Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6270 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Panasonic
• Model: HDC-HS20EB-K
• Released on: 2009-02-28
• Display size: 2.7

Features

• Full HD 1080P AVCHD format
• 2.7" LCD screen
• 16x - 1000x optical/digtal zoom
• 16:9 recording format
• 2.1 Maximum megapixels

Manufacturer's Description
Sometimes a scene is backlit or too dark, or it's difficult to get a good focus on the subject. Adjusting the settings every time is not only a hassle, it can be very tricky. That's where iA comes in. This powerful function senses the shooting conditions and automatically makes the settings and activates functions that will deliver optimal results. With both motion and still images, iA lets you forget about bothersome settings and makes it easy to capture beautiful, well-focused images.

Advanced Optical Image Stabiliser (Optical Image Stabilizer)
Panasonic’s advanced O.I.S. suppresses the effects of hand-shake as you shoot. You get all the beauty and none of the blurring, even at high zoom levels.

The O.I.S. lens moves up/down or left/right and bends the incoming light to correct hand-shake. It checks and compensates around 4,000 times per second. That means that the coreection area is 3 times what it was with the previous O.I.S.

Intelligent Contrast Control
By detecting the intensity of the ambient light and adjusting the exposure accordingly, Intelligent Contrast Control prevents blown highlights and blocked shadows. This helps render natural looking, highly nuanced images with proper contrast. Even when you’re shooting directly towards the light source - a very challenging situation in photography - Intelligent Contrast Control lets you capture clear images with enhanced depth.

The contrast looks natural. The woman shading on the beach has been brightened without making the background appear washed out.

Intelligent Scene Selection
The Scene Selector function analyses the shooting situation and automatically switches the camcorder to the Scene mode that will give you optimal results. It detects the situation and switches the scene mode automatically

Low Light
Use in dim lighting. This mode automatically switches to a slower shutter speed so that images across the entire frame are bright and easy to see.

Spotlight
Use this mode for scenes with particularly strong contrast, such as when you’re shooting a spotlit area on a darkened stage.

Scenery
This mode is ideal for shooting wide landscapes and sweeping vistas, such as at the ocean or in the mountains. It balances the exposure over the entire frame to prevent brighter parts of the image, such as the sky, from being washed out or having blown highlights.

Face
This mode captures faces beautifully. It automatically detects when there’s a face in the frame and adjusts the exposure to capture it correctly. The focus also emphasises the face.

AF Tracking
The new AF Tracking, which keeps the subject in focus even if it moves around to ensure continuously beautiful image quality. The standard auto mode focuses on the subject at the center of the screen, but AF Tracking allows the user to lock the focus on a subject even if it is at an edge of the screen. This is done by simply touching the selected subject on the touch-screen. AF Tracking ensures that the subject stays in focus even if it moves or turns away from the camcorder, thus recording images with the most suitable AF/AE (auto focus/auto exposure) settings.

“Lock-on and Shoot” your desired target via Touch Screen LCD.

Face Detection
Face Detection automatically senses the ambient lighting and adjusts the exposure accordingly, so faces are bright and easy to see. The focus also prioritises the faces, and skin tones are smoothed. Faces in the centre of the frame serve as the reference for adjustments, but the function can detect up to 15 faces in all.

An orange frame appears around the face as the basis for adjustment. Faces are captured beautifully - even in dim or backlit scenes.

Box Contains

Customer Reviews

I really like it, good fun but image quality not the best
Initial purpose is for a 3 week trip around Africa (esp. game viewing, local cultures). Tried out this camcorder + competitors on the highstreet before purchase. Have now spent about a week getting use to it (enough time to annoy the Mrs).

Like the feel of the controls and ease of use of this camcorder over its competitors. Touch screen is great, Intelligent Auto object selection/lock is really nice, and less faffing with buttons and menus at critical times. Lens cover opens automatically when in record mode.

(The cheaper JVC is a joystick + reviews moans about the software. Sony less comfortable, less features for more money, newer Mem Sticks are pricey and not as accepted as SD).

x16 Optical Zoom + OIS is better that either competitors (important for game viewing).

Switching to manual mode to focus on a distant object past nearer objects is easy but uses the touch screen (it isn't the silver grip band around the lens which would have been nicer).

However, I now realise that the image quality is not the best. There is only a single small sensor (< 2Mpixels) so capturing in HD must use some technology will leaves some noise on images (particularly in lower light).

The low light colour mode is pretty useless. Why aren't the green ghost night vision modes included anymore?

In summary, most important thing is that it is fun to use. Pleased with my purchase.

Bundled software HD Writer is fairly basic (don't seem to be able to mix in music), but have managed to edit movie and transfer back onto camcorder HDD via a SD card.

Using a Lowepro Clips 110 bag which holds camcorder nicely but limited space for larger spare batteries. No room for recharger or leads. Good option for a day bag though.

My review of Panasonic HDC-HS20
Panasonic HDC-HS20 High Definition Flash Memory Camcorder With 80GB Hard Disc Drive - Black

I bought this HD Camcorder from Panasonic and so far have been very impressed. Its easy to use automatic mode takes care of most of it, although found you need to change the default settings to get the highest HD mode. Its nice and light to use, takes really clear footage and in 5.1 sound. Ideally you need a HD TV and don't forget to buy a HDMI cable, you get a component cable included but its still not as clear as a HDMI connection. It takes SD cards so this means its cheap and easy to buy. The hard drive size is very large so you can store lots of footage, I would recommend getting another battery as I only manage to get about 1 hour 20 mins in one go. I used it for a wedding, reception and evening do but it wouldn't last all this time, I was lucky enough to be able to re-charge it.

You also need to buy a good bag as it doesn't come with anything and you don't wanna drop it. Still photos aren't too bad either, although only 2.1 megapixels you can save to the Hard Drive or cards, but still decent enough for most purposes. Optical zoom isn't too bad, although could be higher as the old tape camcorders use to have 35x or sometimes 40x optical zoom, so I do miss such a good zoom. Digital zoom you get as well but again not really worth looking at as you lose some of the quality.

Ideally to get the most out of the camera you need a PC and I would recommend buying a good video editing package as the supplied software is very basic. If you just want the footage straight onto a DVD without much editing than fine, the software copes very well. But if you want to create more professional results like I do where you put in sound tracks to still photos and a good menu system with music you really need something like Pinnacle Studio or similar.

Its comes with a big manual, which is good to get as you don't always get manuals these day, however be warned it is a lot of reading and if you are like me I just skipped it and played around with the menu settings instead.

Touch screen is good, clear although a manual viewfinder would be good as well as in bright sunny light it can be difficult to see although you can increase the brightness but I expect this drains the battery more.

To sum up its a great HD camcorder, easy to use, perfect for the beginner, lightweight, great footage but on the downside you need to spend more money to get the extra's eg. (Bag to put in it, Advanced Software, HDMI Cable, Spare Battery and a SD card).

So far so good
So far so good. Very happy with the camera having used it for one month on holiday. Video quality is very good.