Panasonic HDC-SD10 camcorder

At £400 Panasonic’s SD10 is outside the realm of cheaper pocket camcorders, but the quality of the video it produces, at full 1080p HD resolution, is more impressive than those models.

The camera is very light and is easy to carry using a single hand wrapped around the body and under the strap. That leaves the user’s thumb to operate the recording control and the zoom lever on the top of the camera.

Opening the screen doesn’t turn the camera on. Instead there is a power button inside the screen area. This also houses the Manual button, should you wish to switch off all the clever features Panasonic has provided.

These include automatic white balance and focus, automatic exposure and contrast setting, and something called face tracking.

Just like face detection on a still camera, in this mode the user can pick out a face by clicking it on the camera’s screen, after which it will automatically focus and concentrate the exposure on that person.

It’s all controlled by a system called Intelligent Auto, as found on Panasonic’s still cameras, which picks the best settings for the situation.

The camera records footage to an SD (or SDHC) memory card. At top quality it can fit 60 minutes onto an 8GB SD memory card (its sister model the TM10, costing an extra £20 or so, has 8GB of memory built in, allowing for shooting an hour without a card plugged in).

Picture quality was a bit of a let-down, though. The camera struggled to keep up with even relatively slow movement, resulting in lots of blurring, though for slower, more still footage the quality was much more impressive.

Colours looked good although we found indoor shots a bit murky for our liking. There is a surprisingly effective light on the front of the device that can be used to illuminate nearby objects, although it gave everything the look of a cheap horror film.

Overall, we are not convinced that £400 is good value for this camera. We would either buy a cheaper pocket model or a more expensive model such as the JVC Everio GZ-HD10.