MaximumPC 2007 H

66 MAXIMUMPC HOLIDAY 2007

HD CAMCORDERS

FINALLY ARRIVE

PANASONIC HDC-SD1

More than just a pretty face

The HDC-SD1 was the smallest and

lightest camcorder we tested, and the

easiest one to use. It offers few buttons

to confuse you and no viewfi nder, but

wait a minute—that’s a frickin’ 3-inch

viewscreen, which seems huge com-

pared to the others’ 2.7-inchers. And

it’s bright enough to show you its crispy

video even on the sunniest of days.

The zoom lever gives you just the right

amount of speed right when you need

it, and the navigational joystick is right

there under your thumb. Its optical image

stabilization holds those shots rock-solid

unless you zoom all the way to 12x.

The most kick-ass characteristic of

this cam is its awesome resolution, the

sharpest of all the cameras we tested. But

its low-light performance was a bit grainy,

and its room-lit video revealed a few

subtle noisy spots—nothing bad enough

to fret over, however. In bright light, its

autofocus impressed us with its sprightly

response. Its colors were nicely saturated

with auto white balance, but the camera

seemed to set the video slightly on the

blue side. Colors appeared more realistic

when we did a manual white balance by

digging into the menus.

And to think, 40 minutes of crisp,

clean video fi ts onto that tiny 4GB SDHC

fl ash memory card at the camera’s high-

est quality setting. The best news of all

is the rock-bottom street price—we’ve

seen this bauble selling for just north of

$800. Remarkable.

The puny Panny is shaped and sized like a

slimmed-down Red Bull can.

Less is more with that selector dial in

the back and a start/stop button smartly

placed in its center.

PANASONIC HDC-SD1

$1,300, http://www.panasonic.com

9

MAXIMUMPC

KICKASS

SPECS

VIDEO SIGNAL

RECORDING

FORMAT/MEDIUM/

HIGHEST DATA RATE

IMAGE SENSOR

LENS^

SIZE/WEIGHT

W/BATTERY

VIEWSCREEN

1080i

AVCHD (MPEG-4 H.264)/Flash

drive/13Mbps

Three 1/4” CCDs

Leica Dicomar f/1.8-f/2.8,

12x optical zoom

2.9” x 2.7” x 5.6”/17.28oz

3” screen (250K pixels), no

optical viewfi nder

Pretty as a Picture

For comparison, we captured a still from video taken with each camera using the same lighting, white balance, and focus

The Canon HV20’s HDV format uses the

less-compressed HDV MPEG-2 codec, giv-

ing its output less blockiness and noise.

JVC’s G7-HD7’s images had a noticeably

lower resolution than all the others. Yes,

this is as good as the focus gets, folks.

Panasonic’s HDC-SX5 had the best resolu-

tion of the cameras we tested.

Sony’s HDR-SR7

delivered the

second-high-

est resolution of

the cameras we

tested.

The sharpness of

Panasonic’s HDC-SD1

bested all others.