Panasonic NVGS400B review

Sony's DCR-TRV950 was the semi-professional's choice at launch, and resided on our A List for more than 18 months. With impeccable image quality and plenty of high-end features, but a price well under £1,500, the TRV950 was the ideal camcorder for those who couldn't justify the expense of a VX2000 or Canon XL1S. But three-chip technology has been filtering much further down the price spectrum of late, mostly thanks to Panasonic. Now that the TRV950 has been discontinued, its successor arrives to much fiercer competition. The timing of the DCR-HC1000's release couldn't have been better, as Panasonic has just launched it's new three-chipper, the NVGS400B.

They're similarly priced, and their base specifications are almost identical. Both use a trio of 1/4.7in CCDs, each with a resolution of 1.07 megapixels, and both cameras boast a full complement of manual controls and optical, rather than electronic, image stabilisation. Strangely, however, Sony has chosen to position the TRV950's successor more at the point-and-shoot market rather than the 'prosumer', whereas Panasonic seems to be heading the other way.

The differences are most pronounced with regard to manual control. Both camcorders are replete with options, including manual audio levels - essential for the semi-professional. The Panasonic has four white-balance modes - automatic, outdoor, indoor, and manual - as does the Sony. The Panasonic supports shutter speeds from 1/50 to 1/8,000 in camcorder mode, whereas the Sony ranges from 1/3 to 1/10,000. The Panasonic has iris levels from 0-18dB, equivalent to F16 to F1.7, whereas the Sony has a slider with no specific F-stop values.

However, Sony has taken the dubious step of making all of its manual controls accessible only via the LCD panel touchscreen. There's a lens ring, but this is just for focus or zoom, which the user can toggle between using a switch. The Panasonic, on the other hand, uses its lens ring for a plethora of functions. One button toggles between zoom or focus like the Sony, but another switches the ring over to shutter or iris adjustment. Sony's touchscreen does offer some unique features, in particular spot exposure and focus. But most semi-professionals will find the lack of discrete function buttons disappointing.

Now that widescreen is more popular, Panasonic has both a menu-accessible Cinema mode, which places black bars at the top and bottom of the picture, and two types of 16:9 aspect ratio DV recording. One records at 50 interlaced fields per second, and the other at 25fps. The Sony, on the other hand, just has 16:9 DV widescreen mode, with no frame option.

With both camcorders set on automatic, video quality is near-identical, which isn't surprising considering the similar CCD setup. In bright sunlight, both exhibit great colour fidelity, good contrast and accurate exposure. Sony's optical image stabiliser is a little more effective than Panasonic's, but both are in a different league when compared to cheaper camcorders. Under artificial lighting, again, there was little to separate the two, with faithful colours even in poor illumination.

Audio is one area of differentiation. While both camcorders have decent built-in microphones plus accessory shoes for attaching external upgrades, the Sony goes one better. It has a pair of stereo mini-jacks for recording surround sound using the optional ECM-CQP1. However, we tried attaching two mics to the inputs and found that worked as well. The DV format supports either two channels of 16-bit or four of 12-bit audio, and Sony's surround system uses the latter - although you'll require software bundled with VAIO computers to capture all four audio tracks. However, some DV capture software lets you choose which pair to acquire with the video, so you could strip off the audio in two passes and compile it that way.