Digital Trends

Panasonic HDC-SD1 February 7th, 2007 | by David Elrich

Performance

Before we get into the pluses and minuses of this camcorder—Caveat emptor! Please note that while taking high-def videos with the HDC-SD1 and other 1080i camcorders is easy, going beyond simple direct playback on your HDTV via HDMI or component inputs is challenging. You can burn a DVD for playback but it will be standard definition—so what’s the point of spending $1,500 other than sending a disc to grandma? For best quality you need a new Blu-ray Disc burner to do the trick and they cost around $699. You’ll also need a Blu-ray player if you want to move away from the computer and the cheapest is the Sony PlayStation 3 for $499. Of course, Panasonic wants you to simply take the card out and insert it into one of its multi-thousand dollar plasmas with a compatible SD card slot. No one said it was cheap being in the vanguard of home electronics technology.

This camcorder uses three CCDs rated 560K pixels apiece; each handles a primary color of Red, Green, Blue (RGB). We’ve been very pleased with previous three-chip Panasonics PV-GS300 and this one is no different. As a mater of fact, the video from this camcorder is phenomenal. It’s been a long time since I was impressed with a new technology and that’s been the case with all of the next-gen camcorders from Sony, Canon and now Panasonic (HDV and AVCHD). In this instance there wasn’t a bit of noise even with footage shot indoors using Magic Pix (Panasonic’s name for a low-light boost similar to Sony’s Super NightShot). I took some scenes is a dark corner and there was hardly any noise even with severe close-ups. (This was via a 36-inch Toshiba 1080i HDTV using component inputs, sitting just three feet away.) Granted there was some blur with moving objects in dark scenes but you can’t have everything.

In bright sunshine your jaw will drop at the quality. Focusing was quite good with very little grabbing, even shooting through windows. Most people record in Auto and they’ll be very happy with the results (as you can tell, I was). If you want to go beyond Auto, the camcorder has a very clear and logical menu system. To get into the five Scene modes and manual options, simply flick the switch opposite the LCD to manual. Using the joystick you can toggle through all the options such as sports, portrait and so on. There are also options for manual focus, white balance, aperture as well as soft skin mode and tele macro. In other words, more than enough tweaks for 99 percent of the camcorder users out there. There was even a very helpful guidelines option that place rules on the LCD screen so you can make sure your horizons are straight. This is a very cool and usable feature. And the Mega OIS definitely smoothes out footage from handheld operation. The camcorder also has Auto Ground Directional Standby (AGS), a mouthful that simply means the camera won’t record when you place it to your side and hold it upside down.

As mentioned earlier, this is one of the few camcorders (outside of select Sonys) with Dolby Digital 5.1 Creator sound. If you have a surround sound system, you’ll really get a kick out of it. The microphones are on the top of the housing. When you engage the zoom mic it zeroes in on the subject you’re shooting, helping to anchor the action. And be careful: when you zoom do it smoothly without snapping the toggle switch since the mic picks up this annoying sound.

In case you’re wondering why this camcorder has a cooling fan and vents there’s a reason—it definitely got warm after a long period use but nothing that’s a real bother—it’s just there.

Like all camcorders, this one takes photos and you can take 2.1MP snapshots while you’re shooting video. Quality is good but nothing to shout from the rooftops; the Canon HV10 does a much better job of that. Still it’s a nice option to have.

Image Courtesy of Panasonic