The Panasonic HDC-SD7 - Earth's Smallest High Definition Camcorder

Panasonic recently announced in Japan that their HDC-SD7 is now the smallest camcorder on this planet. Forget their older HDC-SD5; this new one is even smaller - not a hell of a lot smaller, but small enough. The SD7 weighs less, at 0.63 pounds vs 0.75 pounds for the SD5, and dimensions are 2.04 x 3.42 x 4.33 inches vs 2.6 x 2.6 x 5.3 inches. Not bad, it's lighter than a can of soda.

It comes standard with Advanced O.I.S. (Optical Image Stabilizer), which detects and compensates for your nervous twitch in the hand at about 4,000 times a second. This system is essential for full HD recording and viewing as the finer the resolution becomes, the more blurry images become on a large-screen HDTV. We can't forget about the lens - a Leica Dicomar for clear, crisp images.

This vertical camcorder also provides MPEG4 recording at 1920×1080 pixels, 10x optical zoom and it comes with a 4GB SDHC card good for 40 minutes. You can get the optional 8GB card for 1 hour 30 minutes of recording. The 2.7 inch LCD screen is not bad for this size of camcorder, but 3 inches would have been nice.

The HDC-SD7 also features an intelligent pre-rec function for capturing shots right when you need them. I don't know how they did it, but when you press the pre-rec button it goes into a stand-by state. When you finally press the record button it's able to also record action three seconds before you pressed the rec button. I guess it has some kind of a buffer (holding these images in memory) that allows you to go back and add in the perfect start time. Pretty cool functionality!

It also provides 3 CCD for better recording in low light conditions. What is CCD? It stands for charge-coupled device and is basically the electronic eye of the camera. It collects light, converts it to charge, and afterwards emits the signal that results in a digital image.

This is a convenient piece of hardware that you can take with you everywhere and will be available September 8.

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