Panasonic SDR-S15 Flash Memory Camcorder With SD Card Slot – Black
Posted by Notcot on May 13, 2010 in Photography |
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This is so small and light it’s great to carry around all the time “just in case”.
DO NOT be misled by other erroneous reviews, this little baby is uttery brilliant as it records in a number of modes: XP (top quality which, when used with an 8GB SD card will give you one and a half hours recording), SP, LP and EP. Hoewever, if quality is what you require then avoid LP and EP modes as the deterioration in quality is substantial.
Set this up to use in automatic mode, set face recognition on, set anti-shake on and that’s all you’ll ever need. I use this semi professionally and it’s been a breeze with the quality of a level more than expected of a non High Def. camera.
Rating: 5 / 5
I have a collection of Panasonic mini DV camcorders that I have been using for recording footage for a local newspaper website, although good quality little machines the real time video transfer is a pain in the bum. So I saw this little beauty and having a massive amount of SD cards from cameras knocking about thought it would be a decent investment. It is a brilliant camcorder, sound and picture capture are really good, battery life is good for such a small unit. The automatic settings on exposure and capture work really well, never needed to alter them of ‘auto’. There are a couple of problems though, the first is, it is very small and I have quite large hands so although its well laid out it isn’t the easiest to use (for me) and it has a manual lens cover which is opened by a small switch on the side of the lens, not awkward but a self opening one would have been easier. The other problem is that i now can’t get it off my wife who loves it for the size and quality. I would recommend this if you need a good quality video camera, very recommended and simply great to drag and drop files from. I use Adobe Premiere Elements to edit the videos and it works like a charm.
Rating: 5 / 5
This unit is quite small, it will fit into a shirt-pocket, albeit a little bulky. It is well-made in a black sparkly plastic with some texturing on the back where your hand goes, this would have been better in a rubberised finish.
It doesn’t have the traditional camcorder hand-strap, instead it has a camera type lanyard, luckily with a sliding bar to tighten to your wrist.
To hold the camcorder you make a fist with your right hand and the zoom buttons fall under your first and second fingers and your thumb falls on the start-stop button on the back. To hold at waist height there is another stop-start button at the front of the camcorder for your first finger and the zoom can operate with your thumb. I’m left-handed and I still found it easy to use.
Panasonic don’t supply an SD card and their current (May 2009) offer of a free 16MB card with this camcorder was returned to me with a letter saying Amazon purchases aren’t eligible.
A 4GB card will hold 50 minutes of video at the highest quality; needs to be Class 2 or better. The battery lasts around 40 to 45 minutes and takes 2 and a bit hours to charge. The battery was the same as my Panasonic Lumix FX33 camera so I could charge it in the camera charger. The camcorder is supplied with a power-supply to charge the battery in the camcorder.
The 10X zoom is more than adequate for most people’s needs and is totally silent in operation. There is a lens cap operated by a switch and a video light.
In use I found the LCD viewfinder viewable in bright sunlight and the image quality is impressive considering this is a standard definition, DVD quality, camcorder. The camcorder has Panasonic’s iA mode which has face recognition which works impressively well to focus on your subject. I was surprised how good the sound was, really crystal clear. In dim conditions the grain does come up a bit but not unduly so.
The camcorder has 16:9 and 4:3 modes. It takes stills but as expected these aren’t brilliant.
The supplied software is simple but has all the basic needs.
For the money this is an impressive camcorder and I would recommend it.
Rating: 4 / 5
I have been very happy with this camcorder. I wanted something to replace my old Sony DVD camcorder, which shots good clear footage, but the DVDs only hold about 30mins and unless you buy DVD-RW, can only be used once. Plus because it has a laser writing onto the DVD, you have to be careful with jolts and it is not pocketable – this camcorder is!
I would recommend this camcorder to anyone who does not want to get a HD camcorder and wants something small and light that will capture memories.
The battery life is good about 1 hour 15 mins and I’d suggest getting more than one SD HC card, going no smaller than 8Gb (this will fit about 1 hour of footage at high quality mode)
Rating: 4 / 5
First of all I have to say thankyou to the other reviewers! I have searced high and low for a camcorder that is small, has decent features, is easy to use and has pretty good quality film, and the above reviewers swayed me to make this decision despite some reviews from expert sites saying this unit is only at best adaquate.
The first thing that you realise is how small it is… it fits into my old digital camera case! I bought a 16GB card off this site for less than £20 and also bought 2 extra batteries for under a tenner (make sure you search for batteries that fit this unit!) All seem to work fine.
The software loaded up easily, I went for a walk with my dog, played around with shooting footage, (fade in/out of shot, pre shooting for nature shots etc and zooming in on some cows miles away
) Got back loaded the footage to my computer via the software and compiled the footage to make a short film, which isnt bad for someone who’s never done anything like that before! With titles, transitions between shots etc! All now ready to burn to DVD, although you do need DVD RW disks (I only have CD RW at moment so cant comment on copying to disk) The software is great and easy if you only want basic but I want to try lots more so will look around for some software I can use easily enough but maybe create some decent DVDs of hols etc with music.
The AUTO i function means that if you just want to point and shoot its brilliant, but in manual it also allows you to select scenes, ie Sports, Snow/Beach, and fiddle with everything to your hearts content. Something Im looking forward to testing in future hols.
The playback quality is excelent on my 32″ TV but only adaquate on my widescreen PC. The zoom is excelent and really steady and quiet. My only gripe so far is that you can only charge batteries while they are in the unit… so now I have three batteries I cant charge one as I use another
Once again thanks to the other reviewers…. Im a bit sceptical as a person but you were all right, its great… and to me size does matter!
Rating: 4 / 5