Panasonic officially unveiled the first consumer, 3D camcorder today. Designated the HDC-SDT750, the camcorder is a rebadged Panasonic TM700/SD600 with new software and a special 3D conversion lens attachment that compresses/squishes two normal 16:9 left/right views onto a 1920×1080 frame. Could a low/mid-range Panasonic camcorder with a lens that while 3D, provide images with half the resolution of full HD, be any good? Read our analysis to find out.

Specs

• 3MOS sensor 7.59 million pixels (2.53 million pixels x 3)
• Detachable 28 Lux 3D Conversion Lens
• HYBRID OIS (Optical Image Stabilizer)
• Crystal Engine PRO
• Leica Dicomar Lens
• 35.7 mm wide angle lens
• intelligent auto focus with face recognition
• manual focus ring
• 5.1 channel surround sound mic
• AVCHD 1080/60P
• time lapse recording
• 50 frames/sec burst shooting mode
• SDXC compatibility

How It Shoots 3D – The Good And The Bad

Early hands-on with the camera have been very positive. At the press event, Panasonic set up a live demo of the camera, hooked up to 3DTVs with active shutter glasses to view the footage.

T3 Magazine’s First Hands On:

The HDC-SDT750 uses a digital 3D conversion lens mounted to a standard camcorder, making the setup look like a sawed-off shotgun with a silencer. Unlike cameras such as the Fujifilm W1 that has two independent lens shooting images onto two camera sensors, the SDT750’s conversion lens merely merges the two left/right images of stereo 3D, to be captured by a single camcorder sensor, similar to other 3D conversion lenses like the Loreo 9005. But unlike the Loreo which halves the viewable frame, the SDT750 squishes a normal 16:9 frame to half it’s size, making each left right image only 960×1080 in resolution. When played back, each frame is stretched back to full 1920×1080. That’s half the horizontal resolution, gone, which is troubling because the feeling of 3D is achieved entirely by the difference in the horizontal space.

Another concern is the spacing of the lenses. Normal stereo photography and video involves mimicking the human eyes, usually by setting two cameras or lenses apart at a width equivalent to the spacing between the human eyes: 7-9cm. The lenses on the SDT750 are not spaced 7-9cm apart. This lack of spacing, combined with the converging of the image, makes the SDT750 not a true 3D camera, but in practice and playback at the live event, most of these concerns aren’t readily apparent.

Like the Loreo, Panasonic’s setup does solve two major problems inherent in 3D shooting: synchronization/duplication and image stabilization. Cameras and setups that involve two sensors, usually have problems with syncing video, requiring some post production work to line up the footages perfectly. Not only that, but settings like white balance, exposure, focus, and color accuracy must be perfectly matched. You can buy two cameras of the exact same model and both won’t be 100% alike. There’s always a slight difference. Even a camera such as the Fujifilm W1, is plagued by a slight difference in the sensors. Having one sensor on the SDT750 means never having to worry about matching white balance, color, or timing.

This also means you need to stabilize just a single unit. On a two camera setup, stabilization must be turned off because the individual stabilization controls on each camera can act completely independently. Stabilization would have to be done on the rig level. It’s also why cameras such as the Fujifilm W1 lack stabilization because it’s incredibly difficult to sync stabilization of both lenses and sensors. The one sensor setup of the SFT750 finally offers stereo 3D image stabilization in one small package.

Is A Rebadged TM700 Any Good?

Released just a few months ago, the $999 TM700 the SDT750 is based on, has been getting great reviews. Cnet.com reviewed the TM700 and found it an excellent camcorder for the price. You’ll find plenty of sample video on youtube to get a sense of the quality, with a stunning example on Vimeo:

Test Panasonic HDC-TM700 from Thierry Philippon on Vimeo.

Based on the TM700 footage, video from the HDC-SDT750 should be excellent, with fantastic color accuracy and good low light performance. Although there are concerns the 3D conversion lens may degrade quality, there was little indication of this concern based on the quality of the live demo. Reviews of the the TM700 show good, but not mind-blowing low light performance. Early specs seem to indicate the conversion lens greatly increasing performance in low light, which is very suspicious. How the camcorder’s 35.7 mm wide angle scope rating is affected by the conversion lens is also unknown. The full affect of the conversion lens on photo and video footage, won’t be fully analyzed until our full review.

What’s absent from the TM700 is the built-in 32GB of storage. Users must supply their own SDHC or SDXC cards, which aren’t expensive, but the convenience of having some internal storage would have been nice.

Pricing And Release Date

The official press release states a suggested retail price of $1399.95 for the HDC-SDT750 with an implied October 2010 release for North American markets. However, pricing and release for other territories runs the gamut from 1200 british pounds, to as much as 1900 euros, and the camera could be available as early as mid September 2010 for Europe and Asia.

Summary

Our preliminary analysis shows great promise. The camera’s video quality is excellent and despite the 3D conversion lens halving the resolution, it’s still far better than the 640×480 quality of the Fujifilm W1. The notorious difficulty editing the 60p footage may be heightened by the need to work with two images instead of 1, but the pricing, feature-set, and lack of competition makes this a potential catalyst for 3D adoption by the consumer market. We look forward to fall when we’ll have our full review of the HDC-SDT750.

Press Images