Panasonic AG-HVX200 Mini DV Camcorder

The HVX200 was really my first experience with a pro-sumer camera, and in many ways I was impressed, and in other ways I was somewhat apprehensive.

Before the HVX200, I had extensive experience with a Canon mini-disc camcorder, which worked well enough, it required significant effort to produce something that wasn't absolute garbage. Keep in mind, I was producing professional-grade training videos and "social-media" videos, well, at least as professional as I could get.

As we were finally able to order our own camera, my coworker suggested this one, stating that many independent film-makers had said how impressive this camera was.

When it arrived, it didn't take long to figure out how things worked. The beautiful thing about pro-sumer is the mixture of professional features and piont-and-shoot simplicity. Don't get me wrong, I highly recommend you read the manual, or better yet spend a few days testing out its features, as my first experience with this camera was a live webcast event, with only an hour to test it out; trust me, I wasn't thrilled, but overall it went fairly well.

I had accidently left the camera on its shotgun-mic input despite having an XLR input, but surprisingly it wasn't too bad, just a little hollow. When I figured out what was wrong, it was a quick fix (a simple switch on the side of the camera), and like that I realized how versatile this little camera was. Having the XLR input jacks made things so much easier, with quick toggles between mic/line levels, and even providing phantom-power to the mic. Needless to say, this camera had seriously stepped up my game in terms of events.

Since that event, I have used the camera extensively, and have had much experiene with other cameras as well, including several studio cameras, so I really can compare it to others. The lens on this camera is pretty sweet, mixed with its 3ccds, its accuracy is really one of the highlights of the camera. I have shot HD with the camera, and this camera gives several operating modes, but I have typically shot in SD, since the majority of filming has been from live webcasting.

The camera comes with USB/firewire out, and I use the firewire out for webcasting, straight into a laptop with a firewire port, and it really works well. Often we use this camera for single-shot webcasts, with a mixboard plugged directly into the camera, otherwise we use the studio cameras and a switcher for larger events.

The LCD screen is plently large, and is good-quality in itself (perhaps a smidgen brighter than the resulting footage). The camera is really too heavy for a "handy-cam", so hold it from the top or tripod; I really wish this was a shoulder-mount, but it's not, so keep that in mind.

We purchased a few P2 cards, and they are very pricey, so you may want to also keep that in mind, but the camera also takes DV/HDV tapes, so once again, its versatility wins out.

The menu has a few items you may need to look up in the manual, but overall its pretty straight-forward, and fortunately has a lot of features and a ton of customization, letting you switch from automatic to manual on the features you feel most comfortable with. Also, panasonic seems to constantly hide their drivers and software, its never in the same place two days in a row, and now it seems they want you to pay a hefty fee to access it, so keep that in mind (although I've used XP, Vista, 7, and OSX, and didn't require drivers).

The end result is I would recommend this camera, but I also recommend you really research what it is you need to make sure you don't need a less-expensive camera. This is a highly-versatile camera, and can easily fit its way into almost any application.