The autofocus, zoom, and manual controls are extremely responsive and smooth. On the other hand, the electronic image stabilization is the PV-GS200's Achilles' heel. Cameras this compact lend themselves easily to wobbly footage, so image stabilization is extremely important--but the PV-GS200's system often left noticeable trails and generally didn't take enough of the shake out of our images. That's a shame, and it cost the Panasonic an Editors' Choice award. On the other hand, the moderate-size 2.5-inch LCD is bright and sharp, as is the color viewfinder.
Thanks to the three CCDs, the Panasonic PV-GS200 easily takes wonderfully vivid footage with excellent color rendition--in good exposure situations, that is. Dim scenes yielded noticeably noisy results. The MagicPix setting, which allows the PV-GS200 to take footage in no-light situations, seems like a great idea in theory, but don't rely on it in practice. Although this Panasonic has three CCDs, they're small 1/6-inch sensors, so you won't get the kind of detail that a prosumer model with larger CCDs would provide. Nevertheless, the footage we captured was excellent--if a little too shaky when zoomed in--coming from a consumer camcorder.
