Panasonic VDR-D100 Camcorder Review

Picture & Manual Control
Automatic Control (5.0)
First, a word about the menus. There are two main menus: the manual control menu and the administrative menu. The administrative menu is accessed by hitting the Menu button on the rear of the body. Here, you will find controls for most things that don’t need to be readily at hand during recording – tape speed, screen displays, aspect ratio, digital zoom on/off, and other controls. The second menu is full of the things you want during shooting, the manual controls. Push the joystick in and a small circle pops up in the lower right of the screen. “1/2” appears in the center. This means that you are on page 1 of 2 pages in the manual control menu. On the first page, you’ll find Soft Skin mode, Fade, and Backlight compensation. If the camcorder is in manual mode, there’s a page 2 as well. Here you’ll find the meaty manual controls: white balance, shutter speed, aperture, and gain. More on those in the next section.

For the most part the auto mode worked consistently, but there were a few snags in the VDR-D100’s performance. When zooming from a wide angle with varying subject matter to a telephoto setting where black was the predominant tone, the camcorder usually needed to readjust levels and settings once the zoom depth was set. This made for a few seconds of tonal breathing before the camcorder settled on an appropriate setting. The zoom isn’t the quickest, which is too bad for those with faster shooting needs, but it tended to mask the focal adjustment needed following a zoom alteration.

Overall Manual Control (7.0)
In terms of manual control, the Panasonic VDR-D100 is equipped with a remarkable number of options compared to the Canon DC10 from last year or the 2006 Sony DCR-DVD105. The manual controls for the D100 allow control over zoom, aperture, focus, shutter speed, gain, and white balance - a very large amount of control for such a low priced camcorder. We of course, love manual control so we applaude Panasonic for this choice.

The manual control menu is entered by pressing the joystick twice so that a transparent screen is displayed on the left side center of the LCD. The controls for manual mode appear extensive, and once activated users will find that they provide even more opportunities than originally anticipated. For example, the gain scale has numerical settings for seven different settings. Once this scale is entered, users will find that there are intermediate steps which although not represented with a number are visually distinguishable. This same situation exists within the aperture scale, providing users with a plethora of manual settings for these two parameters. The preset shooting modes, accessible only in the Panasonic VDR-D100’s manual mode, allow the user to select between Sports, Portrait, Low light, Spotlight and Surf & Snow. These modes are located within the Basic submenu section of the administrative menu.

There are two menus provided when the joystick is pressed inward, which is a stark contrast to the six menu sections found with the 3 CCD MiniDV camcorders from Panasonic. The first menu contains information and controls over soft skin, fade, and backlight compensation. If the user presses the joystick a second time they will find themselves entered into the second menu. This second action isn’t intuitive and wasn’t something I found obvious, even after using the camcorder for extended periods of time. This is a definite drawback in terms of navigational ease of use for this camcorder.

The second menu will display +/- signs for the left and right arrows of the joystick, while hitting the down arrow prompts another menu which appears to the left of the joystick diagram. This manual control menu can only be cycled through by pushing down on the joystick. Pushing up does nothing, which some may find both irritating and surprising. Pushing down allow users to select among manual focus, white balance, shutter speed, aperture, and gain. Each submenu’s selection is altered by pressing the left and right arrows on the four-way control.

The manual controls found on the VDR-D100 are not unique to this camcorder, and consumers who love manual options will find that both the MiniDV and DVD camcorder lines by Panasonic are equally resplendent and should more than satisfy the manual control user. If a user is less comfortable with manual controls, the DVD line by Sony is a wiser choice. However, users won’t be able to begin introducing manual control features into their shooting if they are using a Sony camcorder.

Zoom (7.0)
The 30x optical zoom for the VDR-D100 is controlled by a sliding zoom toggle located on the top of the camcorder. This control is not the best design seen this year on consumer camcorders, though it is sadly common to all Panasonic consumer camcorders released so far in 2006. The sliding zoom toggle made it hard to engage the camcorder in multiple variable zoom speeds and it tended to limit the range to two speeds: fast and sloth-like. The control is also placed awkwardly for many users with larger hands; my index finger had a tendency to overshoot this feature and I found myself controlling the zoom often with the second joint on the index finger rather than the fingertip. Although it is possible to get slower zoom speeds one-handed with this camcorder, it was usually easier to employ the left hand in combination with the right to acquire those rates.

Zoom Power/Ratio (30.0)
The Panasonic VDR-D100 features an impressive 30x optical zoom lens which is controlled via a sliding zoom toggle on top of the camcorder. This optical zoom will provide users with an impressive zoom range, although using the Electronic Image Stabilization will be necessary when higher zoom levels are used. The important thing to note about electronic image stabilization is the slight reduction in resolution which occurs with this process. It isn’t overly noticeable with highly compressed video like that of DVD camcorders, but if image quality and full resolution potential is essential, it would be wise to turn the stabilization off and use a tripod.

