Panasonic PV-GS35 Camcorder Review

Picture & Manual Control
Automatic Control (5.0)
The PV-GS35 offers automatic control over exposure, gain, focus, and white balance. While there is no easy mode, automatic defaults can be reestablished if the user sets the camcorder to auto mode using the switch on the PV-GS35’s right side. Consistent with last year’s offerings, the PV-GS35 includes auto exposure presets which put more explicit boundaries on the camcorder’s automatic adjustments to exposure, shutter speed, and white balance. Automatic adjustments to white balance take a couple of seconds but provide a nice, subtle shift to fairly accurate shades.

Overall Manual Control (7.0)
The PV-GS35 offers tons of manual control for a small MiniDV camcorder in its price range. Manual controls offered include focus, iris, shutter speed, white balance, and gain. While independent adjustment of shutter speed and iris are welcome features on the PV-GS35’s interface, manual control on this camcorder is not without its problems. While the new joystick control makes adjustment easy to do with one hand, it still forces the user to enter a sometimes difficult-to-navigate manual control menu. While I would have liked to see some slower shutter speed options, the manual controls on the PV-GS35 beat the pants off of the controls on many Sony camcorders.

Zoom Control (7.0)
The zoom toggle on the PV-GS35 is the same as featured on many of last year’s Panasonic MiniDV camcorders. It is raised enough to allow easy control over the zoom speed, though it is most easily accessed with the user’s middle finger. I would have liked it to be accessible with my index finger, a finger with which I feel more comfortable controlling zoom.

Zoom Power/Ratio (30.0)
The Panasonic PV-GS35 has an impressive 30x optical zoom with a 1000x digital zoom.

Focus (5.0)
Manual focus on the PV-GS35 is accessed through a slider located on upper left of the right side of the camcorder. Focus can instantly be manually operated by pulling this slider past the manual mode indicator and releasing. Not only will this action manually focus the camcorder to whatever is central to its immediate vision, but it will also put the camcorder in manual mode, specifically, in the manual focus section of the manual control menu. In this section, the joystick can be used to move through the focal spectrum, an ‘MF’ icon will appear on the LCD screen, and the user can toggle through the focus as well as other manual adjustments. Unfortunately, there are no numerical values to guide the user through the focal range.

Exposure (Aperture) (6.0)
Manual exposure is available on the PV-GS35. F-stop options of Open, f/2.0, f/2.4, f/2.8, f/3.4, f/4.0, f/4.8, f/5.6, f/6.8, f/8.0, f/9.6, f/11, f/14, and f/16 are all available, but unfortunately like a lot of the manual control on the PV-GS35 they are kind of annoying to get to. It would be a pain to access them during recording. There are smaller increments between each F-stop, which lack numerical F-stop values, and similar options are available in digital camera mode. While the joystick is okay for adjustment, some sort of dial would offer better control over these options.

Shutter Speed (7.0)
Shutter speed options of 1/60, 1/100, 1/120, 1/180, 1/250, 1/350, 1/500, 1/750, 1/1000, 1/1500, 1/1/2000, 1/3000, 1/4000, and 1/8000 exist on the PV-GS35. In still camera mode, options from 1/30, 1/60, 1/100, 1/120, 1/180, 1/250, 1/350, and 1/500 are available. On a camcorder this small, these are some impressive options; however, I would have liked to see some slower shutter speed options. Adjustment is made through the same method as exposure, white balance, and gain: by using the new joystick. While this method is okay, and certainly better than last year’s, I would have liked to see a dial of some sort, perhaps similar to that of the PV-DV103.

White Balance (7.0)
White balance options on the PV-GS35 include indoor (light bulb icon), outdoor (sun icon), Auto (AWB icon), and Manual (one push icon). These options are accessible in the manual control menu system, by pressing straight down on the joystick.

Gain (7.0)
Once the aperture is Open, manual gain options include: 0dB, 3dB, 6dB, 9dB, 12dB, 15dB, and 18dB with smaller increments in between each setting which lack numerical delineation. For Panasonic to offer manual gain control on a camcorder this small is great and is something Panasonic has been doing for years, but I must warn the reader to use this feature sparingly, as excess gain means excess noise.

Other Manual Control (0.0)
Wasn’t the above enough for you? Aside from the slew of manual controls mentioned above, the PV-GS35 doesn’t include any other manual options.