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Manual options include a few white-balance presets plus custom, shutter speed, and a sort of gain-priority mode--it allows you to boost the gain and automatically changes the aperture to compensate. You can also choose from a handful of exposure presets within the menus: sports, portrait, low-light, spotlight, and surf and snow.
Though it's fun and easy to shoot with, that's where the enjoyment stops. The most obvious problem I hit is its pitiful battery life. After fully charging the battery, I shot about 14 minutes of video and a handful of stills with a few flash shots, at which point it had dropped to about one-quarter of capacity. Plus, the focus is slow to lock. And once I got home, I couldn't help but be disappointed with the results. Videos never achieve true sharpness and display severe interlace artifacts, and weaknesses are exacerbated by poor auto white balance--the sensor is on the side of the camcorder--and inconsistent metering. For stills, throw in random flash exposures and a seriously overprocessed look that should settle the new math argument once and for all: three 800,000-pixel sensors never equals one 3-megapixel image.
If it were cheaper, I might forgive the SDR-S150 some of its flaws. I want to--its SD-based recording of MPEG-2 files is a compellingly attractive convenience. But until this convenience hits the right quality threshold, I recommend sticking with cheaper tape- and hard-disk-based models from Canon, Sony, and JVC.
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Where to buy
Panasonic SDR-S150:
$419.95 - $649.88
| store | price | in stock? | rating |
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$419.95 | Yes |
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Amazon.com
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$649.88 | See Site |
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