Panasonic SDR-H90 and SDR-S26 70X Zoom Camcorders
by Sze | Filed under Camera and Camcorder
In addition to the the 60GB SDR-H80, Panasonic will release in the US market also the SDR-H90 and SDR-S26 camcorders with 70x optical zoom. Panasonic SDR-H90 has a built-in 80GB hard drive while the SDR-S26 is a SD Card camcorder without internal memory.
Both DR-H90 and SDR-S26 features a powerful 70x optical ultra-zoom lens, advanced Optical Image Stabilization (O.I.S.) system, Panasonic’s Intelligent Auto (iA) technologies and Face Detection. They both support SD/SDHC memory cards.
Panasonic’s SDR-H90 will be available in black and for $499.95 while the Panasonic SDR-S26, come in champagne, black, blue and red models, will costs $329.95. The 60GB SDR-H80 will cost $449.95 and will come in silver, black, red and blue models. They will be launched in April 2009.
[panasonic]
Tags: 70x zoom camcorder, Camcorder, Flash-Camcorder, HD-Camcorder, HDD-camcorder, Panasonic, Panasonic SDR-H90, Panasonic SDR-S26, panasonic-camcorder, sd camcorder, SDR-H90, SDR-S26
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tukan,
I believe it’s a question of field of view and image quality. With the camcorder, the field of view is larger, which gives the impression that the zoom is poorer. Also, with binoculars, you’re seeing the image directly, the rays of light magnified and projected onto your eyes. This allows the human eye to see far much detail from a 12x magnification than a 70x image at 0.8 megapixels. The human eye is said to posess between 300-600 megapixels. More megapixels does not of course mean greater zoom, but it could be a factor in the perceived zoom on this occasion. But my bet on the biggest factor is the field of view of the different ways to view an image. I have a Panasonic 18x digital camera and a pair of 8x binoculars produce a similar result to what you describe.
For your question about diminishing zoom power (that is, as you zoom in closer the zoom appears to become less and less effective) a similar situation occurs with optical binoculars too. Find any reasonable pair of variable-zoom binoculars and you will see that at the higher powers, the benefit of zoom is marginal compared to the numbers that you see. It seems the case that the difference between 4x-8x zoom is the same as the difference between 50x-100x zoom. i.e. they have both doubled.
Worth pointing out that on the aforementioned binoculars, at least the two different models I have – at the higher zooms the optical image quality and particulary light capturing abilities drop off considerably. At least with camcorders and digital cameras, this effect isn’t quite as noticeable as the chips do their best to adjust shutter times to compensate!
SDR-S26
Hi all, I bought this camcorder a few days before. I just only wanna to say something about the zoom. Panasonic claims the 70x, but I can’t believe this. I compared camcorder’s zoom with my binoculars with 12×50 optics, and the result was approximately the same like camcorder’s “70x” zoom. So I have doubts about the zoom reality.
More, for example during object zooming, till 40x to 50x you see that object is really comming closer. But after 50x to 70x, I see no (or only negligible) different in object magnification.
I would be very thankful to anyone who can explain me this camera behavior.
Thanks