Panasonic HDC-SD20 Camcorder Review

Manual Controls Summary
• Excellent automatic controls, including Panasonic's versatile Intelligent Auto features    (like AF/AE Tracking and Intelligent Contrast Control) • 16x optical zoom responds to variable finger pressure on the sliding toggle • Manual focus is imprecise using the touch screen controls • Exposure, sharpness, and color (saturation) are easy to use, but buried in a submenu • Aperture and shutter speed are independently controlled and offer numerous increments • Gain control is a nice added features to help further boost exposure
	Compression & Media	(Page 7 of 17)	Still Features

Auto Mode (10.27)

One of Panasonic's strengths this year is in implementing a variety of automatic shooting modes to aid users with a diverse background of camcorder experience. The manufacturer default is a standard auto mode, which simply disengages all manual image controls and some menu options in order to slim down the interface for beginning users. It's interesting that Panasonic sets this as the default mode; to access the full feature set, you have to press the Manual button within the LCD cavity.

Adding an extra layer of versatility to automatic image adjustments, Panasonic includes its well-publicized Intelligent Auto (iA) feature. This tool is activated by pressing the iA button on the top of the camcorder. Intelligent Auto does more than make automatic image adjustments; it also uses Panasonic's AF/AE Tracking, Intelligent Scene Selector, Intelligent Contrast Control, and Face Detection.

The star of the 2009 iA lineup is the AF/AE Tracking, which was the motivating force behind the company's transition to touch screen controls. With AF/AE tracking, you can touch your main subject on the LCD and the camcorder will adjust focus and exposure appropriately. What's more, the camcorder will track your subject and compensate as lighting conditions change or as your subject moves closer and further away. We found the feature to work surprisingly well and to be a lot of fun to use. There are, of course, a couple exceptions where the tool struggles. For instance, if your subject momentarily moves out of frame, AF/AE Tracking often has trouble find it again. There are also problems recording in a more crowded environment: if you're following the action at your daughter's soccer game and another player passes between you, the tracking will often lose one player to pick up the other. For recording at a school play, ballet recital, or gymnastics meet—anything where your subject remains relatively isolated—the feature is surprisingly effective.

This is thanks in large part to the iA's ability to make accurate automatic adjustments for focus and exposure. Focus works well, except in very low lighting conditions. There's a telemacro feature to help you zoom on objects very close to the lens. Exposure is done quickly and smoothly: most slow pans were exposed with nice, slow transitions. White balance is actually quite good, except in some tricky indoor shooting conditions, where colors turn out a bit too warm.

The other iA features are less gimmicky than AF/AE Tracking, but can also come in handy. Intelligent Scene Selector automatically selects the appropriate scene mode for the subject being recorded. Intelligent Contrast Control has some impact on preventing blown out highlights, while Face Detection makes exposure and focus adjustments for up to fifteen faces detected in a frame.

Low Light Modes
The SD20 offers one full-fledged low light mode, called MagicPix. It isn't clear exactly what MagicPix does, but it's probably some combination of 24p video, increased gain, and slower shutter. There's also an auto slow shutter, which drops the shutter speed to 1/30 (1/24 in 24p mode). If you're shooting with iA engaged, the camcorder may go into low light mode, which also drops the shutter speed to 1/30 of a second.

Scene Modes
You get the usual smattering of scene modes with the SD20. You can select these manually or let iA pick the scene mode for you. Options include: Portrait, Snow, Sunset, Sports, Spotlight, Beach, and Fireworks.
 

Zoom (5.0)

Zoom on the Panasonic HDC-SD20 is controlled by a sliding switch on the top of the camcorder. It's very similar to the toggle that was on last year's HDC-SD9 and it's identical to what you'll find on all of Panasonic's high definition flash memory camcorders this year. While the surface of the switch isn't as large as on last year's model, it is just as comfortable to use. The control is positioned perfectly under your right index finger and the grip surface makes sure that your fingers doesn't accidentally slide off.

The sliding zoom switch works well for variable speeds, including a nice slow crawl.

When zooming, a progress bar appears in the upper-right corner to indicate where you are in the available zoom range. If you have digital zoom enabled, that portion of the scale will appear in blue, while the optical zoom range is white. Next to the bar is a numerical representation of the current zoom ratio. Unfortunately, the zoom ratio only appears in whole number increments, but at least there's a number at all—more than we can say for the competition from Canon and Sanyo.

On the other hand, the user isn't given much control over the zoom speed. While the Canon HF20 sports three different fixed zoom speed settings and a variable speed option, you'll just have to use your fine motor skills to control the zoom speed on the HDC-SD20. Fortunately, Panasonic has improved the toggle over last year's model and it's now easier to achieve a variety of zoom speeds using varying finger pressures—including a nice, slow crawl. 

Zoom Ratio (5.62)

The Panasonic HDC-SD20 has a 16x optical zoom, which is slightly above average for a high definition camcorder. The Canon HF20 and the JVC GZ-HD320 are the closest among the competition, sporting a 15x and 20x optical zoom, respectively. Most high definition camcorders settle for something closer to 10x (the Sanyo VPC-HD2000 and the Canon HF S100) or 12x (the Canon HF11 and the Sony HDR-XR520).

There's also the usual digital zoom, which can be turned off or capped at 40x or 1000x. We typically recommend you avoid using digital zoom, since it degrades image quality.

