Panasonic HDC-SD20 Camcorder Review

Color & Noise Performance Summary
• Good, accurate colors, though a little less vibrant than the higher-end competition • Greens and pinks are most heavily skewed • Incredibly low noise levels • Noise is obscured by low sharpness
	Product Tour	(Page 3 of 17)	Motion & Sharpness Performance

Color (7.87)

The Panasonic HDC-SD20 had good color performance for a mid-range high definition camcorder. As is to be expected, it's not as good as the more expensive models from Canon, but it is better than the color error reported by the Sony Webbie MHS-CM1. The SD20 scored a 4.45 color error with a saturation of 79.21%. As you can see looking at the color error map below, the SD20 does very well with light skin tones and blues, but heavily skews purple and green hues. (More on how we test color.)

Color Accuracy Performance
Color Test Chart (above), Color Error Map (right)
The Panasonic HDC-SD20 produced a color error of 4.45 and a saturation level of 79.21% in our bright light color testing. (The map on the right is a diagram of the color error. The length and direction of each line indicates how the camcorder processed each particular color.)

The Panasonic HDC-SD20 offers a couple different adjustments that allow you to make subtle shifts in the colors of your image. The easiest option to access is the Soft Skin Mode, which smooths out skin tones and blemishes. (This option is a lot like the Cosmetic feature on some digital cameras, only it won't apply artificial makeup to your subjects.) Buried in the Picture Adjust sub-submenu, there is also an option to adjust color depth. There are a total of eleven increments, each one making a very minor tweak to the color or your image. Below we have frame grabs from video footage of our still life train display at 60i in auto mode, soft skin mode, and -5/+5 color depth.

Panasonic HDC-SD20 Color Modes
Auto	100% Crop
Soft Skin Mode	100% Crop
Color Depth -5	100% Crop
Color Depth +5	100% Crop

Panasonic HDC-SD20 Color Comparisons
Panasonic HDC-SD20	Canon HF20
Sanyo VPC-HD2000	Sony MHS-CM1

Above, we have the color charts for the Panasonic HDC-SD10 and three similar camcorders. In bright light, you can't see much of a difference between the SD20 and the competition from Canon and Sanyo. The Webbie from Sony is clearly the most significant outlier, producing video that's almost overexposed at 3000 lux. The Pansonic is slightly darker and muddier than the Canon HF20, but it still produces a nice, colorful image. In the crops of the color charts below, you can see the difference a little more clearly.

This also draws out the fact that exposure and color accuracy do not necessarily go hand-in hand. Thought the SD20 looks more like the Sanyo VPC-HD2000, its color accuracy is closer to that of the Canon. It's easy to be fooled by the darkness of the images, but that Sanyo comes the closest in depicting the actual hue displayed on the chart. (Our imaging software ignores exposure when testing color accuracy.) You can also see how noise impacts color accuracy; the Sony MHS-CM1 would probably report better colors if the image weren't marred by noise.

	Close-Up Color Comparisons
	Ideal	Panasonic HDC-SD20	Canon HF20	Sanyo VPC-HD2000	Sony MHS-CM1
Red
	Ideal	Panasonic HDC-SD20	Canon HF20	Sanyo VPC-HD2000	Sony MHS-CM1
Green
	Ideal	Panasonic HDC-SD20	Canon HF20	Sanyo VPC-HD2000	Sony MHS-CM1
Blue
	Ideal	Panasonic HDC-SD20	Canon HF20	Sanyo VPC-HD2000	Sony MHS-CM1
Skin Tone 1
	Ideal	Panasonic HDC-SD20	Canon HF20	Sanyo VPC-HD2000	Sony MHS-CM1
Skin Tone 2

Color Performance Scores

Noise (9.90)

The Panasonic HDC-SD20 scored admirably well on noise: an incredibly low 0.42%. This an excellent showing from Panasonic, though that number does not tell the whole story. (More on how we test noise.)

Noise Comparisons
Panasonic HDC-SD20 100% Crop	Canon HF20 100% Crop	Sanyo VPC-HD2000 100% Crop	Sony MHS-CM1 100% Crop

As you can see in the crops above, there are few that would prefer the image produced by the Panasonic to that recorded by the Canon HF20, which actually has the worst noise percentage of all the camcorders shown above. Unfortunately, high sharpness and high noise often go hand-in-hand: the sharper your image, the easier it is to see the noise. The Panasonic has very little noise because the soft video blurs out a lot of the fine detail. The Sanyo VPC-HD2000 is a good compromise; the image is still sharp and clear, but there is less sharpness to pick up every tiny aberration. The Sony MHS-CM1, on the other hand, shows poor sharpness and plenty of noise—the Webbie's processing just can't keep up with the higher-end models from the competition.

The truth is, noise is of very little concern when you're using a mid- to upper-tier high definition camcorder in bright light. Most camcorders at this price level do an excellent job of eliminating noise in these shooting conditions. Noise becomes more of a factor when shooting in low light.

Noise Score Comparisons