Dr Gadget - Gadget Shop - Panasonic HDC-SD5 High Definiton SD Card Camcorder - Black

	List Price: Our Price: £498.95 Your Save: £ ( % ) Availability: Manufacturer: Panasonic
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Batteries Included: 0 Binding: Electronics Brand: Panasonic EAN: 5025232447817 Is Fragile: 0 Label: Panasonic Manufacturer: Panasonic Model: HDC-SD5EG-K Publisher: Panasonic Release Date: 2007-09-01 Studio: Panasonic
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Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: Great camcorder but be ready for it! Comment: This is less of a review and more of a warning! I bought this on a whim because Amazon offered a great price on it, and it looks and feels fantastic. I have barely used it since it was delivered, and this is for one reason. I was not ready for it. This is a HD camcorder, it will record video of exceptionally high quality, and you WILL need a high end pc in order to process and view the video. My PC is high end, but almost three years old (a little before High definition products were released to consumers), and it struggles to keep up. I have no doubt that HD looks amazing, but it will look less than impressive on a computer that cannot handle it. Fast processor, graphics card, and at least 2 gigs of memory are required...oh, and plenty of hard disk space! And remember, if you want to view Full HD in all it's glory, a screen with a native resolution of 1920 x 1080. The first time I transfered a short recording to my pc, the image looked blurry at times, and grainy in low light. I was a little disappointed. However, when I re-encoded the video to DVD quality, the quality actually improved tenfold! The reason for this is because my pc can quite easily handle DVD, but it cannot handle HD nearly as well. Results on a HD plasma screen will be astounding...but until I get one, the camcorder will probably stay in the box! Customer Rating: Summary: Good, but bits missing Comment: It is a great camera, but some features have been dropped that may bite you later. Key things missing, no mic input. If you every want to record a speech, wedding, or am dram play, then you CANNOT DO IT WITH THIS Camera, as you can't get the sound in from the speaker or the stage. With older cameras, you merely needed a cheap (circa £20) remote mike, and you could record lectures, training am-dram etc. The camera also misses a headphone jack, so makes listening to playback a pain, and not something you can easily do on the plane back from your holiday etc. If you don't need those, then great camera. Customer Rating: Summary: HD in your pocket Comment: I read a host of reviews before purchasing this camcorder, and was nearly swayed towards its SONY counterpart. - So glad that I stuck to my guns. This is a really great consumer level machine. The first thing to note is the size, which you won't appreciate fully till it is nestling neatly in the palm of your hand - It is really, really small - Small enough to fit in a jacket pocket. These seems to have been an awful lot of nonsense written about this type of camcorder, and how "Difficult" it is to save/archive native content from it, when in fact it is really easy. The other thing that put me off initially was the quoted price of SD cards for it. However a quick look right here on Amazon should allay your fears - an 8Mb grade 6 card as recommended, is now less than £20, but in actual fact it will happily run using any standard SD card, with no appreciable loss - Anyway for those of you with a MAC, rest assured that you can just plug it in and iMOVIE or FINAL CUT EXPRESS/PRO will instantly recognise it and be ready to import its contents. If you just want to backup the card content directly for later use, then when it mounts just use right click and "duplicate" the drive. Then use Disk Utility to "create a disk image from file/folder" - DONE !! When you later open the disk image, iMovie will treat it just as if the camera has been attached. And multiple disk images can be burned to one disk, so its a pretty economical way to keep your original material. The image quality even on the lowest resolution (you get a choice of three) is absolutely beautiful, the colours are natural and even the audio capture is very nice for a stereo mounted mic (Dolby Digital). In summary, I'm extremely pleased with this little gem. Customer Rating: Summary: An ideal point and shoot camera but beware compatability Comment: I am not an expert and this is my first camcorder. However I decided to go for it because when compared with others in the flesh it is so much smaller, comfortable and better designed. Having used it now I am very pleased indeed and do not regret the purchase - it is just as I have said above and I find it so convenient to have in my pocket to use as and when. The quality of image seems good and the antishake is excellent. However the issue is the compatability. We have a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 computer with 512 Mb Ram with Windows XP home and it cant cope with even the normal definition images. I havent dare try it with the HD. As we havent got a DVD writer on the PC we link it to our one year old Panasonic DVD Hard Drive recorder - but note that that cant cope with high definition either. The only way we can play back HD images is direct from the camera itself through a HDMI cable in the back of our Panasonic HD TV. I contacted Panansonic to find out if I would be able to play back using the recommended Panasonic DVD burner (£150)but they said "No" - you have to buy a blue ray DVD player - £350. I have therefore opted to buy some extra Transcend SDHC 8GB class 6 cards (£35) to archive some HD recordings of extra special subjects and to use the normal setting for regular recording and for transferring to the hard drive recorder and then to DVD's to archive. Nevertheless it is a great camera and it is only a matter of time before the technology is replicated in DVD players at a more realistic price.....or I buy a better computer. Go for it, but investigate what you need to archive and play back first. You can always ring up Panasonic uk for advice. Note:-The format for recording and playing back high definition images is AVCHD - which is not compatable with conventional DVD format.(from page 8 of the instruction booklet!) Hope this is helpful. Customer Rating: Summary: Great quality footage - but be ready for the HD tax... Comment: Super little camera that is extremely portable and shoots great quality footage. However, the fifth star is denied for two little reasons: 1. the plastic flap covering the ports is a bit flimsy and 2. there is no included mac software so I was forced to buy the clunky iLife 08 before I could use it properly. Also, the "HD tax" in the title of this review refers to the 10x expansion of footage once imported into iMovie. Yes, a full 8GB SD card's worth of footage can gobble up to 80GB of hard drive space when editing - nothing to do with the camera though. You don't get all that quality for nothing right? More Reviews
Editorial Reviews: The ultra-compact HDC-SD5EG-K camcorder uses an Advanced O.I.S. optical stabiliser and 3CCD image processing technology to produce crisp images that are full of colour and detail. The HDC-SD5EG-K is equipped with a 10x optical zoom and a Leica Dicomar lens for capturing footage in high definition with Dolby Digital sound. The 2.7" LCD screen is extremely comfortable to view and makes it easy to control the camcorder as you film.