Panasonic SD5 - Early Review
Bottom Line: This convenient SD-card based camcorder offers excellent outdoor video quality, reasonable indoor quality, and compact design at a reasonable price.
Verdict: Recommended
After much debate and deliberation about which HD camcorder to purchase, I finally settled on the Panasonic HDC-SD5. Other considerations included the now discontinued HDC-SD1 from Panasonic and Canon’s hard-drive based HG10, and various Sony models. I ruled out the Sony models because they didn’t seem to have any advantage over the Panasonic and because the solid-state media models used Sony’s proprietary Memory Stick instead of the more popular SD card standard. Canon’s model reportedly does better in low light though is less vibrant than the Panasonic outdoors. This was tempting, but the HG10 was more expensive than the SD5 and I still prefer the idea of simply popping the SD card out and using a card reader instead of rummaging around for the right cable. Also, you can easily replace a bad SD card, but a hard drive crash could wipe out a large amount of data. Some have said that Panasonic’s earlier model, the SD1, might theoretically have better low light performance because of a larger sensor. I don’t know if this is true or not, but there are enough ergonomic improvements that the SD5 seemed to be worth it
I shot some video of my son in various lighting conditions using the 1080p setting. I then imported the video into iMovie ‘08 on the Mac. There had been some early reports that iMovie ‘08 was horizontally stretching video from the SD5 that was shot at full 1080p resolution (which had not be available on the earlier SD1). I’m happy to report that this is not a problem - all my video imported flawlessly.
One surprise is that, even though a transfer from digital media should theoretically be faster than that from a tape, it’s not with this camera. In fact, my video upload was SLOWER than real time - 20 minutes of video took roughly 30 minutes to upload, despite the fact that I have a relatively powerful quad-core (dual Core 2 Duo, 2.66 Ghz) Mac Pro. The reason is that iMovie converts the video from the highly compressed AVCHD format to a more compatible video format for editing. This conversion takes time. That said, it’s still more convenient to be able to shoot an arbitrary amount of video, upload it, and continue shooting without worrying about tape position, etc.. I should note that the SD-card reader built into my monitor didn’t work - I had to buy a new reader that was compatible with the SDHC format used by the large-capacity SD cards this camera needs.
Video quality was dramatically better than my old tape-based Sony DCR-TRV22, and this was particularly evident when I blew up the image to full screen on my 24″ monitor. Indoor shots in a reasonably well-lit environment looked brighter than with the old Sony, but video noise was clearly evident at a close viewing distance and the colors were a bit washed out. That said, the detail was impressive and the video was smooth. I have not yet noticed the AVCHD motion artifacts that some complain of, though some motion seemed a little less smooth than I might have imagined it could (this may be due to the camera auto-adjusting frame rates). I have not yet watched the video on full-size HDTV at a more typical viewing distance. It may be that the indoor noise is not as evident in this environment.
Outdoor video was simply outstanding. There was no noise, colors were bright, and the image detail was truly impressive. Audio was fine and was basically what i expected from this camera, though I did not shoot in extremely windy conditions. I did sometimes wish the camera could “zoom out” to a wider angle, but the compact size makes it easy to maneuver. The mechanics of use are well thought out, with the camera automatically turning on and off appropriately as you open or close the LCD.
I have not yet seen the video on my HDTV from a typical watching distance.
So to summarize, the camera is a huge leap in quality over my previous Sony DCR-TRV22, both in terms of video quality, convenience, and ergonomics. Outdoor video quality is excellent. Indoor video quality, while better than other cameras I have used, is clearly inferior to the outdoor quality. That said, those in the market for a solid-state camcorder would be will served with the Panasonic SD5.