there is no way to keep recording while switching power sources.

Things I wish were different
If anyone from Panasonic is reading this, here is my list of ways the camera could be improved:

- The included battery is only good for 1.25 hours. Ship with a 3 hour battery.
- The included 8MB memory card is too small. Provide 32MB card or bigger.
- Please, please, please redesign the power supply so that it's possible to switch between AC and battery power without having to shut everthing down.