Panasonic HDC SD90 Camcorder - Black

This camcorder has probably the best video quality in it's price range. It all begins with a great lens.

The 21x optical zoom ratio is amazing. Usually, in a consumer camera, a zoom this large has soft edges or chromatic abberation in the corners when zoomed in or out. Most of the lenses in this price range exhibit high geometric distortion at the widest angle. I'm happy to say this lens has almost none of the above. It isn't perfect, but it's hard to find it's faults unless you really look hard. The images are always sharp and clean, corner to corner. Of course, the 1500x digital zoom is best left disabled. No camera ever made could produce a good image at this insane zoom ratio.

The image sharpness is very good. There's a slight amount of halo effect around sharp edges due to a slight amount of over processing in the electronics, but very little. Only a video professional would spot this, and it can be eliminated by reducing the sharpness control on the TV monitor.

Colors are accurate and not overly saturated. This means grass looks normal green, and not glowing neon green like some camcorders. The automatic setting allows the color to track accurately across mostly any lighting condition.

Exposure is very accurate with nearly no over exposure of bright objects. Small, bright objects don't overly reduce the brightness of the entire image. Contrast is not as high as it could have been, but again, this lends itself to a natural looking image as the human eye sees it. There are manual adjustments for focus, white balance, exposure and shutter speed.

Sound quality is great for voices, but the bottom end is a little thin for music, presumably to reduce the effects of wind noise. There is a mike input and manual settings for the audio, and the AGC can be turned off if you like. Rare features on a camcorder this inexpensive. There's no headphone jack, but there is a level meter when an external mike is connected.

There are two video modes not usually found in most camcorders. 1080-60p greatly improves the video quality, but you can not import these files into Final Cut Pro or many other editing systems. An iFrame mode produces a 540-30p image. This is easy to handle for most editing systems and is just slightly above DVD quality, but the 28 meg data rate is far beyond the 5 to 17 meg rates of the middle four settings for 1080-80i video. You'll get much better images at either of the middle four settings than the iFrame mode, and you'll save a lot of disk space.

This camcorder is beyond the quality you may ever ever need for home video, unless you make Blu-Ray disks of everything you shoot. When the lighting is good, this camcorder approaches the quality of entry level prosumer camcorders. Only it's diminutive size would prevent a professional from using this to record a wedding video. The image quality would surely be good enough.

Admittedly this is the first digital video I have owned but wow what a device.
The hybrid stabilization system is unbelievable, even at maximum zoom the picture is rock steady.
Picture quality is excellent and the camera itself is very easy to use.
The automatic focus is incredibly fast, and the face recognition actually works. I added my daughter in to the camera and recorded her dance concert In low light the picture was still quite sharp and she was in focus at all times, even though I lost her myself a couple of times whilst recording.
Cannot rate this Camcorder highly enough!

Awesome Video camera.
I have a lot of experiance with cameras and video cameras 30n years worth. I bought an open box Panasonic HD 90 for less than $300 with shipping and could not have faoound anything better than this. The only down side on the camera is the picture taking is just 5 meg pix, decent but not worth bragging about. Everything else about the camera is amazing.
Focussing even in low light is even better than some still camera's, zoom in close from 20 foot making it look like I was 12 inches away, and it was a clear video even with just one yard light on outside. The software that comes with the package worked great for me even on an eight year old Dell Desk top with XP service pack 3 on it. My biggest worry before buying the Video Camera was how am I going to burn DVDs? No Problem and the program works better than other Video editing ones that I have. I even have Vholdr or Contour Helmet cam software and it does not work as slick as Panasonic's software does. I only rate the ease of use a 4.5 because it tok me awhile to figure out how to set the date. The date was already set by somebody else (Open Box)
I had to finally flip a switch on the camera to let me do it.
Normally first time users it will let you set the date but once it is set it took me 5 minutes to figure out why it would not let me change the date.
Sound is exactly what you hear crisp and clear, in sterio.
I just love this camera, YOU WILL TOO.

Advantages:
all the advantages of SD60 to apply this, plus the filters can be screwed to whom it is necessary, remove progressive scan, an opportunity to put the shoe (included) and well it what you want, you can shoot 3D film, if, in addition to purchase price as a good converter 3d camera
+) small size and ease of use

Disadvantages:
sometimes, but less than the SD60 in the room loses its color on the machine when changing the plan, with different lighting (on manual mode everything is OK.) On the street everything is OK.

(-) photos bad quality :*(

I have owned a few camcorders over the years and they always get better. I needed to upgrade my Canon that used VHSC tapes. This one is no exception and in fact it was a giant leap from a Canon of only about 4 years ago.

The camera and it features are very easy to use. And there are lots of them. That is a problem with alot of technology
today - hard to use and complicated.

The image stabilization, quick focus, low light tolerance, clarity of lens, zoom and stabilization at full zoom, reviewing shots, single 5MB pictures, sound - all is excellent. I bought it for the ability to plug a wireless Lavalier mic into it. Very good quality. I highly recommend this camera.

the only down side that I have found is getting the video and shots off the memory card. A few times I took the card out, copied several videos off and put it back in the camera and then the camera constantly complained that there was a problem with some images it found - some disappeared on the camera. I use the software now to pull the videos off - its a bit of a pain ( I hate using proprietary programs for stuff like this - pet peve) but it does always work and is easy to do .

If you need a video camera that is versatile, high quality in this range - you cant go wrong with this one.