Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1737 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Panasonic
• Model: SDR-S15EB-K
• Released on: 2009-02-10
• Dimensions: 1.85 pounds

Customer Reviews

A good value "real" camcorder
This unit is quite small, it will fit into a shirt-pocket, albeit a little bulky. It is well-made in a black sparkly plastic with some texturing on the back where your hand goes, this would have been better in a rubberised finish.

It doesn't have the traditional camcorder hand-strap, instead it has a camera type lanyard, luckily with a sliding bar to tighten to your wrist.
To hold the camcorder you make a fist with your right hand and the zoom buttons fall under your first and second fingers and your thumb falls on the start-stop button on the back. To hold at waist height there is another stop-start button at the front of the camcorder for your first finger and the zoom can operate with your thumb. I'm left-handed and I still found it easy to use.

Panasonic don't supply an SD card and their current (May 2009) offer of a free 16MB card with this camcorder was returned to me with a letter saying Amazon purchases aren't eligible.

A 4GB card will hold 50 minutes of video at the highest quality; needs to be Class 2 or better. The battery lasts around 40 to 45 minutes and takes 2 and a bit hours to charge. The battery was the same as my Panasonic Lumix FX33 camera so I could charge it in the camera charger. The camcorder is supplied with a power-supply to charge the battery in the camcorder.

The 10X zoom is more than adequate for most people's needs and is totally silent in operation. There is a lens cap operated by a switch and a video light.

In use I found the LCD viewfinder viewable in bright sunlight and the image quality is impressive considering this is a standard definition, DVD quality, camcorder. The camcorder has Panasonic's iA mode which has face recognition which works impressively well to focus on your subject. I was surprised how good the sound was, really crystal clear. In dim conditions the grain does come up a bit but not unduly so.

The camcorder has 16:9 and 4:3 modes. It takes stills but as expected these aren't brilliant.

The supplied software is simple but has all the basic needs.

For the money this is an impressive camcorder and I would recommend it.

Small, light and good for most people's use
I have been very happy with this camcorder. I wanted something to replace my old Sony DVD camcorder, which shots good clear footage, but the DVDs only hold about 30mins and unless you buy DVD-RW, can only be used once. Plus because it has a laser writing onto the DVD, you have to be careful with jolts and it is not pocketable - this camcorder is!
I would recommend this camcorder to anyone who does not want to get a HD camcorder and wants something small and light that will capture memories.
The battery life is good about 1 hour 15 mins and I'd suggest getting more than one SD HC card, going no smaller than 8Gb (this will fit about 1 hour of footage at high quality mode)

Superb
This is my first camcorder.....and I did a lot of looking and reading on here before deciding what I purchased. This little beauty fits the list perfectly......price wise. User wise...I wanted something not fiddly, this fits the bill, ease of use. A read up on the booklet....charge of battery and 2 and a half hours later, there was I walking around the lounge playing. Just wonder now why I waited so long before purchasing one......lots of holiday views to capture next week. You won't be disappointed with this.