Simply Amazing, But AVCHD Is Still Foreign To Most PCs | Panasonic HDC-SD9 AVCHD 3CCD Flash Memory High...

Pro's & Con's | Panasonic HDC-SD9 AVCHD 3CCD Flash Memory High Definition Camcorder with 10x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom

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	• Panasonic HDC-SD9 AVCHD 3CCD Flash Memory High Definition Camcorder with 10x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom Panasonic Panasonic average customer review:based on 47 reviews view larger image
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Needs Improvement.

Pros:
Price.
Lightweight.
Compact and easy to use.
Good High level light pictures.
SD Card is located nicely and easy to access.
Sound Quality is great.

Cons:
Extremely! poor low light video quality. I mean POOR, Crappy, decrepid, lame, sub-par, not good etc, etc.
Bundled Software is crap.
Have to open the viewer to remove the battery.
Poor Still Picture Quality.

I almost returned this camera due to its poor low light performance. Not what I would expect from something that carries the "HD" symbol. I got this camera to document our new babies life and you have to know that things like family get togethers and X-mas are not going to be outdoors or even during the day time hours sometimes. The picture quality starts to degrade right just before dusk. Lots of grain in faces and video noise when the lights are even slightly low. During the day or with direct light on the subject...no problem. When I first got the camera it was almost dark, so out of the box, I was really pissed at how bad the videos turned out. Only after recording the next day did I even get close to true HD looking videos.

If you plan on any type of low light level recording, stay way away from this camera.

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Simply Amazing, But AVCHD Is Still Foreign To Most PCs

The camera is a technical marvel. I've been wanting an HD camera ever since they came out. The HDC-SD9 has not dissapointed me. Five years ago you'd have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to get video this good. Now the downside.

The files are kept in a complex file structure on the memory drive. I wasn't able to copy the MTS files from the /STREAM folder and play them on my T61 Thinkpad. I tried downloading various CODECs and stuff, but wasn't succesfull. I finally loaded the HD Writer software from Panasonic and that worked. But when I exported to MPEG the result was lousy.

I haven't tried editing software with it yet, but I know this much. It will be another two to three years before this format plays in all the media players. But I can't see this format failing so I'll be glad I have my kids in HD later on.

Bottom line is that the technology and price are right, but file-format ease of use is still a few years away. You'll love making videos, but you'll hate post-production.

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Pro's & Con's

Pros
Extremely small (fits in the front pocket of my shorts)
Awesome picture quality outside with good light.
3CCD
Great zoom
The best image stabilizer I've ever used on a video camera.
Really like that is uses memory cards rather than tape or hard drives.

Cons'
Low light performance is not good.
LCD is great but if you wear sunglasses it goes completely black.
I didn't think I needed a viewfinder but if you're inside somewhere dark you have no way to record without distracting the people around you.
Needs a good manual focus ring not a menu driven manual focus that's hard to use.
Poor low light performance.
There is a flash on the front of the camera that should be replaced with a led for the video camera portion.
AVCHD requires lots of computer horse power to edit.

Not a lot of software to view the .mts files with but Nero Vision 4 for Nero 8 Ultra works fine.

Definitely a great camcorder for outside daytime use but not great of dark environments.

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Great Little Camera

I love this camera. It slips into a pocket and is amazing value. The HD shots are stunning in the right light and conditions. The two main downsides are well known - the auto low light is not great and the fiddly little control that you must move to navigate to change settings and view pictures is irritating. But overall it is a great value package - not least now that you can get 16GB cards at an economic price (eg Transend). Interestingly, I used a cheap 8GB Sandisk catergory 2 card with no problems even though the spec says you need category 4 minimum.

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Very Satisfied with the HDC-SD9

I'm very satisfied with this camcorder. It's small, the video is crisp and clear and I like the features. I can get anywhere from 1 to a little over 2 hours on a 4 GB sdhc card depending on the video quality settings I use and about 90 minutes on a fully charged battery.

Some people have complained about their hand blocking the microphones but mine seem to fit just fine. My hands are not exactly tiny and they fit well.

The only downside of this camcorder is the low light video can be quite bad.

You can view video samples for this camcorder on my website at [...]

Eric

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high-definition SD card camcorder * records high-definition AVCHD video (at 1080i resolution) to SD memory cards (not included) * one 8-gigabyte SDHC card holds approximately 1 to 3 hours of high-definition footage, depending on the video setting * 3 separate CCD sensors for red, green, and blue *