Panasonic's high-end consumer MiniDV camcorder, the GS320, has nowhere near the value of its little brother – the GS85. At almost double the price ($450), it has better image quality in good light conditions, but stumbles in low-light. A complete suite of manual controls (also found on the GS85) and good noise reduction make it competitive at the top of its price range, which says more about the poor state of MiniDv camcorders than it does about Panasonic's top of the line model.



Three 1/6-inch, 800,000 pixel, native 4:3 CCD sensors output standard definition interlaced video. Their images are above average for the under $400 class. Colors are not oversaturated, noise handling is good in all light conditions, but resolution isn't great. In low-light, the video is significantly less bright that the GS85's, but noise is finer and affects the image less. Unlike its cheaper sibling, the GD320 has no LED light.



A 10x zoom lens handles a maximum aperture range of F1.8 to F2.8, and is outfitted with a very good optical image stabilizer (significantly better than the GS85's). Its 35mm camera equivalent field of view is 46.1 – 461mm, which is extremely lacking at the low-angle end. The 2.7-inch widescreen LCD has a 123,000 pixel resolution, and the 0.33-inch viewfinder sports 113,000 pixels.



As is the norm with Panasonic camcorders, manual controls are absolutely great. The GS320's controls crush any similarly priced DV camera. There are independent settings for shutter speed (1/60 to 1/8000), aperture (F1.8 to F16), white balance, gain and focus. The lack of a simple exposure compensation setting stands out, and inexperienced users will feel it most.



A webcam mode lets you hook up the camera to a computer and broadcast live video, a feature that will have great appeal for consumers.



The largest photos the GS320 can capture measure 2048 x 1512 pixels. Photos are saved to SD and SDHC cards.



The on-board stereo microphone has a Wind Cut setting, but these software noise reduction algorithms never don't help that much. They certainly don't make up for the lack of support for an external microphone – as is the case for the GS320. The camcorder is however capable of “zooming” in – that is, focusing on sounds that come from the front rather than sides and back. The zoom function is tied to the actual zoom of the camcorder. For its price, lack of mic and headphone input is a serious problem.



The ports provided on this camcorder are USB 1.1, AV out and Firewire.