I just bought a PV-GS85 in anticipation of my wife delivering our first child next month. However, when looking at the playback of some filming we did in the nursery we noticed some ghosting and edge trails, although this was in what would probably be considered a low light situation. The light didn't seem to help any nor putting it in low light mode in manual. I tried some filming in the same room around 1 local time and the playback looked fine on a standard definition TV. I was wondering this this is indicative of most camcorders, most camcorders in this price range or just Pannasonics.

The reason I want to know is our idea was to by a cheaper mini-dv camcorder (we don't trust DVD or hard drive right now) knowing that it would soon be obsolete with the HD cameras starting to come out, but which are out of our price range. We were hoping to get something that would have decent/good performance now and in a couple years when the new technologies are cheaper and more reliable we'll be able to get something better. If something more expensive (PV-GS320 or HC-96) might be better then we might be willing to go that high but would prefer not to as we have enough expenses right now. We also want to make sure we haven't got a bad unit before we can't return it.

I would appreciate any thoughts anyone had.