Nice little camcorder

Picked this up from newegg.com for $349 plus shipping. Came in sealed retail box. My only beef is that the memory card and firewire cable is not included in the box and must be purchased seperately. I purchased a Canon ZR-60 and Panasonic PV-73 and both included the firewire cable and a with the Panasonic, a small 8 meg SD card.

The camcorder itself is nicely layed out with minimal buttons to clutter up the design. I am still only experimenting with the features but I can say that it includes more than I expected for this price. A/V in was the most important feature I was looking for so that I could transfer some old VHS tapes to DVD using my Mac. This camera includes this but until I get the firewire cable, I can't test it.

One of the features that I find neat is the shutter speed control. I don't remember if the Canon or the Panasonic had this feature but if they did, it was nowhere near as accessible as it is on the Samsung. The speed can be lowered to 1/8 and raised to 1/30000 (or something like that). I tested the slow shutter by taping my golf swing which made the video look like slow motion ghosting, meaning it looked pretty sweet. I am going to try the swing with the highest setting to see if I can see the clubhead at impact. In its normal shutter speed, the clubhead is a blur so it will be interesting to see at the fastest shutter speed.

Taping in low light indoor conditions is grainy at best but in-line with the Canon and Panasonic. The NightShot mode does work fantastic though and with the right amount of shutter speed, can even be used to tape in pitch black conditions.

All in all, I am happier with this purchase than with either the Canon or the Panasonic at this point. The Canon had an issue with staying in focus during zoom and indoors. The Panasonic couldn't do video-in so it just didn't fit my needs even though the camcorder itself was a nice unit. I like the extra features and usability that the Samsung provides. It seems to me that this camcorder has all the features of the other companies higher end models while having the price of the lower end models.