Along with optical zoom, the VDR-D100 comes with digital zoom. The relationship between higher digital zoom levels and image quality is one of inverse proportions, so the higher the zoom level, the lower the image quality. This will be visually noticeable even with fairly low levels of digital zoom. The digital zoom can be capped at three different settings: off, 50x, and 1000x levels. Of course, we recomend turning off your digital zoom and ignoring it for the life of your camcorder.

Focus (5.0)
Unlike other manual controls which demand that the user press the joystick for every shift within their respective control ranges, the manual focus on the VDR-D100 allows the user to engage a sliding scale which quickly shifts focal depth with ease. The only setback to this control is the lack of a numerical or visual symbol to designate the level of focus used by the shooter. Instead, the user will need to rely on the +/- settings on the joystick diagram, which represent left and right arrows to cue them into which focal direction they are using. But the exceptionally quick speed of the manual focus will make settling the focal depth complicated. By the time the user reacted to the proper focal depth, the camcorder had already shot past it and was instead providing a final image which was out of focus. A smooth external focal control would permit users to snap the camcorder concisely into focus while operating against enough resistance and control to avoid over-shooting the depth.

Exposure (Aperture) (6.0)
Manual control over aperture is another one of the pleasing inclusions which set Panasonic apart. The aperture settings are accessed by pressing the joystick into the camcorder. This action will then display the joystick diagram menu, and one more press allows access to the manual controls. Once into the second menu, users are able to select between white balance, shutter speed, aperture, and gain control.

When the gain is set to 0dB, users may set the aperture to the following numerically designated settings: OPEN, f/2.0, f/2.4, f/2.8, f/3.4, f/4.0, f/4.8, f/5.6, f/6.8, f/8.0, f/9.6, f/11, f/14, f/16, and CLOSED. While there are these numerical listings for F-stops, users will find that individual numerical settings have a number of steps which may be visually recognized on the LCD. Between f/16 and closed, for example, the user will find that there are nine F-stops, although none are numerically displayed. Other stops show one or two degrees of separation between settings, but overall the total number of settings number far more than those found on similarly priced DVD camcorders by manufacturers like Canon.

Like the shutter speed (discussed below), the major problem with this manual control is not in the actual settings, but rather movement between them. To switch to a new F-stop, the user needs to push the joystick for each displayed and hidden F-stop level. This can necessitate pressing a joystick well over twenty times just to get from a setting in the f/16 section to a setting of f/9.6. If this was a sliding navigation like the focal control, then Panasonic would have a great overall manual control layout. As it is, the navigation of these controls impedes and hinders the otherwise great manual control set-up.

Shutter Speed (7.0)
The shutter speed can be controlled manually as well. The shutter control is located within the same manual control menu which provides control over white balance, aperture, gain, and focus and which is accessed by pressing the joystick twice. The shutter speeds for the VDR-D100 can be 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. The only problem with this manual control is that it unfortunately requires that the user press the joystick left or right each time a new shutter speed setting is selected. This means that moving from one end of the scale to the other will require the user to press the joystick thirteen times, which makes manual control over shutter speed anything but timely.

White Balance (7.0)
The white balance settings are located within the joystick menu and allow users to make adjustments to this feature when the camcorder is in manual mode. The white balance settings for the Panasonic VDR-D100 are: auto; indoor, which is suitable for incandescent and halogen lights; outdoor, which is suitable for clear skies; and finally, manual adjustment, which should make up for the shortcomings of both the preset and auto mode.

Manually setting the white balance is a hit or miss practice, relying in large part on the camcorder properly gauging a white tone in the light levels of the scene. The user manual warns that this feature may not be able to properly set the white balance if attempts are made in “lower light” conditions. But that being said, the camcorder struggled to set the white balance in a number of interior situations with fluorescent office lighting. This is a surprising disappointment. If any manual control ought to be responsive and accurate, it ought to be the white balance.

Gain (7.0)
Always charitable to the common good of camcorder owners, Panasonic has given users a manually controlled gain feature which rounds out a bevy of manual controls that outdo the competition in both the DVD and MiniDV camcorder markets at this price. The gain scale is located in the same menu as iris control and shutter speed when the camcorder is placed in manual mode. Numerically the gain scale has a range of 0 dB to 18 dB, with numerically demarcated steps of 0 dB, 3 dB, 6 dB, 9 dB, 12 dB, 15 dB, and 18 dB. There is one step located between each numerically represented gain level, which will provide users with even more precise levels of gain adjustment control. Like shutter speed and aperture adjustment, gain adjustment requires the user of the VDR-D100 to push the joystick for each step within the gain scale. Panasonic no doubt hopes you enjoy pushing the joystick over fifteen times to get from one end of the scale to the other.

Other Manual Control (0.0)
There are no other additional manual controls. However, with the number of manual controls found on this DVD camcorder, it would be definitely hard to find an equivalent DVD model on the market which is able to outclass it in this arena.