Panasonic SDR-S150 Camcorder Review by John Neely Published on Sep 15, 2006 6:00 AM
Related Articles

Picture & Manual Control
Automatic Control (5.0)
In auto mode, the SDR-S150 (Review, Specs, $699.95) performs very well, in line with other Panasonic camcorders. There is no Easy Mode per se, as Sony and Canon include on their consumer camcorders, but a switch in the back allows you to select Auto or manual control modes. An Easy Mode option is most useful for true novices, in that it truncates the number of options displayed on the menu screen to create an accessible and foolproof (though I prefer idiot-proof) user interface. Panasonic’s Auto mode engages automatic control over exposure, focus, white balance, gain, and other image quality settings. In terms of camcorder function, it’s equivalent to Sony/Canon Easy Modes.

Automatic adjustments on the SDR-S150 are quick and accurate. Exposure and focus shift adeptly from one framing to another, even from bright light to low light situations in telephoto. The one area this camcorder struggled in was focusing in low-contrast situations, such as low light or a flat wall. In these cases, the SDR-S150 tended to pump in and out searching for correct focus. The white balance can take a long time to color correct, but once it does, the picture looks gorgeous. In comparison to the Sony DCR-SR100 (Review, Specs, $999), the Panasonic was slightly slower in its auto adjustments with the exception of low-contrast situations and telephoto shots. While Sony camcorders tend to excel in Easy/Auto mode, the SR100 had a notably tougher time focusing in the most challenging framing situations.

The sparse button layout on the SDR-S150. The toggle near the bottom switches
between Auto and Manual Modes, as well as engaging manual focus.

The camcorder’s Scene Modes (called “Program AE” on some camcorders) are options that enable you to tailor automatic control to more closely match a given shooting situation. To engage Scene Modes, the SDR-S150 must be set to Manual shooting mode as Auto mode deactivates them in the menu. The Scene Modes available on the SDR-S150 include Sports, for high speed subjects, Portrait, for interview-style shots, Low Light, Spotlight, for subjects that are brightly lit relative to the background, and Surf & Snow, for subjects that are dimly lit relative to the background. The Scene Modes can be helpful as long as the environment you are shooting in consistently calls for the appropriate Scene Mode. If the lighting changes, however, you should be prepared to abandon scene mode for Auto or Manual. For example, if you’re shooting a performance in Spotlight and the whole stage is suddenly lit, your subject may no longer be exposed appropriately. For this reason, we recommend becoming comfortable with Manual controls as they offer precise image control at all times.

Overall Manual Control (7.0)
The SDR-S150 is an exceptional camcorder in that it combines potent features in a pint-sized body. While we are big fans of Panasonic’s commitment to providing consumer camcorder users with high-quality manual controls, it’s still impressive to see this approach transferred to a camcorder as small as this one. Some corners have been cut in the design process, but the SDR-S150 retains most of what there is to like about Panasonic’s manual control feature set.

The administrative menu of the Panasonic SDR-S150.

The SDR-S150 provides more manual controls than other ultra-compact camcorders, not to mention much larger HDD camcorders like Sony’s DCR-SR100. The JVC Everio line offers a similar manual control feature set, but like the Sony, they are not nearly as compact. And uniquely, the SDR-S150 records MPEG-2 video to SD memory cards, making direct comparisons to other HDD and DVD models that also use the MPEG-2 format impossible.

The main manual control and menu navigation tool is a four-way touch pad on the back of the camcorder body. This touch pad offers the same functionality as the joysticks found on other Panasonic camcorders, a design that JVC has added to this year’s Everio line with similar success. While I generally prefer joysticks over touchpads, I found the SDR-S150 control to be well-implemented and easy to use. Given that the touch pad is another manifestation of the compact interface, users with large hands may find it challenging.

