PANASONIC HDCвЂ‘SD40 MANUAL

It's easy to use, nice zoom range, still camera mode can't compete with a real still camera but that shouldn't come as a big surprise. I decided it is acceptable for my use but my 10 year old camcorder did better in low light.Д®verything else about the camcorder is about what I expected.

PANASONIC HDCвЂ‘SD40 MANUAL

This isn't a big deal to me now that I use manual mode (because of my white balance complaint) but if I did want to use auto mode there are times you need to have the wind cut filter off or the sound will get totally messed up (like when an audience is clapping along to a song). The wind cut filter can't be turned off in auto mode.

Manual mode is a bit of a hassle but worth it to avoid the white balance swings the automatic setting produces. I've given up on auto white balance and now use manual white balance. Within a single lighting environment and a single shot the auto white balance will vary from a little too yellow, to a little too blue to just right. The automatic white balance isn't the greatest. Things that are a bit of a disappointment:

You can delete portions of clips, add transitions between clips, add text to a clip (first clip only) and build a menu screen. It allows you to arrange your clips into a video and write it to a standard DVD in standard definition, to a standard DVD in high definition or to a blu-ray disc. The software that comes with it is certainly good enough for me and is easy to use. The battery lasts longer than it is suppose to (manual says 50 minutes but I get double that). The video picture quality is impressive. The image stabilization feature is very very good. I don't have experience with any other new camcorders so I can't say this one is better or worse than any of the other new models. Without going into too much detail I'll just note the things I found much better than I expected and the couple things I am a little disappointed in. This is a replacement for my 10 year old Panasonic camcorder so the first thing I noticed is this thing is SMALL, but they are all pretty small compared to my old camcorder.

Panasonic hdcвЂ‘sd40