panasonic SDR-S150

Panasonic SDR-S150

PRICE £600.00

FEATURES

* Three CCDs.
* 10x optical zoom.
* 3.1MP photos.
* 2.8-inch LCD.
* SD/SDHC card slot.
* 50x100x83mm.
* 290g.

This improves on its predecessor in a number of ways. The optical image stabiliser is superb, and it uses SDHC Flash memory cards, an updated version of SD which promises sizes up to 16GB. Well, one day, anyway; for now it comes with a 2GB card, which is good for about 25mins of SuperFine quality video, 50 mins of Fine and 1hour 40 of Long Play.


It sticks with the trusty pistol design, although if you’re someone with tiny hands – Tom Cruise, say, or a lady, its girth can make it tricky to grip. It’s nowhere near as thin as Sanyo’s Xacti.


Mind you, the Xacti is nowhere near as good as this. Three CCDs means fantastic colour quality and this camcorder’s performance is second to none in its class. Outdoor footage taken in good light looks brilliantly colourful, although it’s less fun in low light.


Getting the footage off the cam is easy. The clumsy-but-simple editing software is largely redundant since we’re dealing with MPEG2 – the video file equivalent of Ready Salted. Just change the file extension to .mpg and you can play them in Windows Media Player. After that you can edit, burn, or stick them on YouTube.


Hi-Def camcorders may be widely considered the gold standard, but standard-def camcorders still have an awful lot to offer. For filming people hurting themselves or spectacle-theft, in order to have a laugh on YouTube, you won’t do much better than this.

CamcorderInfo takes a look at a very nice tapeless digital camcorder in their Panasonic SDR-S150 review. The Panasonic S150 was announced back in June, and has just started shipping. It features three 1/6″ CCDs, 10x optical zoom, and the capability to record high-quality video to SD card. A 2GB card is included, but at the highest quality this only gets you 25 minutes of footage. Fortunately this camcorder also supports the new SDHC cards, which will be capable of capacities far greater than 2GB. So how did the SDR-S150 fare when put to the test?

The video quality of the Panasonic SDR-S150 was not unlike its predecessor: very good. The noise levels are low, and colors are not oversaturated, which can be very common in any consumer digital camcorder. The picture was quite sharp.

The optical image stabilization worked quite well, actually beating out most other camcorders, according to CCInfo. On the other hand, low light performance was not very good, and other similar camcorders on the market performed much better.

In conclusion, we love this camcorder, if you can accept the handling issues inherent in an ultra-compact and the almost assured necessity of purchasing an additional SD card. It’s a tough call, but the quality just about makes it worth it.