Panasonic VDR-D230 Camcorder Reviewby Michael PerlmanPublished on Dec 10, 2007 7:40 AM 
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Still Features (4.75)
The still features on the Panasonic VDR-D230 (Review, Specs, $0.00) are exceptionally weak. Sure, the manual control set is great. You have access to same aperture, shutter speed, gain, and focus that you do in video mode. You also have the Soft Skin mode, Backlight Compensation, and Scene Mode. Undermining all these benefits, however, is the fact that the VDR-D230 only shoots at 640 x 480, approximately 0.3 megapixels. Just for comparison, the average point and shoot digital still camera is approximately 7 megapixels, more than twenty-three times the resolution of the VDR-D230. You can also take stills in the 16:9 aspect ratio at an even smaller 640 x 360, or 0.2 megapixels. Each of these still sizes can be saved in two qualities, high and low.
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Main Menu (Photo Mode) |
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| Basic | Scene Mode, Picture Quality, Aspect, Clock Set |
| Advanced | OIS, Guide Lines, Shutter Effect |
| Setup | Display, Date/Time, Date Format, Format Card, Power Save, Beep Sound, LCD Set, EVF Set, Initial Set, Demo Mode |
| Language | English, Francais, Espanol |
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Main Menu (Photo Playback Mode) |
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| Pict. Setup | DPOF Set, Format Card |
| Setup | Display, LCD Set, EVF Set, Power Save, TV Aspect |
| Language | English, Francais, Espanol |
Still Performance (7.5)
The still performance of the Panasonic VDR-D230 was tested by shooting a GretagMacBeth Color Checker chart at a bright, even light, then ran the stills through Imatest imaging software to determine color accuracy, noise, and saturation. At best, the VDR-D230 was able to produce a color error of 8.0, a score similar to comparative Panasonics and Canons, and higher than comparative Sonys. This score was the primary factor in the high performance score. The noise measured 0.955%, a decent score. The saturation measured 96.42%. The
In order to get this best score, we set the aperture to f/2.4 and the shutter to 1/60th.
Outside of the lab, we can assure you that the stills from the VDR-D230 are laughable compared to a point-and-shoot camera. Yes, you can discern shapes and tells reds from reds and blues from blues, but at 640 x 480, it’s hardly worth it except as documentary evidence that you saw Bigfoot.
Still Resolution (1.76)
The still resolution was tested by shooting an Applied Image ISO 12233 resolution chart at an even, bright light, then running the stills through Imatest imaging software. At best, the Panasonic VDR-D230 produced a horizontal resolution of 359.2 lien widths per picture height (lw/ph) – with a very high clipping of 7.94% and an undersharpening of 4.48% - and a vertical resolution of 340.8 lw/ph – with clipping of 4.31% and an oversharpening of 2.36%.
Clipping occurs when Imatest determines that certain pixels are either blown out or too dark and contain no useful information. In this case, a large percentage of the black pixels, those along the edge of a slanted black rectangle, had bottomed out – all red, green, and blue channels registered zero. A clipping this high can skew the resolution score, but there was no way to avoid a high clipping percentage, though we use a variety of manual adjustments on the camcorder. This score is based on the settings that produced the lowest clipping: an aperture of f/2.4 and a shutter of 1/60th.