Sanyo VPC-HD1 Camcorder Review

Picture & Manual Control
Automatic Control (6.5)
The Xacti VPC-HD1 offers no “auto” or “easy” mode that a novice would be able to find without consulting the manual. "P" mode, in the manual exposure settings portion of the menu, allows the camcorder to automatically adjust the exposure levels, controlling aperture, shutter speed, and gain(called ISO). Accessing P mode, however, requires a detailed explanation of the menu structure, discussed later in this review.

Some of the control settings, like focus, have more than one mode. These are not manual controls, but they allow you to have the camcorder make smarter automatic adjustments. The focus can be set for Super macro (for close-ups), 5-Point finder (an evaluative mode that looks at the whole picture), or Spot Focus, which creates a small target in the center of the LCD and makes its location the point of focus. Unlike the "spot focus" on most camcorders, however, this target cannot be moved; it's really more of a center-weight focus, deceptively named.

Cavity underneath the OLED.

Automatic exposure can also be adjusted to Multi-section light measuring (an evaluative mode), Center-weighted, and Spot metering. The difference between these last two settings is a bit confusing. The Center-weighted mode, according to the manual, “is modulated for the entire image after measuring form mostly the center area.” Spot metering, on the other hand, allows you to “compose the picture and capture the image after first modulating the light only at the center spot of the monitor.” (Sadly, the whole manual reads as impenetrably.) We found little difference between the two, except that the Spot metering is a more extreme version of the Center-weight mode.

Scene modes, known as auto exposure modes on some camcorders, also appear on the Xacti. These are exposure settings tailored to specific lighting environments, with modes including Sports, Portrait, Landscape, NightView, Fireworks, and Lamp. The names are intuitive, indicating pretty clearly when each mode should be used.

The white balance can be set automatically, adjusted manually, or preset. Preset white balances are indicated only by icons, but the meanings are clear enough: sunny, overcast, fluorescent lighting, and incandescent lighting.

The last automatic control options in the main menu are the filter options, which include a Cosmetic filter (in which “skin tones are enhanced in close-up shots,” though the manual doesn't state which skin tones are applicable), a Monochrome filter (for black-and-white), and Sepia.

Finally, the option menu offers Image Quality. This includes four settings: Normal, Vivid (which increases color saturation, though we could not imagine ever needing to do this with the HD1) Soft (which decreases sharpness), and Soft Vivid (which both increases saturation and decreases sharpness).

Overall Manual Control (4.5)
Maneuvering through the manual controls on the Sanyo VPC-HD1 is not a simple matter. The first mode of doing so involves the menu, which is divided into two areas: the Shooting Setting Screen and the Option screen.

Pushing the Menu button, located on the back of the body, will bring up the Shooting Screen menu. This menu is split into two pages, "Basic Settings" and "Advanced Settings," but the nomenclature seems more or less random.

"Basic Settings" provides options for changing the video and still quality, the Scene modes (described in the section above), the filters, and the timer for still photography. Also on this page are the Manual Exposure settings, which include auto, aperture priority, shutter speed priority, and full manual modes.

"Advanced Settings" covers image stabilization, focus controls, auto focus methods, auto exposure methods, white balance settings, and ISO settings. The ISO setting is perhaps one of the most confusing controls, and gets its own explanation in the Gain section below.

Users toggle through the menu with a joystick located on the rear of the body. While we normally lionize the joystick as the best possible navigation control on consumer camcorders, we have to make an exception in this case. The joystick on the Sanyo VPC-HD1 has terrible sensitivity problems. Almost half the time I attempted to push the joystick inwards (which functions as an “enter” button),it interpreted the movement as left, right, up, or down.

In addition to navigating the menus, the joystick has other functions in recording mode. Pushing the joystick up will lock the exposure, while pushing it to the right brings up an exposure compensation scale at the bottom of the screen, which gives you a range of +/- 1.8. Pushing the joystick down shifts the focus control between automatic, manual (a scale at the bottom of the screen), and Super macro. Pushing it to the left allows you to access the exposure controls, which appear in the lower left of the screen.

Depending on which mode you are in (aperture priority, shutter priority, auto, and full manual), the exposure factors you can alter will be limited: the Natural Density filter can only be switched on and off in full manual mode.

The exposure controls – shutter speed and aperture – are severely confusing, primarily because the HD1 doesn't distinguish logically between movie mode and still mode. For instance, the shutter speed mode for stills can be as slow as 4 seconds, obviously impossible for video, where the manual indicates that the minimum shutter speed is 1/30. However, when you toggle through the controls on screen, the range does go down to 4 seconds,  so you really have no idea what the shutter speed will be.

Finally, and most unbelievably, there is no live view of your changes. That's right: a camcorder released in 2006 fails to display exposure adjustments until after you start recording. You don't like the picture at 1/60 with an aperture of f/3.5? Well, what would it look like if you changed it to f/4.7? On any other camcorder, simply making this change while in standy mode would give you an idea of what the image would look like. On this camcorder, it is not so. You hit record, look at the image, make an adjustment, hit record again, and re-evaluate. This is an absurd system, particularly considering that even DSLR cameras began incorporating this technology in 2006. A manufacturer should be ashamed to produce a camcorder which lacks this kind of basic functionality.

