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Panasonic HDC-DX1 Camcorder Review
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The HDC-DX1 and HDC-SD1
set Panasonics entrance into consumer high sharpness video. Dissimilar
to the SD1, which is the first HD camcorder to employ SD/SDHC media, the
DX1 is one of major three DVD-based HD cams now present in the US
market. The other two camcorders are the HDR-UX5 and HDR-UX7,
manufactured by Sony. The DX1 has an extremely good OIS function, but it
is good but not superb: a microphone jack but no earphones jack, a
single mystery zebra adjustment, mediocre focus help, and disc
accession speeds that would be beaten a race with a tortoise. The
HDC-DX1 has few hard doubts to answer, but its AVCHD codec might be its
most urgent trouble of all. |
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Video Performance
The Panasonic HDC-DX1
(USD1120) possesses three 1/4inch Charge-coupled devices, all with
560,000 gross pixels, which cuts down to an effective pixel number of
about 520,000. This is the similar chip set received in the SD
card-based tantamount camcorder, the HDC-SD1 (USD1120). We received many
reasons to prefer the SD1 on the DX1, if you pushed to select within the
two, but picture standard is not one of them.
In
this respect, the camcorders are almost the same. Dissimilar to the Sony
DVD and HDD camcorders that photograph in AVCHD, there is no
dissimilarity in bit rate among the models. Both the SD1 and DX1 take
images at a maximum rate of 13Mbps. Both camcorders also demonstrated
the signs that one must be guided against buying an AVCHD camcorder this
early phase of development. Though AVCHD contains great ability for the
future, the processors within today's camcorders cannot encode with the
competence and excellence essential to contend versus HDV. We are all
keen to go further than tape, but the time is not at the moment.
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Low Light Performance
Once more, the Panasonic
HDC-DX1 functioned same to the SD1 in this family. The chips were not
especially receptive, and the AVCHD compression intensified any noise
that a DV or HDV camcorder having the same chips would develop.
Together, they developed a blurred picture. On 60 lux, DX-1 released the
aperture to its full, f/1.8. And it increased the gain equal to about
12-15dB. Since the manual gain just reaches 18dB, the reality that the
DX1 was almost forced to its fix at 60 lux does not indicate good for
its general value as a low light player. When we by hand increased the
gain to the level of 18dB, the picture quality degraded extensively,
with extensive noise and a few blown out fields.
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Wide Angle
The
fisheye trial is carried by measuring the field of camcorders in 16:9
modes. Stabilization is switched off, the zoom is adjusted to the
broadest angle, and the full video frame is watched on an external
monitor to get the field of view measurement. The DX1s measured field
of view was 52 degrees.
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