Panasonic HDC-HS100

The basics

The Panasonic HDC-SD100EBK is a full HD compact camcorder that comes with a 3MOS sensor for more vibrant colours, an iA/ Leica Decomar lens, an SDHC memory card slot, and the Manual ring which gives users more freedom in controlling and manipulating image production. The camcorder comes with five key settings and Face Detection capabilities.

The good

Welcome to the future. Panasonic’s flagship HD camcorder offers cutting edge Full HD (1920x1080 resolution) footage so sharp you risk slicing your eyeballs on its ultra-precise colours. A massive 60GB hard drive soaks up over eight hours of full quality flicks, together with dozens of manual exposure modes and tweaks that let you stamp your mark on your movies. Sounds complicated? It could have been without the flexible Manual Ring that fronts the 12x Leica zoom and lets you zip through settings in moments, or the helpful menu explanations that pop up on the tip-top 2.7-inch screen.

The bad

Does anyone know what those ‘gaffers’ and ‘best boys’ you see on movie credits actually do? You’d better find out because this almost faultless pro-level camera is aching to be used on a real film set. If we do have to whinge, we’d like the photo flash a touch further from the focus ring and crisper low light movies, but honestly that’s only because we’re annoyed Tom Cruise got a bigger trailer than us.

The bottom line

Panasonic serves up a 60GB feast in a size zero shell. The manual ring keeps the features right at your fingertips, and Full HD video sparkles too.