Zoom (5.0)
The zoom control, a rather tight sliding switch, is located on the camcorder's upper back portion. While this is a natural position for the thumb, pushing and pulling the switch has a tendency to pitch the whole body forward and backward, thus upsetting the frame. While it's hard to think of an alternative location, this is no excuse for the poor control.

Zoom extends to 10x optically and 100x digitally. The optical zooming is a bit jerky and has a tendency to leap forward when all you want is a gentle nudge. The digital zoom speeds forward very quickly. We are grateful, however, for a numerical indicator that tells you exactly where in the zoom you are, down to a tenth decimal place during optical zoom.

Zoom Power/Ratio (10.0)
The Sanyo Xacti HD1 has an optical zoom level of 10x with a maximum digital zoom level of 100x. Digital zoom can be engaged by entering the options menu and opening the digital zoom sub-menu. It should be noted that the higher the digital zoom level, the lower the image quality and the more the camcorder will display hand shake, noise, and indecipherable image content. The camcorder has two separate image stabilization settings, one intended for still photos and one for video clips, which should be useful when engaging higher zoom levels. The image stabilization settings are located within the second page of the shooting menu.

Focus (5.75)
Manual focus is engaged by pushing down on the joystick. A scale, with a flower at one end and a mountain at the other, appears at the bottom of the screen. We are pleased to see that Sanyo was gracious enough to offer a numerical indication of the user's place in the focal range: 1 cm to 40m to infinity. Being able to hold the joystick in one direction to move the cursor, rather than nudging it each time to make adjustments, is also a welcome feature. However, the shift from one focal length to another is distinctly jerky, as if each adjustment is clicking into place. Don’t expect to make smooth, Hollywood-style rack focus adjustments with this camcorder. All in all, though, the HD1 boasts a pretty good focus control.

Exposure (Aperture) (5.0)
The aperture can be adjusted when the exposure is set to “M” (for full manual mode) or “A” (for aperture priority). This is found in the Screen Settings menu, page 1. The aperture range is relatively small – f/3.6, f/4.1, f/4.8, f/5.7, and f/6.9--compared to Panasonic camcorders, which offer f/1.8 to f/14. We really want to give them credit for giving true F stop readings: Panasonic and some JVCs are the only other manufacturers who do this. However, the small range makes us less excited.

In full manual mode, the aperture and shutter speed can be adjusted independently. In aperture priority mode, you can set the aperture alone, and the camcorder will automatically compensate with shutter controls. Exposure correction, sometimes called compensation, also adjusts both the aperture and shutter speed in small, +/- 1.8, increments when you desire a little extra control.  

Overall, the exposure control suffers most from the bad joystick control.

Shutter Speed (6.5)
The shutter speed on the Sanyo Xacti ranges from 1/500, 1/250, 1/125, 1/100, 1/60, and 1/30 in video mode, and continues down to 1/15, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 1 second, 2 seconds, and 4 seconds in still mode. This is found in the Screen Settings menu, page 1. If this was a normal camcorder, with a clear distinction between video and still mode, differentiating between the two sets of ranges would be easy.  Video and still mode are mashed together, though, producing some confusing controls. For example, the onscreen shutter control display will allow you to go all the way down to 4 seconds and then hit “record video,” never knowing that the video could not possibly capture at that shutter speed and that it bottomed out several steps away at 1/30. Aside from this confusion, this is a good range of shutter speed controls.

White Balance (7.0)
The white balance is set by entering the white balance options section in the Shooting Screen Menu, page 2, and selecting the eyedropper icon, then pointing it at a white surface and pushing the joystick in. The screen will go black, sometimes for up to 2 seconds, before the balance is adjusted. After the wait, though, the color accuracy looks good.

There are also preset white balances for sunny and overcast outdoor settings, fluorescent lighting, and incandescent lighting. None of them are terribly effective. We believe that the first manual control new users should master is generally the white balance. It makes a world of difference in image quality.

Gain (5.0)
Gain is a digital boost to the signal, which increases sensitivity (good for low light situations) but likewise increases the noise within that signal. The Sanyo VPC-HD1 does offer gain control, though in a measurement with which tmany video users may be unfamiliar. Rather than the standard dB levels, the Xacti uses ISO ratings for gain. We think this hints at the fact that the VPC-HD1 may be a still camera faking it as a camcorder, instead of the other way around. Since we're CamcorderInfo.com, and not DigitalCameraInfo.com (although we do love them), we prefer the latter. 

Both ISO and dB measure the same thing when dealing with digital products; the confusion with the HD1 doesn't really stem from the different terms. The real confusion lies in the bizarre system that the camcorder uses for conversion between video and still mode. The ISO choices displayed are auto, ISO 50, ISO 100, ISO 200, and ISO 400, regardless of whether you’re in still or video mode. In video mode, however, the manual indicates that ISO 50 actually corresponds to ISO 200, and so forth for all video ISOs. When the display says ISO 100, the ISO is actually ISO 400. ISO 200 is ISO 800 in video, and ISO 400 is actually ISO 1600. The relationship is the same; each setting is twice the sensitivity of the previous step. But a simple distinction between video mode and still mode would have cleared all this up.

Other Manual Control (0.0)
There is no other manual control on this camcorder.