Panasonic AG-HSC1UP and the HDC-SD1

Cool little HD pocket cam using AVCHD compression recorded directly to a SD card. This thing is small, almost identical to a pop can. its a go anywhere camera, if you can manage to bring a can of soda you can bring this camera.

Almost everything I know about the Panasonic HDC-SD-1 was learned on Pana3CCD user AVCHD forum

Some of my Sample Video clips can be found on Vimeo

Video thoughts
The video is surprisingly good, with a rather pleasing look and dynamic range.
The camera used 3CCD's which is offset slightly so that the camera can interpolate a higher resolution.
Chips are 1/4 inch each which is somewhat larger that many other mini cameras, the result is a bit more blur in out of focus areas which is very pleasing to the image, (I may notice this more because I tend to compare to my old Sanyo Xacti HD1 which tended to keep everything is sharp focus no matter what.)

Playback
Short of a Sony Playstation - nothing I have tried will "play" the clips straight out of the camera. Naturaly you can plug the camera into a TV and play from the camera. This does not bother me since I generally like to edit stuff anyway.

Editing
Sony Vegas Premium are able to play back the original clips from the camera with no need to converting to any other format, on my laptop 2.2 gh with 4 gig ram Vegas render the output at about 1 minute render time per 10 second of playing time.

HDC-SD1 vs AG-HSC1U
These seems to be identical, the AG model being part of Panasonic's pro line, most importantly it possible have slightly better color, secondly the AG model comes in a dull grey paint job instead of the more flashy paintjob on the SD1. Also the AG ships with the 40gig battery powered HDD for dumping your video on the run.

No Moving Parts
One of the cool parts of shooting to Solid State memory means no tape drive and mechanismes, however it turns out there is still a fan left keeping everything cool.

External drive VW-PT2
Just started my day with a little "too cool" moment. I realized that the cable output on the battery charge was the same as the charger for the supplied harddrive, So I tested the plug in the drive and then powered it up... sure enough, the drive is charging.
Conclusion. one less charger to travle with, you can get away with bringing just the Camera charger and the camera power cable which will also charge the drive.