Review on Panasonic HDC-SD80R HD Camcorder (Red) - SD Card technology (Discontinued model) by Nate Jenkins

The original review follows; then see update below. My first experience with the Revain warehouse deal was a failure. Excellent camera reviews, probably a great camera except the item was shipped in a disaster. The camera I received (I stress this) takes decent photos and captures usable footage. If only after some difficulties. The box arrived via Fedex from Revain - I had to drive to collect it. Brought it with something dangling inside. The box looked good from the outside, but inside it was a disaster. I opened it up in front of the clerk and we saw a small sheet of bubble wrap, flattened with no air in the bubbles, and a small camera and accessories with no packaging or padding. A small sheet of flat Styrofoam, probably wrapped around the camera, just floated freely with no tape anywhere to be seen, no rubber bands to come loose. The camera looked fine except that the LCD door had fallen off. I put a loose battery in the camera, turned it on, the red light came on and nothing showed on the screen. I took it home thinking the battery needed charging but noticed a light on the camera meaning the battery is charged. A message to Revain's warehouse staff: Why ship the box unprotected and turn it into a Fedex rattle? Who knows what happened to that camera when there was nothing to protect it. The LCD did not turn on even after charging the battery. I checked the troubleshooting guide and clearly printed text says not to shake the camera too much. Warehouse people: I can send you bubble wrap. First Use: Finally, finally, after charging the battery and nothing, replacing the regular battery, and a few slight camera shakes, the screen started to fade. It seemed to disappear - so I looked up the fade feature in the manual and found it was disabled, so why the disappearance? The instructions came in a clean, crisp, sealed plastic bag, by the way, and the backings were torn off. Luckily the pointer is pointing ahead. Reading the printed manual has become a chore as the text references dirty, fuzzy and barely legible illustrations that require a 10x magnifying glass. menu item somewhere in the camera. I started wondering if the camera needed a software update. I went to the Panasonic website and couldn't find anything for this model, not even a manual online, although I found something that says I'm joining the upgrade program. Management spends too much time defending the company against claims, and entire paragraphs are scattered in self-defense, especially often on the front pages. Although I found NO choice of camera storage or memory card, after taking photos and videos and then removing the card from the computer, I had trouble locating images for me due to the many sub-directories and not a single descriptive content within. I finally found the images again: adequate, if a bit blurry and not sharp. Then I looked for records and couldn't find them. Insert the card back into the camera to try to find the missing SD card selection again, or locate the USB cable to transfer to the computer. I couldn't find it, I re-read the manual, looked around and found that I need a card of at least 4GB. I checked my card and yes, 4GB and class 4. After several attempts I decided to search every folder on the SD card until finally after much effort I found entries deep in several subdirectories. Little did Panasonic and other manufacturers realize that this kind of unnecessary complexity made the average non-technical user of the product jittery. Recordings are saved as MTS files. They didn't work when playing on the free VLC player. I saw something with abrupt starts and stops. Even if they constantly focus on one part of the courtyard garden. I have converted several MTS files with reliable software (AVS4You AVS Video Converter and Applian Replay Converter) and got unsatisfactory results. Playback had problems converting files and froze after a long time. Several attempts later with different extensions resulted in some of them being converted. Error messages appeared in the Panasonic MTS file itself. After trying half a dozen files, only one out of two was converted and saved. Then I searched the internet for something that would handle these new high-resolution MTS files and found a free converter called MTS Converter. After a simple download, it installed with numerous small print ads that required me to carefully bypass each one lest my browser switch to Babylon and other unwanted options. It was highly rated and converted files without any problem. The resulting files were quickly converted to MP4 and AVI and looked amazing when played back in VLC with no stuttering. Except for one barely visible file. I felt uncomfortable with the camera. Very small in my big hands. I found the Start/Stop Record button poorly placed. When pressed, the camera briefly moved from side to side. I found the photo snap button better positioned as it's on top - using it on such a small camera caused a slight up and down motion that didn't result in a blurry shot. Overall, for most of the photos I found the color of the image to be fake and a bit muted, although still adequate for my use on the web. I found the images to be fairly clear and close-ups (with zoom) looked much better. The zoom was too fast until I could control it by barely touching the TW rocker. Photos received reasonable image quality after setting MENU next to the highest photo quality setting. I have to keep saying to myself: cheaper camera, what do you expect! Cheaper (not cheap) and from the AMAZON warehouse - did I mention they sent it unwrapped in a big box so it rattled and bumped and was thrown my way? Even with bad shipping it works well enough that I'm not sending it back and waiting to get the same camera again. It captures fairly clear footage and photos, and also delivers web images and videos. It has enough settings, maybe I can figure out how to get something good enough to show on our big screen TV. I'm getting used to the sound of something dangling inside, a wobbly, visibly damaged LCD door, a lens shutter that doesn't work properly (doesn't close fully), loose Velcro, and other minor issues. The camera's power button didn't work, so I set the MENU option to turn on when the LCD door is opened. The shredded manual (in a clean crispy cellophane bag) must have an online PDF version somewhere if anyone knows? I would love to see how this book ends. Update 060712 The camera seems to be working quite well. Fixed Velcro issue. The problem is that my paid consumer software cannot convert or play MTS files, the freeware Converterlite does an excellent job of playing MTS files created by this camcorder smoothly and letting the resulting avi or mp4 files play well in VLC. The problem of locating video and photo files is solved by creating a shortcut for sub-sub-folders containing these flies in the first opened SD card window, giving instant access. This Revain storage chamber worked well enough, with really minor issues the decision was made not to swap it out for fear of deterioration. I also really like that it fits in a shirt pocket!