Panasonic PV-GS250 Camcorder Review

Widescreen/16:9 Mode(7.5)
The PV-GS250 offers two widescreen modes: Wide and Cinema. The camcorder’s Wide mode is the camcorder’s 16:9 mode, which gains information at the sides of the image while losing a bit at the top and bottom. This is similar to the mode found on the DV953 of yesteryear and is decidedly inferior to the GS400-esque widescreen found on the PV-GS150 this year. We can't imagine Panasonic's reason for doing this. The Cinema mode letterboxes the 4:3 image of normal recording with black bars to look like a 16:9 filmstrip in aspect and not quality.

Standard 4:3 Mode

Wide Mode (16:9 squeezed to 4:3 visualization)

Cinema Mode (letterboxed 4:3 screen for 16:9 image)

Scan Rates/24P (0.0)
The PV-GS250 does not offer recording in 24P (24 progressive) or any 24P-like effect to stimulate cinema-like capture. Video is captured at the rate of 60 interlaced fields per second each, with 525 reported lines of resolution.

Other Features (7.5)
Magic Pix (Magic Pix and 0 Lux Magic Pix)
Indicated by the star and moon icon, this feature functions as the camcorder’s night mode and actually operates in two modes: Magic Pix, a slow shutter mode which lets more light in, and 0 Lux Magic Pix, which turns the LCD screen bright white so that it can be reversed and shed more light on the scene.

TeleMacro
Indicated by the Flower icon, this feature focuses on the foreground object (about 16 inches in front of the camcorder). If selected when the camcorder is not zoomed in to 10x optical zoom, this feature forces the camcorder to zoom to 10x and focus on the foreground object. The background becomes blurry, with crisp focus placed on the close-up object.

Fade In/Out
Indicated by the icon of an arrow within a box, this feature allows the user to fade in and out of a given shot. This feature is available in the camcorder’s manual control menu.

Wind Cut
Available in the camcorder’s menu system, this feature reduces wind noise when recording with the camcorder’s built-in stereo microphone.

Image Stabilization
The PV-GS250 offers Optical Image Stabilization which works great, except when optical zoom is engaged—the more zoom, the worse. Oddly, the PV-GS250's menu system still lists EIS (Electronic Image Stabilization) as an option, perhaps to save a bit of money and recycle the PV-GS150's menu system, as suggested by Guy Bruner, editor of Pana3ccduser.com.

RapidFire Consecutive Photoshot
As the burst mode for still picture capture while in still mode, this feature allows the user to capture up to 10 pictures at an interval of a 0.5 seconds. Additionally, if the shutter speed is set to 1/30 of second, a 0.7 second interval can be established.

QuickStart
This function allows the camcorder to enter into standby mode for thirty minutes, which allows for it to be turned on in a shorter time (1.7 sec) and ready to record to either tape or card, depending on the mode selection. During the QuickStart standby time, the camcorder uses about half the power than it uses during recording mode, which drains battery power and leaves you with less overall recording time than if you just turned the thing off completely. One warning: once the QuickStart standby is implemented, the camcorder’s zoom mechanism automatically retracts to wide angle. Thus, you cannot save a particular zoom magnification while standing by. If you were to turn the camcorder completely off, your zoom magnification would remain, which makes the QuickStart function a misnomer.

Zoom Mic
The zoom mic function is accessed in the camcorder’s menu system and adjusts audio capture based on the camcorder’s zoom engagement. This is nice feature, though it probably makes only a slight difference with a 10x optical zoom camcorder.