Wanting to buy a DV Cam and would appreciate some advise
on any models anyone can recommend, I am new to the DV cams.
I'm quite keen on the Panny's, but open to offers on other makes.
Picture quality a must. Cheers!!

[Angie]

I highly recommend the Panasonic MX8. (I got mine from John Lewis, who price-matched to £799.)

I bought one about a month ago, and took it to North America for three weeks. Five hours of video so far. It's a delight to use. Picture and sound quality are excellent. Controls are well placed and easy to use. It's well balanced, and comfortable. The zoom is sensitive (allowing controlled slow movement) and quiet in operation.

Nice range of special effects (I particularly like the fade). The battery life is shorter than I'd hoped, but I got a couple of spares and the recharge time is short (1 hour battery recharges in 1 hour, and so on).

The stills feature is also good, though it's rather 'pixelly' at the lower setting. The higher setting is excellent (but you'll need to buy a bigger card to get more than a few good-quality pics - it's supplied with 8MB; I subsequently bought 64MB).

Buy and enjoy!

Good wishes,
Angie