Panasonic Sets Price and Date for SDR-S150

by David Kender
Published on Aug 21, 2006 10:00 AM



August 21, 2006 - An MSRP of $999 has been announced by Panasonic for the SDR-S150 camcorder, the follow-up to the SD card-based SDR-S100. The SDR-S150 was originally announced in early June. No significant changes have been made since then. The camcorder ships with a 2GB SD card, and is compatible with 4GB SDHC cards.

Like it’s predecessor, the SDR-S150 features three-chip imager system. The imagers measure 1/6” each, with 800k gross pixels (540K effective pixels in 16:9, 640K effective pixels in 4:3; 540K effective pixels in 16:9 still mode, 710K effective pixels in 4:3 still mode.) The Leica Dicomar lens has a 10x optical zoom, with an focal range of 3.0mm – 30.0mm and F1.8 – 2.8. The 2.8” LCD monitor offers a relatively high resolution of 210K.

The SDR-S150 records video directly to SD card in the MPEG-2 format, with a maximum bit rate of 10Mbps. DVD camcorder, which also capture in the MPEG-2 format, have a current ceiling of 8.5Mbps, sometimes rounded up to 9Mbps. The included 2GB card will hold approximately 25 minutes of the highest quality video, and 100 minutes of the lowest. A 4GB SDHC card (also known as SD 2.0) will hold twice that data.

Other features of the SDR-S150 include a still flash, optical image stabilization, and MotionSD Studio editing software.

The Panasonic SDR-S150 ships in September for an MSRP of $999.95.