Panasonic NV-MX500B

The Panasonic NV-MX500B is an extremely competent camera, and after 2 years of ownership I now feel justified in writing a real "user's" review...

There have been complaints about some aspects of this camera, so I'll tackle them first.

Firstly, white balance: this occasionally causes me some problems, but I think it is my own fault! Many people do not realise that the camera uses two different sources to calculate white balance - the picture entering the lens and a separate sensor hidden behind a window on the front of the camera. If you have your hands placed over the sensor then it (quite reasonably) fools the white balance system. Just the hold the camera the way it was designed to be held!

The second 'problem' is low light capability. For each person saying low light performance is bad, another (like me) says it has never caused them a problem. Admittedly, the MX500B's 1/6 inch CCDs are smaller than some other camcorder's CCDs, but it is ridiculous to expect to get grain-free pictures with any digital camera in extremely low light levels. As a point of interest, many of Panasonic's new (2005) models just announced use the same 1/6 inch CCDs, so it's clearly not a problem for most customers.

Now onto the positive aspects. The pictures that this camera produces are stunning! The resolution is truly exceptional and the colours very natural. Even now, after two year's use, I often freeze-frame my recordings just to look at the razor sharp detail. The optical image stabilizer is truly useful and works very well, without any loss of quality. And if you know a thing or two about photography and switch to manual mode the camera has all the control you need to create the image you want. For picture quality alone, this camera justifies its 3CCD's and price.

On top of that:

* It takes respectable 3MP stills, although they are not quite as good as a dedicated stills camera.

* It can act as a (very high quality!) webcam.

* It can "pass through" the signal entering its AV input, and output it on Firewire (IEEE1394) to a computer. This makes it an ideal upgrade for anyone with an old analogue camera and lots of tapes to capture to their PC.

* It can act as a voice recorder, giving many hours of recording on to the SD card, making it an ideal reporting tool.

* Unlike some notable rivals, it does *not* have the annoyance of a fiddly touch screen LCD menu system, where your lovely display gets clouded over in fingerprints!

In summary, the NV-MX500B is an extremely well designed tool, and easily justifies its position as a "prosumer" camcorder.

The Panasonic NV-MX500B has white balance all over the place. Any moving shot runs the risk of everything turning blue. Low light performance is pathetic. No matter how you set it, the performance when compared to any Sony camera is hopeless. Shoot indoors with lights only and avoid moving the camera for best effects. Sound has to be manually set for each situation because on automatic it just clips everything. Once again, only of use when shooting highly controlled environments.

I wouldn't recommend the Panasonic MV-MX500.

Reviews of MV-MX500 (or its US version) barely mention any problems or weaknesses (a perfect camera????). They sound like a Panasonic sales pitch.

I found a number of problems with two MV-MX500 tested a few months apart (and most probably coming from different manufacturing batches).

In each case after a few days of testing I have returned my NV-MX500 and got my money back. Several reasons: disastrous low light performance - very dark and grainy (noisy) footage indoors, even in very brightly lit rooms. Essentially it is a fair weather outdoor, daylight camera only (forget evening occasions like parties, family gatherings in the evening, kids indoors or filming in a church).

Another very serious problem with both cameras was uncontrollably fluctuating White Balance. The MV-MX500 frequently tries to adjust WB on the fly which results in footage frequently changing from cool, unnatural, blue-biased colours to equally unnatural yellow-biased colours and back to blue. This happened several times indoors, in a bright room, in bright-overcast and also in bright-sunny conditions outside. Even short takes of 10 seconds (without panning) had up to two or three, very visible fluctuations of White Balance/colours without any possibility of preventing the camera from fiddling. Somehow the camera cannot make up its mind what source of light it is dealing with.

The ergonomy is also questionable. One of the main points here is: the frequently used menu wheel is placed on the right but it is impossible to reach it with the right hand fingers without breaking them. Operating the wheel with my left hand under my nose and looking in the viewfinder at the same time is impossible. The list of problems I discovered is much longer, the zoom lever is too sensitive, both brand new cameras had dead viewfinder pixels "on arrival", user manual is disastrous, the strap is very uncomfortable, etc.

It is a pity because the market begs for a good, light semi pro camera. Panasonic should learn from SONY and CANON (MV3i!) designers a few things and create a new, winning reincarnation of 3CCD MX500. I would be the first one to buy it. Subject to all above problems fixed.

As it stands now I wouldn't use PANASONIC NV-MX500 even if it came free. It is because it ruins most of my footage!