As usual, the image stabilization doesn't effectively cover the entire zoom range, but does a good job out to approximately 75 or 80 percent of the zoom. The variable zoom lever atop the camera is easy to get used to and gives a nice range of zoom speeds. Playing along with the über-zoom craze, the H18 includes a 32X optical zoom lens, which sports a maximum aperture range of f/1.8-3.7. Since the H18 has the same instruction manual as the higher-end H200, it's a simple error, but one that happens way too often on the company's Web site. Panasonic's online specs are a bit misleading, in that they hint that this model has three CCDs when it doesn't. That drops to 340,000 pixels when capturing 4:3 video or 350,000 when capturing 4:3 stills. When recording in 16:9 mode, it uses 460,000 pixels to capture video or still images. It would've been nice for Panasonic to put the menu button somewhere more convenient, however.Īt its heart, the SDR-H18 sports a single 1/6-inch, 680,000-pixel CCD sensor. While I had a hard time reaching and pressing the menu button with my right thumb, you still can access the most frequently used controls-such as backlight compensation, white balance, and shutter and iris controls-by pressing the joystick, so this isn't much of a problem. Almost all the camcorder's controls are also on the right-hand side most of them can easily be reached with either a forefinger or thumb. Part of the reason is that designers had to find a place to put the camcorder's hard drive, which finds its home in the right side of the body-creating an iPod-sized block that is just the right shape for a hand to wrap around. Unlike the awkward body designs we've seen with some recent SD-based camcorders, the SDR-H18 is very comfortable to hold.
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