Panasonic HDC-HS100

Hello, I'm Rich Trenholm of CNET UK, and this is the Panasonic HDC-HS100. It's a hybrid camcorder with a 60GB hard disk drive, recording around eight hours of 1920x1080 high definition video. Let's take the tour. It's a feature-packed model so there's plenty to see, starting with buttons for the intelligent auto mode, which does all the thinking for you, and pre-record function, which captures the action before you hit record, so you don't miss out on anything. Here's the flip-out, 2.7-inch 16:9 screen. Under the screen we've got the connections and controls, including this four-way joystick. There's plenty of movement in it, but it still feels just a little flat to me. You've also got your menu button, delete button and a button for toggling image stabilisation on and off. Beneath those are the connections, where you'll find component and AV/audio out, and a little hatch for SD and SDHC cards, which you can use to transfer footage from the . Closing the screen puts the camera into stand-by, while we have a look for the HDMI socket... Hmm, it's a long shot, but let's try... ah. Yes, the HDMI and USB connections are under the battery, so you have to take the battery out when transferring or watching your footage, which may be a very good idea but feels a little weird. Moving on, there's an electronic viewfinder, which is reasonably crisp. Up top is the shutter button for capturing stills, and the zoom rocker. Now this isn't the only way to zoom, because at the front there's a manual lens ring. You can either use this to zoom in up to 12x, or use it to manually focus. When you're focussing manually, the screen magnifies the centre of the frame so you can make fine adjustments. You've also got a mic input and lamp, and a cold shoe, although the cover doesn't really get out of the way properly so you might have a problem fitting some accessories. Video is recorded in AVCHD format, and It uses three CMOS sensors, one each for red, green and blue, the idea being to capture as much colour information as possible for a richer image. That's why they've called it '3MOS'. Eh? Yeah. I'm Rich Trenholm of CNET UK, and this is the Panasonic HDC-HS100