Panasonic PV-GS31 MiniDV Camcorder w/26x Optical Zoom | 
| Brand: Panasonic
List Price: $399.95
Buy New: $199.95
You Save: $200.00 (50%)
New (2) Used (4) from $155.00
Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 3041
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Number Of Items: 1
Batteries Included: Yes
Floppy Disk Drive: None
Optical Zoom: 26
Display Size: 2.5
Maximum Focal Length: 49.4
Minimum Focal Length: 1.9
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 9 x 7 x 5
MPN: PV-GS31
Model: PV-GS31
UPC: 037988978007
EAN: 0037988978007
ASIN: B0007QN86U
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | 1/6-inch CCD imager with 680K resolution | | • | MiniDV recording format offers up to 500 lines of horizontal resolution | | • | 26x optical zoom with digital image stabilization | | • | 2.5-inch color LCD screen | | • | MagicPix feature enhances images shot in low light |
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Product Description
The optical zoom feature acts like a telescope to produce close-up shots with extraordinary clarity so you won't miss a single detail. It also offers variable zoom speeds, so you can adjust your zoom speed from wide angle to full telephoto. In addition, the digital zoom ratio can be increased up to an extraordinary 1000x. Now that's close up!.Now you can snap off a still shot (VGA) while recording video without having to change recording modes. The video is recorded onto the Mini DV tape and the still image is recorded onto the SD Memory Card. This 2-in-1 capability means you can catch sudden photo opportunities without interrupting a great moving picture scene.Soft Skin Mode detects skin tones and softens the focus in that area of the picture. It helps make blemishes and lines appear less noticeable, while preserving resolution in areas of the picture outside the skin.The joystick makes the camera much easier to use, letting you control all basic operations with one hand. As you shoot, just watch the image in the monitor and follow the instruction guide. You can handle a number of operations quickly and easily, without even taking your eye off the subject.When illumination is insufficient, turn on the built-in LED video light to take crisp, colorful movies. The LED has low power consumption, long service life, and the safety of a low operating temperature. Color Night View gives you smoothly flowing pictures even in dark places, where it's normally difficult to capture good shots. And since the Super Image Stabilizer corrects for hand-shake, you get beautiful pictures with minimal afterimages.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 20 more reviews...
 Found What I Was Lookin' For July 7, 2005
G. Meyer (Fort Lewis, WA USA)
59 out of 59 found this review helpful
The Panasonic PV-GS31 is an excellent camcorder to learn the basics and capture excellent digital video. It had exactly what I needed: a light for night shots, LED screen, and a great zoom feature for close-ups. It transfers well to the computer to upload the video I take on the MiniDV tapes. But make sure you purchase a firewire cable (4 pin to 4 pin) and have software like Intervideo DVD creator or Windows Movie Maker to take advantage of video editing. It's a good buy without the features you don't really need!
If you're looking to take good pictures, don't rely on the Panasonic camcorder. Instead, go buy a tiny digital camera with at least 5 megapixels. This camcorder can take pictures but they're less than 1 megapixel, which equals poor quality pix.
 Yep--disappointing October 14, 2005
tomjonesrocks (San Diego, CA)
26 out of 31 found this review helpful
Read some positive things about this line that led me to believe that maybe our modest video needs could be served with a "budget" level video camera. I was wrong.
As others have mentioned, this camera is nearly useless indoors. All we wanted to do was shoot some video of our newborn baby. The problem is, newborns aren't in the mid-day sun, outdoors, much. Tried video during the day -- indoors -- very mediocre. In the evening, in a lit home, horrible. This camera is also very slow to focus when using in "auto" mode, and there's minimal steady-shot capabilities here too. So you get a shaky, pixellated, out of focus, dark video all the time.
I came to the conclusion anything I shot with this was going to turn out frustratingly poorly, except in absolutely optimum light conditions. Despite my limited use for the camera, it had to go back. Having no video camera it seems is less frustrating than having one you wish was better. I concluded I had no choice but to add more to my video camera budget and get something that might actually give me some useable video.
 very good tiny camcorder August 17, 2005
Antoniy Tonchev
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
It is a very good budget buy for family movies. Sharp picture, no motor noise. Nize zoom (and mic zoom too!). Fit well in the hand. Few complicated functions, you may need the manual in the begining if you want use them. You can record more than 60 minutes with the standart battery. It would be nice if they had usb and firewire cables in the package, but you can find them really cheap on the net. The battery indicator may be improved. Overall, for 300 usd after the rebate it is a very good buy. Better night shots comparing to Sony, no motor noise comparing to JVC and lighter than Canon.
unable to transfer video to computer using xp February 23, 2006
C. Trunnell (Middletown, DE)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
Panasonic offers a USB driver however no video driver. This means that anyone using windows xp will be unable to transfer video to their computer. When talking to panasonic they just said they didnt have a driver and were not developing one. They offered no suggestions or alternatives.
 horrible low light video August 21, 2005
aaaaaah
7 out of 9 found this review helpful
I quickly returned this. Nearly all videoa I take are indoors with the kids in the evening. All lights in house are on, but of course it's not as bright as a sunny day. The video looks great in the LCD monitor, but once it's on TV or computer.. yuk!! grainy and pixelated, washed out colors. All the grainy junk makes the video look flat somehow. Terrible. My old analog Panasonic takes much better indoor video than this. I now understand why other camcorders advertise features like "3D Noise cancellation" and "Low light boost", etc. My advice, spend the extra bucks and get one of those cameras if you're going to shoot indoors, because the quality with this is just ugly.
Couple other things I didn't like about it: it has a lenscap, and the USB/firewire connections are blocked by the handstrap, so you have to loosen the handstrap nearly all the way to get at those ports.
The best thing is its joystick navigation thingy. Navigating menus and doing VCR operations in playback mode is a breeze. Wish all cameras had this.
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