This camera specs well and packs a lot of features. Using the features can be difficult and in some cases, too easy. On several occassions, I have hit the photo button while trying to find the zoom button. The IEEE 1394 (firewire) port failed. While mounted on my tripod, you cannot replace the battery. The battery release is on the bottom of the camera which is obstructed by the tripod. The sound quality is marginal. I am being generous with a three star rating. If you plan to use the camera frequently, invest time understanding your objectives and match the capabilities of the camera. This camera is small and awkward for me to use. I was happy to receive it as a gift but would not have purchased it for myself.

This Panasonic DV camcorder is a solid performer and a great value. I've been using it for several months, and it hasn't let me down at all. Battery life is good, picture quality is great, and audio quality is acceptable.

The basic features of this camera are intuitive and easy to use. You can have it out of the box and recording in no time (after you charge the battery). Video quality is high, and playback on the LCD screen is easy and watchable. It comes with nearly every imaginable cable, so you can hook it to whatever you want. However, I highly recommend a firewire (IEEE 1394) card for capturing video to a PC. I've used Pinnacle Studio software flawlessly with this camera, and produced very high quality results.

This camera is chock full of features. To be honest, I haven't used many of them, not yet having learned how. The instruction manual is 102 pages long, and you'll every last page if you're going to exploit all the features of this camera. However, it's not necessary to do so to get your money's worth. One note: still picture quality won't match that of a good regular digital camera, so I wouldn't recommend using it for that purpose, although it comes equipped with an SD card slot that enables the capture of stills.

This is a small, lightweight camera that will just barely fit in your hand. It'll go everywhere without being a burden. It's worked great for me, and I can highly recommend it. Enjoy.

I get this camerea, and it was almost perfect for filming. It doesn't get that high of resoultion for stills, but that's not why i bought it.. The sound quality was one of the setbacks, (you can adjust it to 12 or 14 kbps) , but on 14kbps it still wasn't as good as i expected. It's aslo very quiet.. i found myself talking louder than i normally would to make the voices a little more audible, however it picks up sound like in another room very well. The mic is useful, but you really don't want a mic poking out in a movie. The major setback is that you can only transfer stills and mpegs to your computer through the USB, so you HAVE to have a firewire card on your pc to edit your movies. I was really disappointed that i had to buy a firewire card, but i got one for $28 so it wasn't that big of a deal.
on the flip-side, it's is so small , and sneaking it places is easy, it fitws in my pocket, and i take it everywhere now. The battery charges rather quickly too.

I love the camera for the purpose of recording those unforgettable moments, but when using to take digital photos....it's not so good. The pictures have a very low resolution and when the photos are printed (from both photo center and my home printer) they look like a computer screen picture. Even with the light feature on, they aren't very nice printed.

This is a great camcorder and a great buy. It's tiny, full-featured, and well designed with the usual Panasonic attention to ergonomics and practicality. The battery life is extraordinary for a battery this size. On the downside, the digital photo mode has fairly low resolution, but remember that any camcorder you're using as a digital camera will NOT have a flash, and that's very limiting anyway. So don't buy this (or any camcorder) to be an all-in-1 device or you'll be disappointed. On the plus side, the ability to record MPEG-4 video to either the DV tape or the SD card is great, although it will be an *.asf file and not .mpg (and no, you can't easily convert), so your file sharing may be limited. You'll likely prefer to record in regular mode instead and then capture it on your PC (via firewire) and save it to mpg. Overall a very impressive camcorder and a good operating manual, although you won't even need it to do the basics. And that's rare these days! Well done, Panasonic.