Panasonic HDC-SD60K SD Based Hi-Def Camcorder with 35X Intelligent Zoom (Black)
by Panasonic
Our Price: $638.69
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Category: Digital Camera
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Digital Photo Product Details
Manufacturer: PanasonicModel: HDC-SD60K
Color: Black
Product features:
- 2-11/16" widescreen LCD
- 25X optical zoom lens (digital zoom to 1500X)
- High-definition video resolution: 1920 x 1080
- Optical image stabilization
- Face recognition tracks your subject within the frame (up to 6 registered subjects)
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Panasonic HDC-SD60K SD Based Hi-Def Camcorder with 35X Intelligent Zoom (Black)
Customer Review: All-around camera
Summary: 5 Stars
I've had this camera for a couple of months now, and I am pleasantly surprised by it. I've never owned an HD camera, and this is my first new camera purchase in about 15 years or so. I've been using my phone camera for most pictures or borrowing my wife or daughter's digital still camera for the occasional need. This camera is many times better than my Droid phone camera mainly because of the versatility. That is, the phone camera isn't great for video, or zoom and slow motion playback or low light situations. I scrubbed Amazon for quite a while before purchasing, reading all the reviews I could find on other cameras looking in this price range down to about 1/2 the price of this camera. Although this one didn't have many reviews, and wasn't cheap, it was well-liked by those who purchased it, and now I know why. It has a bunch of advanced features which I haven't used but I will detail the ones I have used.
The camera fits in my pocket reasonably comfortably, it's slightly larger than my wallet. It's a touch wider than my hand when I hold it but comfortably fits in the palm of my hand. The controls are easy to use once you get used to them. There are 3 modes, playback, video and still. The still pictures are quite impressive. I sold a car on eBay and the pictures were huge and very crisp on my computer. They were amongst the largest pictures on eBay after I posted them, larger than most of the car dealers selling anyway. I believe it's 4.3 megapixel, but not all megapixels are created the same. I think this 4.3 quality is better than a 4 megapixel camera phone.
The video quality is exceptional. Oddly, on playback using my TV this camera seems to have better video quality than most of the HD programming I watch on Dish Network. I'm not sure how that can be possible, but it is better. I can see every hair on my daughter's head and every blade of grass when I watch a playback. During video recording, there is a box that appears around faces, apparently it's recognizing and focusing on those faces.
I've used this camera in several challenging situations and found it to be very good. I've used it low light for example, and it has a built-in light that comes on automatically. We were at a restaurant recently which was dark, and I recorded video for a few seconds and the image was somewhat dark, but the light automatically came on for both the video mode and still picture mode (flashed). The people whom you are recording might find the light annoying (in video mode as it stays on), but as the cameraman the playback image looks great - you can turn off the light manually, easily.
The zoom is pretty incredible. I was recently at Brewer's baseball game, from the 1st base line I was able to zoom in on the center fielder to fill the frame, he was about 500-600 ft away from where I was sitting. Zooming out, I turned the camera back on myself and my son for a nice wide angle shot at arms length. During playback on my TV, I could even see the thin stripes on the center fielder's shirt. The stabilization (anti-shake) mode (OIS) allowed me to see the players on playback with no noticeable shaking or movement on my part. With the OIS turned off, I could not hold the camera steady enough for the long range zoom shots. You don't need a tripod to steady the camera but I've used a tripod and it works well with this camera.
The battery life is pretty good about 3 hours of use or so playback and at least an hour or more in record mode reduce. I'm thinking about getting the larger battery as although it might heavier, it would be nice to have the extra battery life and a spare battery.
I also recorded my golf swing using the high-speed record mode. Although I couldn't get the super-slow motion playback that you see on TV golf, but I was able to stop the club head fairly well for my purposes anyway. I could see my driver shaft was bending quite a bit which was a surprise. I was also able to see the club shaft angle fairly well during playback. The controls for playback in slow motion are a little clumsy but not too bad once you get used to it (press the pause button, then hold down the FF or Rewind buttons).
I plan to use the camera for recording my daughter's lacrosse games this school year. I expect from what I've seen that it will work well for that purpose as well.
The biggest complaint that I have is that still pictures have a problem with red-eye when using the flash. Even when the person isn't looking directly at the camera, the center of the eyes are red. It's an annoying problem that I can't seem to fix. Other than that I've been pretty happy with the camera's usability and quality.
Accessories:
The camera comes with a detailed user-manual, a charger, 2 connector cables, and a CD disk containing software for IBM-compatible computers. However, just plugging it into my Mac computer worked fine with without any additional software.
The two cables included: a USB cable for connecting to your computer, and cable to attach to your TV for playback. The cable for playback is one of those 6-connector types (red, green blue, video as well as yellow (video), and red/white audio). Unfortunately, it's only about 5' long. Although the video quality was quite good with the included cable, I went for the additional HDMI mini-cable as I wanted to see the quality difference - which frankly is hard for me to tell the difference, but the accessory cable below is much longer (nearly 10' instead of the 5' cable that comes with the camera) therefore I recommend it.
I purchased a cable (Panasonic Mini HDMI Cable, 9.8 Ft) and a memory card (SanDisk Ultra 32GB SDHC Card (SDSDRH-032G-A11) - both of which I recommend. The memory card was a bit more than I wanted to pay, but works quite well. There may be be cheaper memory cards available that work as well, not sure.
cable:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001A5LW1U/ref=oss_product
memory card:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00194101O/ref=oss_product)
I would recommend purchasing a case, which I've yet to do, but will add that to the review once I find a good one.
More Panasonic HDC-SD60K SD Based Hi-Def Camcorder with 35X Intelligent Zoom (Black) reviews:
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Description of Panasonic HDC-SD60K SD Based Hi-Def Camcorder with 35X Intelligent Zoom (Black)
The SD60 Series features a 25x optical zoom and an Intelligent Zoom function that goes all the way up to 35x. When using Intelligent Zoom, Intelligent Resolution technology lets you shoot at high zoom rates while preserving the image resolution. You get sharp images of highly detailed objects without the blurry edges. Plus, POWER O.I.S. suppresses even slight hand-shake, which is a must for extreme zooming, because of its high susceptibility to hand-shake.Camcorders
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