Reviews |
Quick Review Camcorders : Panasonic VDR-M70
by Matt CullerPublished on November 23, 2004
Panasonic’s VDR-M70 raises the bar and becomes this year’s
top-end offering in Panasonic’s DVD camcorder racket. While this bad boy offers
many upgrades and new features over its less advanced contemporary, the VDR-M50,
the VDR-M70 has the same imager, performance, and price as Hitachi’s lower-end
DVD camcorder this year. Since prices always fluctuate, it might be a better
deal to adopt Hitachi’s DZ-MV550 if you’re interested in video performance. If
not, the VDR-M70 offers many upgrades from the DZ-MV550.
The VDR-M70 has a large 1/4-inch CCD, with 400K effective pixels for video and 960 for stills, behind a 38mm lens with a 10x optical zoom. This is an upgrade from the VDR-M50’s 1/6-inch imager. As seen with the Hitachi models this year, there is a decrease in optical zoom between the VDR-M50 and VDR-M70.
Automatic settings are present for exposure, focus, white balance, and shutter speed, and there is a full-auto mode. Automatic focal adjustment is slow and automatic exposure adjustments are, though quick, significantly delayed. The automatic white balance of the M70 is relatively quick, taking approximately fifteen seconds to make adjustments in color temperature.
The manual control options of the VDR-M70 include focus, white balance, and exposure, though individual adjustments to the iris and shutter speed aren’t available. AE settings of Spotlight, Portrait, Sports, Surf & Snow, and Low Light are available as well.
Most of these controls are located beneath the LCD screen, which makes for cumbersome adjustment. This camcorder isn’t meant for manual adjustment; three or four minutes with it will tell you that.
The Panasonic VDR-M70 captures JPEG stills at 1280x960 or 640x480 on DVD-RAM disc or SD card. The sheer magnitude of stills available for capture on DVD camcorders is astounding, though that's not necessarily a reason to purchase one, as the stills are of middling quality.
In low light, the VDR-M70 performs on a par with the DZ-MV550, and experiences the same trends in color and increases in noise as the Hitachi machine.
Physically, the VDR-M70 is very similar to Hitachi’s DZ-MV580. It features an almost identical body design, with ports in the same places. The VDR-M70 adds a hot accessory shoe to the VDR-M50's design, and includes all of the same ports: S-Video, A/V, and USB. There is also a 16:9 widescreen mode.
Overall, the VDR-M70 does a good job of providing a DVD camcorder with better options and performance than Sony DVD camcorders do. (For an in-depth description of format differences, see the full reviews.) However, Hitachi offers a similar machine (DZ-MV550) with a few more improvements for less money.
| Panasonic VDR-M70 - THE
BOTTOM LINE
Rating: 90.05 |
 |
| Likes |
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- Decent Low light performance
|
| Dislikes |
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- Price
|
Panasonic VDR-M70 Compared to the...
|
Sony DCR-DVD101
|
Sony
|
Panasonic
VDR-M50 Rating: 90.25 |
Hitachi
DZ-MV580 Rating: 94.25 |
Hitachi
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Better | Better | Better | Better | Better |
| - Convenience (DVD-RW/R format)
- Hot accessory shoe |
- CCD specs
|
- 18x optical zoom |
- Hot accessory shoe
|
- 18x optical zoom |
| Equal | Equal | Equal | Equal | Equal |
| - Manual Control
- Ports - LCD size - 10x optical zoom |
- Manual Control
|
- Still performance
|
- Still performance
|
- Manual Control
|
| Worse | Worse | Worse | Worse | Worse |
|
- Low light performance
|
- Low light performance
|
- Hot accessory shoe
|
None |
- Cold accessory shoe |
