Design
The SD60 has a comfortable-to-grip design and feels well built. If your hands are large or you simply don't like the tubular design, there's the HDC-HS60, which features a hard disk enclosure on the right side, giving you a little extra edge to grip. Hard disk aside the HS60 and SD60 are technically the same device.
As such both lack an accessory shoe, so the top of the camcorder simply has a zoom switch and shutter button for still photos. Unusual for the price class, the SD60 includes an LED video light for shooting in dim environments. Though it's a nice touch, don't shine it directly at people, it may well blind them.
(Credit: Derek Fung/CNET Australia)
Panasonic provides a switch on the back of the camcorder to select among still, video and playback modes; it's much more convenient than having to go through the touchscreen. Next to the mode switch is the power connector. Along with the power button, a full complement of ports and connectors live in the LCD recess: proprietary video and mini-HDMI out, USB and an SD/SDHC/SDXC card slot.
Although everybody's doing it, we dislike the placement of the connectors inside the LCD well, since that means it's got to be open while you're attached to other devices, which is just kind of awkward.
Interface and features
On top of the camcorder, you can toggle between intelligent auto and manual via a button. In both modes, the relevant options become available via a fly-out set of icons on the touchscreen. Like high-end Panasonic camcorders, the SD60 also has manual shutter speed and iris controls.
The user interface is relatively straightforward and there are also nice iris controls for their class, switching from f-stops to decibel display when you cross the line where the optics are wide open, as well as providing an optional luminance-level readout.
(Credit: Derek Fung/CNET Australia)
In direct sunlight the flip-out 2.7-inch LCD screen is pretty usable, but the on-screen buttons are quite cramped, with the manual focus controls particularly difficult to operate. Given the low, low prices, the small, low-resolution LCD screen is understandable. The touchscreen interface is augmented by a row of membrane switches for record, zoom, menu, video light and delete underneath the touchscreen.
We like this approach, since touchscreen-based controls tend to introduce a slight operational delay; you have to wait for the preceding screen to time out, for example, before the menu or zoom controls appear. Although the zoom switches are a lot harder to get a feel for and operate than the zoom rocker atop the camcorder.
The SD60's most novel capability is face recognition, which seems to work similarly to the way it functions in the company's still cameras. You can register up to six faces in the camcorder's memory with names, priority (for AF and exposure) and a custom focus icon. The camera then identifies them during recording, but not playback.
Performance and image quality
One of the more-notable aspects of the SD60/HS60 siblings is performance; it's very good, not just for its class but in general. The zoom switch has a nice feel and it's pretty easy to maintain a steady rate with it. The autofocus is quite good, both fast and accurate; unlike many competitors, it almost always seemed to focus on the correct subject.
Like most camcorders this year, the SD60/HS60 twins also include a second optical image stabilisation (OIS) option: Power OIS, which is optimised for shooting while walking. We found standard and Power OIS reasonably but not exceptionally effective at the camcorder's maximum optical zoom of 25x, but that's typical. The battery lasts a long time, though it's also larger than most (and juts unbecomingly off the back of the camcorder) so it's not that big of a surprise.
(Credit: Derek Fung/CNET Australia)
Video quality isn't quite as impressive, but it's about average for the price class. Unlike high-end Panasonic camcorders, the SD60/HS60 uses a single CMOS image sensor instead of three and it shows.
You'll definitely want to switch from the default 13Mbps mode to the highest quality 17Mbps mode. It's visibly sharper, especially in scenes with lots of activity, with better shadow detail. But it's still soft, with mushy detail in general.
Exposures are good, though the video might not look saturated enough, especially if you're planning to edit it rather than just play back on a TV. The low-light video is very noisy, desaturated and soft. With the video light it's much better, but there are limits to situations where you can use the light.
The 640x480-pixel still photos actually look better than any of the other available resolutions — quite bright and sharp — but the interpolated 5-megapixel photos look over-processed.
Conclusion
Panasonic's duo of entry-level HD camcorders — the HDC-HS60 and SD60 — deliver a nice manual feature set and good performance, as well as solid video quality for their class.
If you're tossing up between the two models, we'd go for the cheaper memory card SD60 unless you need enough capacity to record all-day sessions. After all a hard drive full of video left in a camcorder is an accident waiting to happen.
Via CNET US
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