Review on Panasonic SDR S26 SD Camcorder Blue by Dave Albright

I got this camera from me for Christmas. I spent a few days reading many reviews of different brands of camcorders and finally settled on this one mainly because of the reviews. (I'm a fan of the Sony brand, but reviews of similar Sony camcorders made me look for another brand this time. I have an analog Sony Hi-8 and I'm very happy with it, but I was looking for an easier way to store family memories, and now digitally). I have to say I love it a lot (so far I've only used it for the holidays). Recorded all night (Christmas Eve) and already transferred the videos to my computer and watched them on TV (straight from camcorder and computer) and they look very good. I'm not a pro and I'm not looking for a professional camcorder, just a regular user looking for something to save family memories and found this device to be perfect. The ease of use right out of the box is amazing, just pop in the battery and SD card and you're done. I've already read the manual to the end and found that all the functions are very intuitive. (I'm not used to reading manuals, but I only did this to see if there was some special hidden feature, but to conclude that the manual isn't really necessary since everything is so simple is to be served). The feature I like the most is the optical zoom combined with the autofocus, which is so good that you don't lose focus while zooming. So far I've only tried it indoors at night and the results are very good. I read some reviews that said these (digital) camcorders work best outdoors in sunlight. So if I'm very happy now, I can't wait to shoot some outdoor videos. I have a pair of SDHC 4GB cards that store almost two hours of SP (medium quality) video. Not bad, and as other reviews recommend, get an extra battery if you need more than two hours of battery life.