Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I bought this camera for a specific purpose: Music. I go to a number of shows frequently and I'm in the process of building my own guitar instructional website. For these purposes, I wanted a camera with the following in mind:
1 - HD
2 - Record to Flash Media
With keeping a low budget in mind, I stumbled upon this camera fairly quickly (there aren't many that record to flash media, apparently - especially in this price range). If you want to read a more accurate range of opinions on this camera, visit the following Amazon page:
http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-HDC-SD9-Definition-Camcorder-Stabilized/dp/B0011FTKFY/ref=dp_cp_ob_p_title_1
That's the page I stumbled upon and has the most reviews. While there are many there that will give you numerous breakdowns, my review mainly consists of how this camera performs for my needs. All in all, the camera does a fantastic job. As others have noted, it's grainy in low-light conditions... but there are ways to combat that via settings in the camera. There are walk-throughs built into the camera that help you adjust settings for when it detects low lighting issues, bright light issues, etc. It's best if you sit at home and fiddle with the camera for a while before you get out and try to use it.
In regards to ideal lighting conditions, the camera does a FANTASTIC job. Its zoom functionality works magnificently with crisp, clear recordings at full zoom. As I noted previously, the main purpose of this camera was to record videos for my guitar instructional website. It catches all the action of speedy guitar solos both far away and zoomed in. Those are very important details to catch and it does a fantastic job capturing them! With the capability to record through various mic settings, I can maintain many of the details of my guitar tone that most cameras lose either through their inadequate mics or video encoding techniques.
As far as flash media goes, I wanted this option because I didn't want the added noise of a motor turning on and off for either an internal HDD or DVD recording medium. Likewise, I'm the perfect guitar player until the camera is on, so I knew I would be making tons of mistakes and outtakes in my recordings. Flash media is perfect for this, because I would have otherwise been blowing through DVD media (added cost).
This camera easily gets 5 stars from me for exceeding my expectations. For the price and functionality, I couldn't have gone with anything other than this that would've made me any happier. Sure, there might be a camera out there in this price range where the lense may be slightly better or whatever, but the video quality I get from this camcorder leaves me desiring absolutely nothing!
Oh, and don't buy this thing expecting it to be as good of a camera as it is a camcorder. It takes great pictures at 2MB, but camera and camcorder technologies are separate for a reason. If you know you're in the market for a *camcorder* that you might occasionally take pictures with (not a *camera* that you might occasionally record video with), I absolutely recommend this product!
Oh, and one last thing: If you upload videos to YouTube, you can now upload AVCHD content with no conversion needed! This is a major plus and just one more sign of AVCHD being adopted in mainstream capacity.
-Stephen
Click Here to see more reviews about: Panasonic HDC-SD9 AVCHD 3CCD Flash Memory High Definition Camcorder with 10x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom w/8 GB SD Card
pNew! Full-High Definition 3CCD Camcorder with 1920x1080 Pixel Recording, Advanced Optical Image Stabilizer, Leica Lens, 10x Optical Zoom, Face Detection and 5.1 Surround Sound, Records to SD Memory Card./p
