[py6km]

I was recently ogling the camcorders in my local John Lewis, and spotted the rather spiffing looking Panasonic HD range. I took a shine to the SD200, but did not take a shine to the £899 price tag in John Lewis

I had a bit of a dig around and found it for £614 on Amazon yesterday (and directly from Amazon too). When I finally got around to thinking about ordering today, they were all gone The next best price was Hughes Direct, an Amazon marketplace seller, at £599. Not knowing anything about them, I decided to check and see if they have a bricks and mortar store -- seems so (in Ipswich), and they seem like a good place by all accounts. I decided it wouldn't do any harm checking their website, and found the same camcorder for £549 !! Job done.

I wonder how many poor sods spent 900 quid on one from JL. Don't get me wrong, I love JL, and they do a great job of price matching etc, but they seem to have got it spectacularly wrong on this occasion. I did consider getting them to price match this, but decided not to harm their bottom line that much!

All I need to do now is to figure out how to use Premiere Pro (or iMovie). I've got Toast with the HD/Blu-Ray plugin, and was surprised to see that you can use it to put some HD content on a normal DVD - makes sense to me now. Presumably I need to get Premiere Pro to render my edited footage to a high-res format (quicktime file?) to drag and drop in Toast for burning?

[maxipax]

Hi,
I am also thinking of getting one of these so would be really interested in what you think to it when you get going!!!
all the best Max

[Dutch]

Originally Posted by py6km

I had a bit of a dig around and found it for £614 on Amazon yesterday (and directly from Amazon too). When I finally got around to thinking about ordering today, they were all gone The next best price was Hughes Direct, an Amazon marketplace seller, at £599. Not knowing anything about them, I decided to check and see if they have a bricks and mortar store -- seems so (in Ipswich), and they seem like a good place by all accounts. I decided it wouldn't do any harm checking their website, and found the same camcorder for £549 !! Job done.

That's a good deal you got there. I'm also in the market for a new camcorder after my HV20 was relieved of my possession here in Rio. I will be interested in hearing how you get on with your new SD200.

Steve

[py6km]

Seemed like a keen price, but as with all these kind of things, it'll carry on going down and probably be half that in 6 months!

It's due to arrive on Tuesday, so will post back as soon as I've had a chance to play. I've been playing with Premiere Pro CS4 today, as well as Encore and After Effects. My MacBook Pro was actually struggling a little, so it'll be interesting to see how it copes with AVCHD straight out of the cam

[py6km]

Well, it arrived today as promised by Hughes, and I'm very pleased with it. I messed up ordering an SDHC card at the same time (still in the post), so plugged a SanDisk Ultra II 4GB card in (15Mb/s), and it works perfectly - I have it in the highest quality, and it appears to be giving me a readout suggesting that I'll get just over an hours footage, which is fine for me at the moment. At that rate, the 8GB SDHC Class 6 I ordered will be the only card I ever need for it.

I've added some HD footage to iMovie '09, and it imported about 4 minutes worth in 5-6 minutes (and I imported it as it was shot, so that's not downsized as iMovie appears to default to).

First impressions of playing with that imported footage in iMovie are that I will have no problems at all playing around with larger file sizes - it's all very snappy and responsive. I'm very impressed with the latest version of iMovie actually - it's very intuitive, and clever (the stabilisation for example is a nice touch).

I've not tried playing with footage in Premiere Pro yet. I'm not even sure I'll need to either given the impressive nature of iMovie. I've yet to use iDVD, which I'd really prefer over Toast due to the integration, but I can't see at the moment if it will burn 1080i/p or if it only goes to 720.

Anyway, will post more thoughts on the cam, or if you have specific questions, fire away !

[A n d r e w]

Originally Posted by py6km

I've yet to use iDVD, which I'd really prefer over Toast due to the integration, but I can't see at the moment if it will burn 1080i/p or if it only goes to 720.

iDVD will burn standard definition DVDs only. You can drag a 1280x720 or 1920x1080 movie into iDVD, but it will "downscale" it when rendering for the burn.

[py6km]

Thanks for the info. Hmmm, that's a pain, as the themes in iDVD look really good (and the ones in Toast look rubbish!). Is Toast with the HD plug-in my only option really for burning hi-def content to a normal DVD then (which will presumably require me to export from iMovie as a quicktime movie @ 1080 [i/p?])?

[Dutch]

Thanks for the initial impressions of your SD200. How accurate is the colour reproduction, and what is the sound quality from the on-board mic?

Steve

[JonStatt]

From what I can see the main difference between the SD200 and TM300, are the viewfinder, cold shoe, mic and headphone sockets and the built-in memory. This makes the SD200 verison 50g lighter.

Other than that I had been assuming it gives exactly the same picture as the 300 series as it has the same sensor and lens from what I can see. Are there any other differences?

[py6km]

Originally Posted by Dutch

Thanks for the initial impressions of your SD200. How accurate is the colour reproduction, and what is the sound quality from the on-board mic?

Steve

I've not really tested or used it properly yet, but my first impressions are that colour reproduction is very good, if not excellent, and is as true to real as you could probably want (this is coming from someone who uses prof. photography equipment, so I'm quite fussy). I've certainly not noticed any odd colour effects coming out of the files I've uploaded so far.

The sound quality appears to be excellent. I shot some stuff in our back garden, and it picked up birds chirping in the background that I hadn't even noticed until I played it back on my computer. It seems to be able to pick up direction pretty well too, which is just bonkers considering the placement and number of on-board mics.

I doubt that it could compare to having a camcorder with a good external mic attached, but for one with no mic input, and only one mic on-board (on the top incidentally) it's pretty impressive. It's been quite still of late, so I'm not sure how it fares in windy conditions (although there is a wind noise reduction option [on by default], which probably helps a bit).

[py6km]

Originally Posted by JonStatt

From what I can see the main difference between the SD200 and TM300, are the viewfinder, cold shoe, mic and headphone sockets and the built-in memory. This makes the SD200 verison 50g lighter.

Other than that I had been assuming it gives exactly the same picture as the 300 series as it has the same sensor and lens from what I can see. Are there any other differences?

No, I think that's right - the picture quality is the same since they have the same 'stuff' inside and the same lens. I might have liked a VF, but wasn't bothered about the other stuff, as I'll only use it in a very amateur fashion anyway. I'd question whether the difference in price is worth those additions though - if I were going to spend upwards of 800 quid, I think that it would have opened up a whole new range of machines to look at (Canon etc).

It is light, but sturdy and feels very well made - no creaks or gaps etc, and all the buttons and dials etc feel positive and good. The touch screen menu system works very well - it's intuitive, and easy, so not a disadvantage in my view.

[maxipax]

Hi,
Thank you for your udates, I think I am going to take the plunge this week!. Would you recommend Hughes Direct, and also have you filmed indoors in a bit dimmer room yet, if so is it ok..
Many thanks
all the best
max

[py6km]

Originally Posted by maxipax

Hi,
Thank you for your udates, I think I am going to take the plunge this week!. Would you recommend Hughes Direct, and also have you filmed indoors in a bit dimmer room yet, if so is it ok..
Many thanks
all the best
max

I was a little concerned ordering from them because the price was so much cheaper than anywhere else. However, I called them up first to check stock, and was happy enough after this that they are a proper shop. Delivery was quick, and on time (you select a day). I'd check stock first to be safe, but yes, they're good all things considered. Not used inside in dim light yet, but I don't expect great results from that to be honest given the sensor size(s).