Panasonic NV-GS500 review

Panasonic's NV-GS500 is an impressive three-CCD DV camera that boasts features attractive not only to beginners but also to upgraders wanting a higher specification, comprehensive manual control and the ability to record edited DV sequences back to tape.

Of particular note are its Mega OIS (optical image stabilisation), anti-ground shooting and digital zoom capabilities.

Unlike many camcorders that use anamorphic techniques to squeeze and stretch 16:9 images into the 4:3 space on the CCDs, the NV-GS500's three 1.07 megapixel CCDs, each measuring 1/4.7in and producing an effective 710,000 pixels in 16:9 mode, provide what Panasonic describes as 'true' widescreen. Widescreen images require 20,000 more pixels than the 690,000 pixels for shooting in 4:3 mode.

The NV-GS500 is large, chunky and pleasing to handle. Its weight distribution is very good and the whole thing feels like it's meant for business.

Visible controls and buttons are at a minimum, with most of the main operational controls accessed from the combined power dial and mini-joystick at the rear of the camcorder's body. All tape and stills functions are selected on a single dial at the rear of the camera under your thumb. A mini-joystick sits in the centre of this dial, which you use to navigate around the menus. Pressing the joystick confirms your choices. The Menu button accompanies the main power on/off switch, photo button and zoom rocker control at the top of the camcorder's rear.

A 0.33in colour viewfinder slides backwards and tilts upwards to suit your preference and, when opened, the 2.7in colour LCD screen reveals sockets for FireWire and USB 2 connectors, together with the main Auto/Manual function selector, which enables manual operation of focus, exposure and white balance.

What's particularly impressive is the large, knurled lens ring, which is designed to provide perfect manual focus control when using the f1.6 Leica Dicomar lens, which itself provides a 12x optical zoom (3.3-39.6mm) and has a 43mm filter thread.

In addition to the camcorder's optical zoom offering, it has two digital zoom settings - at 30x and 700x. While the latter is barely of use in any situation, the lower zoom setting provides surprisingly decent images and lacks the heavy pixilation normally associated with digital zoom magnification above 24x.

Using the small zoom toggle provides fast and responsive zooming, and enables you to slowly increase and decrease the speed of zooms at the beginning and end of zooming. When digital zoom is selected at either 30x or 700x variants, the zoom will slow momentarily before launching into the next stage. Although the 30x digital zoom is acceptable, the 700x zoom has few - if any - practical uses.

As with all its siblings in the current range, the NV-GS500 only offers input recording on the DV (FireWire) port; it only provides AV (analogue) outputs via either composite or S-Video. However, there's a socket for an external mic input, for which manual on-screen level control monitoring is also provided for when you need to adjust input levels from either an external or built-in microphone. Strangely, there's no headphone connector, so you'll have to check audio via the built-in speaker in the LCD screen recess.

Recording in a variety of environments using 16:9 widescreen mode in our tests, it was clear the NV-GS500 was up to the job of capturing beautifully resolved images in bright daylight. Not only were the colours rich and prominent, but the camcorder's three CCDs seemed to cope with a wide contrast ratio (where an image contains very light and very dark elements in the same frame) with ease, and with only slight white peaking during auto exposure recording.