Zoom Comparisons
Wide Angle	8x Zoom	16x Zoom

 
Focus (4.0)

No one will be surprised by our lack of enthusiasm for the touch screen manual focus. For starters, you have to block part of your image with your finger in order to manipulate the touch screen slider. The user has no viewfinder and shouldn't have to block part of that precious LCD real estate in order to obtain an accurate manual focus. We're looking forward to our upcoming review of the TM300, which has the smooth and responsive manual control lens ring for adjusting focus.

On the other hand, Panasonic provides you with an incredibly high number of focal increments, enabling you to select a very precise level of focus for your shot. There's also a focus assist box, which magnifies the center of your image to help you find the best focus. However, it's still a finicky affair with the SD20. There's no numerical focal increments and holding down on one of the arrows will often result in the user flying by the best option. With such a good auto focus system in place, we recommend you just stick with that. If you're the kind of camcorder user that likes to perform the occasional manual focus, it's probably best that you stick with a model that provides a ring or dial for focus adjustments.

Manual focus is not easy with a touch screen.

Exposure (6.6)

Exposure is, once again, buried deep within the menu structure of the Panasonic HDC-SD20. We were surprised by the fourteen button presses necessary to reach this feature on last year's models. The SD20 has slimmed this process down to just one button press and eleven screen taps (see below). We're not sure why Panasonic hides this feature, especially since it's such an easy concept for beginners to understand.

Once you do uncover this hidden feature, you can easily choose from one of eleven brightness increments, from -5 to +5.

One button press brings up the menu and eleven screen taps get you to Exposure.

 
Aperture (9.5)

Panasonic continues to include aperture control as part of its "Iris" adjustment feature. You can use the touch screen to select one of about thirty different increments between f/1.8 and f/16. Fourteen of those increments are associated with an approximate aperture setting (displayed on the left side of the touch screen). It's a little bit unusual to only number half of your increments, but this is something that Panasonic has always done. The touch screen simply draws more attention to the oddity: when you you touch the arrow and the number doesn't change, it feels like the touch screen wasn't responding. We wish Panasonic would just number every increment with its approximate aperture value. "Halfway between f/3.3 and f/4.0" doesn't feel very precise.

When you've exhausted your options for aperture by bringing it to a fully open position, you can further boost the exposure by increasing gain (explained in the Gain section, below). The SD20 doesn't have a manual control ring, luminance meter, or live histogram to aid with manual adjustments, but the thirty-ish aperture increments give you plenty of flexibility for a mid-range consumer camcorder.

Aperture is bundled in with the Iris feature.

Shutter Speed (10.0)

Shutter speed is controlled via the same touch screen operation as Iris, with a scale on the left side of the LCD. This time, all the increments are numbered, so there's no ambiguous half increments. The aperture range is quite wide, including a total of fourteen increments when shooting at an ordinary 60i frame rate. When you engage Auto Slow Shutter, the range of options widens to include 1/30. Shooting in Digital Cinema mode changes the frame rate to 24p, which means the slowest shutter speeds are now 1/24 and 1/48 (with and without Auto Slow Shutter engaged).

There is a reasonable range of shutter speed options.

White Balance (7.75)

The SD20 has just four white balance presets to choose from: Sunny, Cloudy, Indoor 1, and Indoor 2. This is about average for consumer camcorders. Like most white balance presets, they're somewhat hit-or-miss. The outdoor white balance options work well enough, but the auto white balance works even better when you're shooting in outdoor lighting conditions. The indoor are less reliable and don't give any indication of what type of indoor lighting they're designed to accommodate.

Performing a manual white balance is easy and intuitive, but doesn't always work perfectly. We found that the manual white balance under certain fluorescent lighting produced a washed out and/or blueish tone. At least the manual white balance is always responsive and simple to perform, and in most lighting conditions, the color balance turns out to be quite good. We recommend you compare the auto white balance to the manual balance and simply decide which you prefer before you start shooting.

There aren't many white balance options.

 
Gain (4.0)

Panasonic is still one of the few manufacturers to offer a manual gain setting. This allows you to digitally boost exposure beyond what you can accomplish with shutter speed or aperture alone. The Sanyo VPC-HD2000 has an ISO feature, which was designed for still photography control, but can be used when recording video as well. As Panasonic has done for the last couple of years, gain is part of the larger "Iris" setting, which allows you to boost gain only once the aperture has been fully opened to f/1.8.

As was the case for aperture, there are actually half-step increments between each numbered gain setting. (i.e. There is a distinct gain level between 6dB and 9dB.) With a range of 0dB to 18dB, that means there are about thirteen total increments available.

Gain is bundled in with the Iris feature.

Color & Image Controls (7.5)

There are a couple of options added for extra flexibility over image control. These are the same features present on last year's Panasonics, so users familiar with the HDC-SD9 or HDC-SD100 will find no surprises here. Soft Skin Mode (see Color Performance) and Digital Cinema Color are shooting features that can be engaged or disengaged to obtain the desired effect. We're happy to see that Digital Cinema Color is now its own option—separate from Digital Cinema mode. Now you can use x.v.Color without recording in the 24p frame rate.

The other two image controls on the SD20 are hidden away in the Picture Adjust submenu (with Exposure). Color and Sharpness each have eleven increments to choose from. A single increment produces a very subtle change, but the range from -5 to +5 can create very different results (see below).

Panasonic HDC-SD20 Color and Sharpness Controls 3000 lux at 100% Crop
Auto	Color -5	Color +5	Sharpness -5	Sharpness +5

Other Manual Controls (2.0)

There are only a couple of minor tools to complement the already robust manual control offering of the Panasonic HDC-SD20. Notably missing are zebra striping and/or live histograms to help with exposure control. The Sanyo VPC-HD2000 also has a noise reduction mode, which is unusual for consumer camcorders.