The HDC-SD20 is Panasonic’s entry line of Full HD digital camcorders. It’s a pretty new release too; several stores including MSColor, Courts and Best Denki, haven’t received stock for it yet. And Amazon.com lists the item for sale only from 15 April 2009 onwards too.
The IT Show Panasonic brochure stated that the item was for sale though, so after a few more calls, I found that Hougang Mall’s Harvey Norman had the camcorder, so picked it up on the Sunday afternoon.
The package at SGD1199 isn’t too bad: B & H lists the coming item at USD599.95 or SGD930. But the IT Show package included also a Panasonic camera bag and their lightweight tripod – both of which are throwaway items that I didn’t really need or want. What was very nice, however, was the included the extra higher capacity VW-VBG130 battery, which Amazon also sells for about SGD100, and the salesperson threw in a Kingston 8GB card, which saved me having to buy one more on my own.
Built-in vs SD Memory: The SD20 actually has a companion brother: the TM20, which apparently is identical except for that the latter also comes with built-in 16 GB memory. Both were within budget, but while the built-in memory is always nice to have, it would have also meant that data files would need to be transferred via USB cable. I prefer ejecting SD cards and using the built-in SD slots in all three notebooks to transfer video, so while the additional SGD100 for the TM20 wasn’t a lot, I went for the SD20 without the built-in memory option.
Color: The unit I picked up was a metallic sort of dark red color too. Very nice! It comes in three colors actually: black, silver, and this shade of red.
Physical features: The two older camcorders made use of lens caps. A couple of times, we’d power up the camcorders, press the REC button and realize the caps are still covering the lens element LOL. The SD20 uses a lens cover instead which retracts automatically, just like most modern compact cameras do.
Weight: The camcorder’s also very light too at just 400g, almost to the point where it could cause handheld stability issues LOL. Besides being Tripod Girl on our vacations, Ling was also the Camcorderess. She never found the old Sony DCR-H28 heavy even though it weighs perhaps around 600g, so I’m pretty sure she’ll like using the new SD20 even more.
Noise: One thing about mini-DV camcorders too is the amount of noise it can make, what with all the whirling and mechanical sounds that emanate from the cassette tape chamber. Try starting up a mini-DV camcorder and you’ll know what I mean LOL. Fortunately, the SD20 has no such issues too, and the optical zoom works silently too.
Continued in the next post.:)
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