Panasonic HDC-SD1 review

While there's a logic to combining them -- both allow you to increase or decrease the exposure -- each produces different side effects when changed. The shutter and iris settings also function more like priority modes than manual modes. You can't change them independently.

Other shooting features include backlight compensation, five scene program modes, MagicPix night mode (which drops the shutter speed below 1/60), a very nice tele-macro mode, soft-skin mode, zebra stripes, an audio wind filter and zoom microphone.

The SD1 also offers Auto Ground-Directional Standby (AGS) -- a fancy way of saying that it goes into standby when you hold the camcorder upside down.

Overall, we liked the SD1's video quality. In good light, video usually looks nice and sharp. The colours are bright and pleasing, the exposure generally hits the mark and there's little noise in low-light shots. The 1,920x1,080-pixel still photos look good printed up to 200x115mm (8x4.5-inches). We wouldn't bump any HD-resolution shots beyond letter size.

Played back on an HDTV, videos and stills look great. Up close in a video editor, however, they lose a bit of their lustre. Interlacing and interpolation artefacts appear, thanks to the undersized 520,000-pixel sensors (effective resolution) Panasonic uses.

Image quality is also inextricably entwined with performance, which isn't so hot. The autofocus is a tad too slow to keep up with unpredictable subjects, such as squirrels. And the automatic white balance seems confused most of the time, usually producing overly cool tones. On random occasions, the video seemed to get particularly soft and the autofocus simply didn't lock. The optical stabiliser works well, though.

Conclusion
A fine if not stellar camcorder, the Panasonic HDC-SD1 scrapes a respectable score thanks to solid AVCHD video. Footage is fun to watch, but somewhat less fun to shoot and not at all fun to edit.

Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Shannon Doubleday