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- Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 31 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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69 out of 75 people found this review helpful
2.0 stars
"Mixed bag of Features"
Pros: Great Outdoor videos; Nice viewfinder
Cons: Low-light challenged; Battery hungry; still photos are low-res; bulky
Summary: I really wanted to like this camera - that's why I bought it. Maybe my expectations were too high.
I first tested the GS250 outdoors, in sunlight. The results were awesome. Good color balance and saturation - at full 16:9 resolution too (true anamorphic!). In these conditions it's the best camcorder I've owned. After that, things went downhill a bit.
The Panasonic menu system is more complex than it needs to be. The "joystick navigator" is nice but I found myself in an endless "menu-maze" before long.
Indoor performance in normal light is mediocre-to-poor. Grainy immages and low color saturation - even black and white somtimes. That's the penalty for 3 CDD's. The light-splitter adversely affects indoor performance.
The mid-size battery that came with the unit lasted less than 1 hour on two occasions. I never use the LCD (I use only the viewfinder - which BTW is nice on the GS250). I think the GS250 is a bit battery hungry.
The GS250 is also bulky. I found taking candid shots was a bit difficult. This camera is more "in your face" than some others.
Not surprisingly, still photos are NOT 3.1 MP. Shooting various high-detail images showed this camera resolves less than my 5 year old, 2.1 MP Canon digital camera. All comcorders inflate their still picture specifications; but enough already! Don't bother taking 3.1 MP images - the interpolated images produced are hardly worth the space on your SD card.
3 CCDs do not compensate for the GS250's limitations. After a week, I returned it an bought a Sony HC90. IMHO it surpasses the Panasonic in every category except bright sunlight conditions.
- 2 replies to this review
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Your incorrectly blame 3CCDs for inadvertantly affecting the low light quality - you are wrong. Why do you think pro cameras ALL use 3CCD? The problem is more sensor size, and even with small sensors, good results should be attainable - how were you shooting (ie. what settings, auto/manual, etc)?
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most of your videos must have been indoors!
Why could you not just buy a video light if the color was great outdoors?
Is H90 better in all respects than the gs250? are they comparable in video quality?
