Labs

The DC19 is very slim and light. Its neat design is helped by the unusual placement of its battery, which is tucked away behind the LCD. This means you can't fit a bigger replacement, but it lasts for a decent one-and-a-half hours of recording. The slim design doesn't leave any space for an accessory shoe, however.

The front of the camcorder houses an automatic lens cover, a flash for still photos and a single LED video lamp for shooting in the dark. Due to the battery position most of the controls are squeezed on to the rear of the camcorder. It can be a bit confusing at first, but

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they're all within easy reach. A small joystick is provided for browsing clips to play back through the A/V or S-video outputs.

You can record video or stills to a range of DVD formats or capture stills to a Mini SD card. The viewfinder has a very small eyepiece, but it is angled upwards for easy access.

PERFORMANCE

The DC19 produces good-looking video thanks to its large 1/3.9in CCD. Barely any noise is visible in video shot under well-lit conditions. Images have plenty of detail and colours are bright and true to life. In low light it suffers from increased noise and compression artefacts, but it's better in dark conditions than the budget MiniDV cameras.

It performs well outdoors, and on the best quality settings only panning shots suffer from compression artefacts. It's also capable of taking decent photos with resolutions of up to 1,632x1,224 pixels. Photos looked well balanced and were full of detail.

VERDICT

This is the best DVD camcorder for the money. MiniDV cameras allow you to record for longer, but if you want the convenience of recording directly to disc, this is a great way to do it.