Panasonic PV-GS35 MiniDV Camcorder w/30x Optical Zoom

Hey there! The camera is great; however, after taking it on a trip with me all my video turned out badly because there appears to be a problem with the head. I won't totally blame this on the seller, but will say that it was quite dissapointing to have a bad camera immediately after purchasing what I thought was a totally refurbed unit.

For the price the picture is certainy great.

An earlier reviewer had written about a problem with the tape getting tangled. One solution would be to record to the PC directly. As it is quite impossible to decipher the instructions from the manual I will briefly describe the procedure. Hook up the camera to the PC using the USB cable. Then start MotionDV Studio (which comes with the camera). Hit the play button, twice if necessary. What the camera sees should appear in the MotionDV window. Next click Capture and it will start recording directly to your PC, neat!

One serious defect of the camera is that if you use the microphone jack, it records only to the left channel!!! I tested a couple of cameras and they both have the same defect. I wrote to Panasonic, but no reply. I had to extract the video track from the AVI using VirtualDub, then convert to mono and back to stereo using Soliton and finally adding it back again using VirtualDub.

I've had this camcorder now for 6 months and it shoots great video. If you are looking for something for family type use it is perfect for that. The zoom is very nice and the image stabilization feature makes a huge difference.

My only problem with this camera is the product support that Panasonic provides. I was able to successfully load two full tapes onto my computer before it simply doesn't recognize that the camcorder is even plugged in now. Panasonic doesn't offer a video driver for this model on their website so for now I am stuck recording to tapes and just storing them until I can find a fix.

Other than that, I would recommend this camera for those looking to capture family type events.

I bought this camera 7 months ago and used it only rarely. (My total recording time was less than 2 hrs.)

This week I opened the camera to find out that it is dead. No display, nothing. Called the customer service and they asked me to ship the camera to their Camera Repair company. And the fee for that service: 161.5 Dollars. This is a flat fee according to them, no matter what happens to the camera.

I had a Sony 8mm camera for last 8 years and it still works fine. I am going to buy a Sony camera instead of wasting so much money on repair.

I like the camera very much... it serves my purpose.. It was hard to find a camera in my price range that had an external microphone connection... that was a priority... The light is amazing... picture quality good.... not too please with the stability option... when you move the camera around.. like walking while filming... not very good quality... if I had to buy it again.. I would.