During shooting in either Auto or Manual modes, pressing the button in the center of the touch pad brings image control options up as a disc-shaped menu in the lower right corner of the LCD screen. In Auto mode, you are restricted to a few presets: TeleMacro (indicated by a flower icon), Soft Skin (indicated by a girl’s face), and Backlight Compensation (indicated by an icon of the sun). I don’t find these icons (or other Panasonic icons) to be particularly intuitive or helpful, so if you plan on using them, you will just need to memorize the features they are attached to.

If you’re working in Manual mode, the options that appear when you press the center button are the same but the on-screen disc is marked with the label 1/2, meaning page one of two. Pressing the button a second time brings up page two, labeled 2/2. By pressing down on the touch pad from this page, you’ll gain access to manual control over white balance, shutter speed, aperture, and gain control.

Actually using the controls takes some practice if you’re not familiar with Panasonic’s quirky manual interface. You can adjust each control element independently, but they are ordered in a sequence that you may find rigid. Here’s how it works: pressing down on the touch pad from page two enters manual control over white balance, which appears as an icon on the left side of the LCD. To cycle through white balance options, you press left or right on the touch pad. To skip to the next control, shutter speed, you push down and once again cycle through options by pressing left or right. Pressing down again moves you to iris and gain control, which are linked on a continuum from closed shutter with 0dB gain to open shutter with 18dB gain. In other words, as soon as you brighten the image exposure by pressing the right side of the touch pad, you’ll eventually reach open with 0dB gain. Pressing right again engages the camcorder’s electronic gain control meaning you cannot pump up the gain if the iris is not fully open. This means iris and gain are not completely independent, but you’ll still have more control over exposure than any other consumer camcorder maker offers.

Zoom (4.0)
The zoom toggle is the manual control that took the biggest hit in the miniaturization of the SDR-SR150. The control itself is pretty poorly designed. Instead of a conventional lever or slider, this one is a rotating disc that is most easily adjusted by applying pressure to the outside edge with your thumb. While it seems capable of delivering fine control over zoom speed, I found manipulating the control to be an awkward and somewhat treacherous exercise. The issue for me is the toggle’s location combined with the camcorder’s lack of a hand strap resulted in a contorted and unsustainable grip. As a result, I couldn’t operate the zoom toggle one-handed. In its favor, the zoom is accompanied by a handy on-screen display that shows your zoom level between 1x and 10x. You also have the option of using digital zoom, which can be capped at 25x or 700x. in order to avoid a pixilated image, we recommend turning digital zoom off, at least capping it at 25x.

Zoom Power/Ratio (10.0)
The SDR-S150 has a 10x optical zoom and 100x digital zoom. The digital zoom can be set to off, capped at 25x, or allowed to top out at the full 100x. Digital zooms should be used sparingly because they magnify pixels digitally rather than optically and result in a loss of image quality, especially at high levels.

The10x optical zoom is modest, but we suspect it is a result  of the very compact camcorder body because optical zoom power is a function of the space available for the lens mechanism. Another interesting choice on the part of Panasonic was equipping this camcorder with a digital zoom of only 100x, since digital zoom is boosted through electronic processing. We are vocal critics of high digital zooms because of how steeply they degrade the quality of a recorded image and it’s possible that Panasonic assumes anyone willing to shell out nearly $1000 for a camcorder is savvy enough to know this.

Focus (5.0)
Manual focus on the SDR-S150 is serviceable, and better than most manual focus adjustments on consumer camcorders, but it’s not great. When shooting in Manual Mode, engaging the manual focus control is easier and faster than any other manual control: you simply depress the Auto/Manual/Manual Focus switch on the lower back side of the camcorder, bringing up the MF icon on the LCD and -/+ indicators at the lower right corner. As with other manual controls, pressing left and right on the touch pad makes adjustments.

