Panasonic PV-GS150 Camcorder Review

Audio (2.0)
This camcorder offers slim pickins in the audio department. There is an onboard mic – and that’s it. The on-board mic’s placement is a bit unusual, on top of the camcorder near the back, but it seems to work as well as a front-mounted microphone. If anything, this mic records better sound than most on-boards because the camcorder is virtually silent during video recording thanks to its lack of moving parts. Recording mechanism noise is something that both MiniDV and DVD camcorders suffer from, and the sound of a whirring motor can be loud enough to distract.

This camcorder’s silent running is a huge perk – and after watching and listening to your SDR-S150 footage, you’ll be amazed that you tolerated camcorder motor noise for years! This camcorder includes a headphone adaptor jack, enabling you to monitor your audio but that’s a feature that is made less useful by the lack of a mic jack. That addition would make this little camcorder a much hotter property by opening up a universe of high-quality sound recording options.

From my right-handed perspective, the camcorder handles very well for such a small device, and there are pros and cons associated with miniaturization. One issue is that camcorders of this size can be more difficult to hold steady than larger, heavier units. Thankfully, this camcorder has an amazingly effective OIS (optical image stabilization) system that bests most of those we’ve seen on the consumer market. The other issue I found vexing is that I couldn’t find a truly comfortable way of gripping the SDR-S150. Its small, it can be handled by either hand, but you can’t just let the camcorder roll and relax your grip. There’s no hand strap to keep it attached to your hand (just the option of a dangling wrist strap), and while I love the compact size, I found that I missed the ability to “just let go” afforded by a hand strap.

Another feature of the SDR-S150 is its quick start-up, allowing it to be ready to roll in a mere 1.5 seconds, the quickest start-up of any camcorder on the market. And let us not forget this is an SD-based camcorder, which means you won’t have to deal with (relatively) bulky media, or risk damaging an onboard HDD. Then again, you will need to devise a fool-proof way of tracking your quiver of diminutive SD cards…

VCR Mode (8.0)
The SDR-S150 offers a variety of options for playing back video and stills, like other camcorders that store data non-linearly such as HDD camcorders. When video playback is engaged, this camcorder generates thumbnails for each clip stored to the card, at sixteen to a page. The plus side of clip displays like this is that you can move non-linearly through your stored files, unlike tape-cased camcorders that require you to jog back and forth to find and playback the desired footage. The drawback to this system is access time since the processor takes a few seconds to create each page of thumbnails as you scroll through. Finding a clip in this manner can be tedious, but it’s still better than the old MiniDV-style linear method which seems to be on its way out.

From any thumbnail page, pushing the Set button at the center of the touchpad plays back the selected clip, and there are also options for slow-motion and frame-by-frame viewing. When the LCD display is rotated 180 degrees and pushed back into its cavity for monitoring from the side, the navigation pad adjusts to your new orientation; “left” is now “up,” “up” is now “right,” etc. This is a small but thoughtful feature, though we’d also love to see a similar re-orientation implemented for when the screen faces the lens.

Still playback also displays thumbnails 16 to a page, and when viewing stills at full-screen, it is possible to jump from photo to photo by pressing left or right on the touch pad. A slide show feature is available for still playback, and any file or files can be deleted on camcorder in playback mode. Files can also be “locked” or protected from deletion and Digital Print Order Format (DPOF) and PictBridge are available for saving and printing.

Refreshingly, no wipes or cheesy digital effects have been provided, features that are included on almost every other consumer camcorder.

Ports (3.0)
The sole recording medium of the SDR-S150 is an SD card, which can be removed and inserted into a computer, card reader, and even some TVs. As a result, the port selection is thin and they are all located under the port cover at the back of the camcorder. They include a USB, an AV/headphone multi, and a DC power in. The multi-port can be used for A/V or S-Video output, and headphones using the included adapter. The SDR-S150 lacks additional jacks and ports that would have added to the camcorder’s versatility, including a microphone jack, a shoe, and a control jack. The SDR-S150 also lacks a FireWire port, but that’s an omission that is expected on a flash memory MPEG-2 camcorder.