Panasonic HDC-SD1 First Impressions Camcorder Review

by Guy Bruner
Published on Jan 11, 2007 6:00 PM

Intro
Performance
Format Tour
Auto / Manual Controls Still Features
Handling and Use Audio / Playback / Connectivity
Other Features Comparisons / Conclusion
   


 
Video Performance
In good light, like the lighting in the Panasonic display booth, the image has appropriately saturated colors. (See frame grabs below.)


 
Skin tones are very real and colors are accurate. This is not surprising since Panasonic 3CCD camcorders are known for having excellent color reproduction. There seems to be some tendency for the camcorder to overexpose bright whites. You can see the whites are blooming a bit in the yellow and white striped towel behind the male model’s head. Interestingly enough, the zebra feature did not indicate the bright white areas were too bright.  Also, the image resolution (picture detail) is not what I expected. I took frame grabs of the beach scene from a standard definition video shot with the Panasonic PV-GS400 (Review, Specs, $1099) and compared blown up sections from each camcorder of a portion of the frame containing the starfish and shells. Picture detail is essentially the same indicating that, although the frame is larger, the resolution appears to be only marginally better than standard definition. The overexposed whites and low picture detail may be due to the low pixel count on the CCDs or may be a result of the AVCHD encoding.  At this point, I don’t have enough information to say for sure. I’ll have to wait until I can shoot a resolution chart and do more analysis.
 
There is some distracting jitter in the image as the camcorder is panned. The jitter shows up when I play back the MPEG2 transport stream files on my laptop using Nero 7 Ultra Edition Enhanced and Cyberlink’s PowerDVD 7 Deluxe, both of which use adaptive de-interlacing. But, my laptop has a progressive display and the video is interlaced. Progressive displays and interlaced video often don’t play well together. I was unable to view the video using the HDMI or component video ports. I suspect those will look better on a large widescreen and I look forward to the opportunity when I can see the video from the HDC-SD1 on my HDTV.
 
Panasonic has almost standardized optical image stabilization across its camcorder line. OIS is even more important to the video quality of the new AVCHD format as compared to DV since the AVCHD resolution is so much higher, thus amplifying any movement. The OIS seemed to work well on the HDC-SD1, which is good since this camcorder is so small and light any hand shake would make a mess of the image.
 
Low Light Performance
Panasonic put three, ¼” CCDs in the HDC-SD1 and rates their low light sensitivity at 6 lux. As a point of reference, 6 lux is one full F-stop more sensitive than the 12 lux rating of the PV-GS500 (Review, Specs, $1040), last years top MiniDV camcorder. This should please many consumers who complain that camcorders with small CCDs don’t do well in low light. Panasonic was able to improve low light sensitivity by increasing the size of the CCDs while using fewer pixels than the PV-GS500 used to create the image. That means the pixels are larger and therefore can capture more light. It also means Panasonic was able to get increased sensitivity at a maximum aperture of F1.8. While I was unable to get really low light levels in the Panasonic display booth, I was able to discern a definite improvement in low light sensitivity in the dim areas around the booth as compared to my PV-GS400. The grain was low too, which made the image much cleaner than many other camcorders in these light levels.



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