Panasonic HDC-SD9

The Panasonic HDC-SD9 seems to be quite an attractive buy for a flash based AVCHD camcorder. At 11.7 ounces with battery and SD card and only 3.6 inches long, it's certainly one of the smallest and lightest full size camcorders we've ever tested, and is pretty comfortable to shoot. The zoom switch feels responsive, and all the controls seem logically placed and fluid to operate.

Many of the buttons, especially the face detection and Pre-rec (for 3 second pre-recording) are a tad small, but that's to be expected on a device this size. As with other compact camcorders, only a few controls remain under your right thumb zoom, photo, capture, playback, power, and recording start or stop. All the rest of the controls sit in the LCD enclosure.

The joystick is in an especially odd place which requires some getting used to for instance, pressing the joystick towards you produces the same result as moving it to the right in a traditional orientation, while pressing it away will navigate to the left.

I was relatively comfortable with this design, but our Lab tech disliked it. However, Panasonic made a few irritating design choices, especially with regard to the battery.

To remove it, you have to open the LCD cover that's fine, as long as you don't use Quick Start mode, which turns the power on when you open the door. In that circumstance, when you open the LCD to remove the battery as you must to charge it, since you can't charge the battery in camera the camcorder naturally turns on, and removing the battery at that point leaves the electronic lens cover open.

Furthermore, to download the files to your computer you must plug in the AC adapter (a pretty common requirement), but since the connector is in the battery compartment you have to remove the battery to do so. Furthermore, Panasonic offers an optional Shooting Guide which prompts you with "Camera panning too fast," "Use Intelligent Contrast," "Use O.I.S.," and "Use Low Light Mode" messages.

Unfortunately, each of these messages takes up a huge chunk of the already too crowded 2.7 inch LCD, blocking your view of the scene entirely. In the case of contrast and panning, the messages seem to appear more frequently than not.