As far as the build is concerned, the user will be at instant ease with Panasonic SDR-H101 Camcorder. First, because it is compact and easy to hold with a secured belt; second, it has a shiny black body with very intelligently placed buttons and knobs. The LCD display rotates 360 degree and has a joystick with two keys for steering through. It has a battery clipped to the back, which charges with the device itself. Above the battery lays a switch to select between record and playback mode. Processing is pretty fast and the camcorder takes a second or two to switch on/off.
The zoom lever can zoom till 78X and also functions as sound control during video playback. The on/off button is placed in the inside panel and has a card slot next to it. To record, you have to manually open the lens cover. The LED white light, above it, stays on while recording, and is particularly useful at night. To start recording, there is a button adjacent to the battery. To click images, there is a separate button at the top beside the zoom lever.
There are two modes for recording auto and manual. Auto is pretty simple, as it expects nothing from you except proper framing. It has an interesting feature the auto focus. Place the focus icon on the subject, press the auto-focus button, it will become yellow and active, and will follow the subject. The manual mode has some interesting options like pre-record, where recording starts three seconds before the recording button is pushed. It has an option to call off wind generated noise, when shooting from a moving vehicle, by selecting the wind cancellation option.
The device boasts of an amazing 78X optical zoom capability with 3500 digital zoom. With 78X you can shoot distantly placed objects with ease, however, as the zoom exceed beyond 50X it starts shaking and at 78X it is almost impossible to shoot a decent video without a tripod. Here comes in the OIS option. Just press the OIS button and the shaking is greatly minimised. We recorded videos in full 78X zoom with minimal of shaking.
Images can be clicked at the same settings as in video recording. The recorded videos, when transferred in a laptop, looked very decent and agreeable. One can easily make films like paranormal activity or LSD in 16:9 aspect ratio. In the playback option you can go back to the recorded images and videos, edit it if required. The camera has an in-built memory of 80GB and takes external SD/SDHC cards as well. Its battery lasted a good three hours at one go.
It has 78x optical zoom, which no other camcorder is offering till now. It is light and has 80GB HDD. The wind noise cancellation option is a major highlight too. However, considering that it?s an SD camcorder 25k is a bit too much, especially when an HD camcorder can be had for 20k, like Samsung HMX-H200. Manual lens cover is a limitation, as in case one forgot to close it, it can accumulate dust easily. The camcorder is USB2.0 equipped and comes with A/V cable, user manual, USB cable, power cable, Videocon Suite 3.5 CD, AC adaptor.
? CyberMedia www.LD2.in
Mail:talkLD@cybermedia.co.in