1920 x 1080 Full HD Recording

Full-HD recording 1920 x 1080, provides exceptional image details and offers a grat companion to your FHD television.

16 x Optical Zoom

You can zoom close to catch dynamic shots of distant objects. And because the zoom is optical, there's limited image degradation. Also, Panasonic's Advanced O.I.S. (Optical Image Stabilization) helps prevent blurring - typically a big concern when shooting with a zoom. This combination of optical zoom and Advanced O.I.S. gives you the ability to take fantastic zoom shots.

Advanced Intelligent Auto

Intellignet Scene Selector

This function analyzes the shooting situation and automatically switches the camcorder to the Scene mode that will give you optimal results.

Face Detection

Face Detection automatically senses the ambient lighting and adjusts the exposure accordingly, so faces are bright and easy to see. The focus also prioritizes the faces, and skin tones are smoothed. Faces in the center of the frame serve as the reference for adjustments, but the function can detect up to 15 faces in all.

Intelligent Contrast Control

Detects the ambient light level and adjusts the exposure accordingly, helping to prevent blown highlights and blocked shadows. You capture natural-looking, highly nuanced images with proper contrast.

Advanced O.I.S.

Panasonic's advanced O.I.S. helps suppress the effects of hand-shake as you shoot. You get all the beauty of the shot, even at high zoom levels.

AF/AE Tracking

Touch the LCD screen to indicate the subject, such as a person or an animal, that you want to focus on,and let AF/AE Tracking do the rest. The camera locks on the subject and follows it around, keeping it in sharp focus and properly exposed. It keeps tracking even if the subject turns to the side. This advanced function makes it easy to get a continually clear, beautiful shot of the subject in the scene you care most about.

Leica Dicomar Lens

Photographers around the world know Leica Camera AG as a maker of superb cameras and lenses. This company's advanced optical technology has been fused with Panasonic's leading-edge digital technology to create the Leica Dicomar lens. The Leica Dicomar lens provided in the HDC-SD20features10 lens elements in8 groups and uses Extra low-dispersion optical glass to reduce colour blurring. A special multi-coating process is applied lens element surfaces to minimise chromatic aberration, so images are crisp, clear, and free of flare and ghosting.

_{*Leica is a registered trademark of Leica Microsystems IR GmbH, and Dicomar is a registered trademark of Leica Camera AG.}

iMovie - Mac Compatible

TheHDC-HS20 works with iMovie editing software. Click here to see system requirements.

5 Microphones and 5.1 Channel Surround Sound

The HS20 is equipped with five electret condenser microphones. The center mic helps capture the sound source and distance accurately, so you get a more 3-dimensional effect than you get with conventional systems, which capture all sounds from the front. You get a realistic sound space that's a perfect match with the true-to-life HD images.

Highlight Playback

The Highlight Playback function is designed for users who want to view recorded images as quickly as possible. It detects zooming, panning, scene changes, increases and decreases in sound level, faces, etc., in recorded images as "highlights" by using the I.I.S. (Intelligent Index System). Then, it automatically plays back the detected highlight scenes according to a set time interval. It even allows the user to select music stored in the camcorder and plays it together with the video as background music. Because this function plays only highlight scenes, it makes not only playback but also recording more