Digital Trends

Panasonic VDR-D300 May 4th, 2006 | by David Elrich

Performance

The VDR-D300—like all DVD camcorders—is not ready in a New York minute. When you first power up, it has to read the disc and with a blank RAM platter it took about 10 seconds. Once it had done that, other starts took about three seconds, a more reasonable figure. I took a variety of shots outdoor and in, motion and still with OIS turned on. Initially I had the camcorder set in Auto at best quality. Shots were also taken using the extensive manual options as well. And the results were the best video I have ever taken with a DVD camcorder.

Before getting into the results first a comment on the 2.7-inch widescreen LCD. Although 123K pixels I had no problem using it in direct sunlight. When things got a bit washed out, a hit of LCD button bumped up the backlighting and the screen was very usable. I took the disc out and popped it directly into a Panasonic DMR-E60 DVD recorder/player (with RAM there's no need for finalization). The video displayed on a 36-inch 4:3 Toshiba HDTV was, for the most part, superb. Evergreens were rich and dark. Cloudless blue skies did not have the digital noise I experienced with many other DVD cams. It did have some issues with tree branches rapidly moving in the wind; the green was not very vivid and in some instances the images were overly sharp. Trees silhouetted against the sky showed the true color of their bark. Indoor shots taken with available sunlight had very little noise. I could go on but suffice it to say the video was fine and dandy. Now realize this was shot in XP mode (9 Mbps) so the 30-minute disc only held 19 minutes of this best-level video. Still I'd rather spend the money on blank media and have good video.

Still photos were also quite good, in fact very similar to the Sony DCR-HC96 recently reviewed since both take 3MP files. The 4x6 prints looked quite good; even an 8.5x11 was very acceptable but on the verge of losing it if we went larger--not that many people would do that with a 3MP image.

All is not perfection with the VDR-D300 (is there any such thing in the CE world?). The wind noise filter really didn't work and my videos shot on a breezy day sounded like I was standing in a wind tunnel. And Panasonic along with Sony et al really should do a better job with their graphic user interfaces. Although the basic menu of the Panasonic is nicely laid out, when you drill down things start to fall apart. When you try to change the Scene Mode, tiny icons appear and even if I had Ted Williams' eyesight, I'd have trouble deciphering them especially what turned out to be a snowman (that's the setting for Surf & Snow). Initially it looked like a guy standing under a light bulb. The 180-page owner's manual explained it but there shouldn't be a need for something this basic. As far as manual adjustments go, the Panasonic has plenty of them including focus, shutter speed, iris and white balance. Adjustments made with the joystick in this instance were intuitive and simple. And the OIS did as advertised, reducing the amount of camera shake even though it's never entirely eliminated. What didn't work as advertised was the battery which gave up the ghost before its rated 85 minutes.