Unfortunately, Panasonic does not provide an on-screen numerical means of tracking your point of focus, so rack focus moves can’t be rehearsed accurately. There is not even a sliding scale to give you a rough idea of where you are in the focal scale – something that only Samsung offers on its consumer camcorders. Another drawback to manual focus on the SDR-S150 is that the adjustment moves so quickly that I inevitably overshot my mark. I literally couldn’t release the touch pad quickly enough to stop at the right focal point. You can work around this by tapping the pad repeatedly when you are close to your focal point, but it’s time-consuming. It’s an easily accessed control, but it’s far from perfect.

Exposure (Aperture) (6.0)
The exposure or iris control is located below white balance and shutter speed in the display of manual control options on the left side of the LCD. To reach this setting, you must press down twice on the touch pad from page 2/2 of the picture control menu. The SDR-S150 offers a wide range of iris settings, measured in f-stops that appear on-screen. Pressing left or right on the touch pad cycles through the settings, which range include Open, F2.0, F2.4, F2.8, F3.4, F4.0, F4.8, F5.6, F6.8, F8.0, F9.6, F11, F14, and F16. In between each marked stop is an intermediate step for a total of 25 possible iris settings - an enormous range on a consumer camcorder that is in keeping with Panasonic’s high degree of manual control. Moving through all these settings required tapping the navigation pad repeatedly, so moving from one end of the scale to the other can be tedious. While most consumer camcorders don’t even offer such a high degree of iris control, be prepared to spend some time adjusting your picture in Manual Mode.

The buttons and dials are very small, though they provide access to a lot of manual controls.

Some camcorders like the Canon DC40 (Review, Specs, $539.99) provide an Aperture Priority mode that allows you to select a given iris setting (such as F4.8) while the camcorder automatically adjusts other picture settings like gain and shutter speed to maintain that exposure. It’s not as precise as true iris control, but it is a user-friendly approach to exposure. Sony’s DCR-SR100 does have a manual exposure setting that brightens and darkens the picture but there is no numeric measure of exposure, only a sliding bar on the LCD screen.

Shutter Speed (7.0)
The SDR-S150’s shutter speed options offer a degree of flexibility that matches exposure with manual settings of: 1/60, 1/100, 1/120, 1/180, 1/250, 1/350, 1/500, 1/750, 1/1000, 1/1500, 1/2000, 1/3000, 1/4000, and 1/8000 of a second. It’s an unusually good range of shutter speed options. Adjustments are made using the touch pad which can be tedious as you cycle through the numerous shutter speeds offered.

The JVC GZ-MG77 (Review, Specs, $467.95) does the Panasonic one better, offering manual shutter speed options below 1/60 while the DC40 offers a shutter priority mode (See a description of Priority modes in the section above.) The DCR-SR100 offers no manual shutter speed controls.

White Balance (7.0)
White balance is the first item that appears when you enter the manual control menu from page 2/2. The SDR-S150 includes a slim list ot presets: Auto, Indoor, Outdoor, and Manual white balance. Although setting white balance manually is a simple process, it’s a little tricky given that I intuitively want to press the center of the touch pad since it does act as the selection button during navigation. Instead, you press the top of the touch pad and release it when the white balance icon stops flashing. Once you’ve got that kink worked out, it’s a fast and effective control.

Gain (7.0)
Manual gain control is a lamentably rare feature on consumer camcorders, and we’re glad to see it on the SDR-S150. The gain settings available are: 0dB, 3dB, 6dB, 9dB, 12dB, 15dB, and 18dB, and each marked setting is separated by an incremental step as well, for a total of 13 settings. As mentioned previously, you can only access manual gain settings once the aperture is set to open. Adjustments are made by the navigation pad.

The inclusion of gain control separates this camcorder from the Sony DCR-SR100, the Canon DC40 and the JVC GZ-MG77. While those camcorders do include an automatic gain control, they don’t provide the ability to control gain manually. Three cheers for Panasonic’s commitment to giving users a plethora of manual control options. Excellent manual controls are there if you need them – and if you don’t, Auto Mode will take reasonably good care of you.

Other Manual Control (0.0)
There are no other manual control features on the SDR-S150.