Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD2000

Auto Mode (8.02)

The Sanyo Xacti series has an interesting take on the concept of an 'auto mode.' On the LCD panel (to the left of the screen itself) is a small switch that toggles between Normal and Simple. This isn't so much an easy mode as it is a stripped down menu. Normal will activate the full menu structure, including joystick shortcuts. Simple will activate an entirely different menu design, where a scant few options are available. Lots of camcorders do the same thing, building an auto mode with no helpful tool tips or explanations, just a mode that locks you out of menu options. At least Sanyo is more upfront about what they're doing; two minutes with the camcorder and you can tell that Simple mode is just a different kind of menu.

The Simple menu setting limits the user to zoom, video/picture size, focus method, and flash settings. If you want to delve any further, you'll need to enter Normal mode and navigate the intimidating menu structure there.

The good news is that Sanyo seems to have improved the automatic image adjustments in this year's VPC-HD2000. So, you may have an easier time of just cruising in Simple mode without traversing the complicated landscape of the Normal menu. On last year's VPC-HD1010, auto exposure was a choppy, abrupt affair, especially when trying to accomplish a slow pan. Happily, the HD2000 offers nice even fades from one exposure level to the next, even in tricky backlit situations. The camcorder still reaches for the 1/30 shutter speed in brighter scenarios than necessary, but even that problem seems tempered compared to last year's model. If you want to change the way the camcorder handles metering for automatic exposure adjustments, you can choose from multi, centre, and spot metering.

Automatic white balance is about as mediocre as it was on last year's HD1010. On that camcorder and the current model, indoor shots often appear to have a yellowish tint, while the outside world is dark, oversaturated, and a little cool. The indoor white balancing issues are status quo for a consumer camcorder. (Has a camcorder ever come through our labs that can expertly handle incandescent or fluorescent lighting?) The trouble with white balance outdoors isn't out of the ordinary, but it's a little troubling. Fortunately, the VPC-HD2000 has a good range of white balance presets and an excellent one-touch manual white balance. It's too bad the manual white balance can't be assigned to one of the joystick shortcuts.

Sanyo offers a good selection of autofocus options, including two different autofocus ranges (standard and super macro) and two autofocus modes (9-point auto and spot focus). The default of standard, 9-point auto works quickly and well. And since the lack of a focus ring makes manual focus a chore on most camcorders these days, we suggest you stick with the auto focus. It's more than up to the task. For a little bit of extra help in the focusing department, there's also Sanyo's 'Face Chaser' feature, which is exactly the same as the face detection technology we see on most cameras and camcorders these days.

Low Light Modes
The special low light mode on the VPC-HD2000 is called High Sensitivity mode. It allows the shutter to drop to 1/15 of a second and boosts ISO to a maximum of 1600. The image certainly appears brighter, but any motion within the frame will look blurry and exhibit gobs of motion trailing. There is also a mysterious 'Lamp' mode nestled within the scene mode options, but we're not sure how this might be any different from High Sensitivity mode. Neither 'Lamp mode' nor High Sensitivity mode can be engaged while any of the manual exposure modes are active.

Scene Modes
The HD2000 includes the usual smattering of scene modes. Each one will disengage whatever manual exposure settings you might have active, in favour of the camcorder's programmed settings for the appropriate scene. Choose from Sports, Portrait, Landscape, Night Portrait, Snow & Beach, Fireworks, and the aforementioned Lamp. We don't know what Lamp does, but ever since we saw Sleeping Face mode at PMA, we've given up on deciphering the scene modes of camera manufacturers.

Zoom (5.0)

Zoom on the Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD2000 is controlled by a sliding toggle located on the back of the camcorder. While zooming, a display at the bottom of the LCD shows a sliding bar that demonstrates your relative position within the overall zoom range. Optical zoom is the white portion of the scale, while digital zoom is in yellow. There are a couple of peculiarities about operating the zoom, particularly the inability to get a nice slow crawl. The toggle technically reacts to finger pressure, but there are really only two speeds in practice: kind of fast and really fast. The camcorder also prevents you from getting a smooth zoom from the top of the optical range to the bottom of the digital range. (You have to let go of the toggle and the re-engage it to get the digital zoom going.) We don't really count this as a bad thing, but it's a peculiarity nonetheless.

Our biggest disappointment is that Sanyo did away with the numerical scale, making it difficult to replicate shots or even tell what the zoom ratio is. In fact, the only way we could figure out the maximum zoom ratio was by looking it up in the camcorder's specs. This is a step down from the HD1010's clear and precise numerical scale.

The zoom toggle is easy to use with your thumb, but it doesn't give enough speed variance.

Zoom Ratio (3.77)

The camcorder has a 10x optical zoom, which is small compared to other mid-range camcorders, but isn't surprising given the HD2000's short lens barrel. (This is the same zoom ratio offered on last year's HD1010 and the Sony HDR-TG1.) New this year, the HD2000 also has a 16x Advanced Zoom, available only when shooting videos. Since there's no numerical scale during zoom operation, we're not sure if this is part of the optical zoom range or is only available when digital zoom is activated.

There is a 100x digital zoom, which can be turned on or off in the Recording Menu, but it is only available when the photo quality is set to 8M or below. Since there's no separate photo mode, this means that even if you're shooting video, you have to pay attention to the selected resolution for still photos. We don't recommend using digital zoom anyway, since it degrades image quality, but it's a very strange feature.

Zoom Comparisons
Wide Angle	Mid Zoom	10x Zoom

Focus (4.25)

Let's face it: we will always prefer manually focusing with a ring or dial to the other options out in the camcorder world—especially when those options involve selecting a focus from one of several hard increments. Focus is a very precise adjustment that is best made with a smooth control. On the VPC-HD2000, manual focus is implemented via a small joystick, which is used to select one of 22 discrete focal increments from 1cm to infinity. The bottom end of that range includes 1cm, 2cm, and 5cm. What if you want to focus on something that's 3.5cm away? You can't. Fortunately, the auto focus is perfectly adequate. If you're shooting subjects in the distance, the standard auto focus can handle objects from 80cm to infinity, while getting up close and personal may require you to switch to super macro (1cm to 1m).

Manual focus in action

The actual control mechanism is neither the best nor the worst we've seen. As we've said, focus is best handled by a soft control like a ring or dial. However, you can adjust focus while shooting with one hand and without blocking the LCD, which is more than can be said of touch screen manual focus controls. And the joystick is more precise than the Laser Touch slider on JVC's entire 2009 lineup. (For instance, the 2009 JVC Everio GZ-MG670.)

Exposure Controls

-1.8 to +1.8 in thirteen 1/3-stop increments

Aperture Controls

1.8, 2.0, 2.4, 2.8, 3.5, 4.0, 4.7, 5.6, 6.8, 8.0

Shutter Speeds

For Auto Shutter Speed, Shutter Priority mode, or Manual Shutter: 1/30, 1/60, 1/100, 1/125, 1/250 For High Sensitivity mode or Lamp mode: 1/15, 1/30, 1/60, 1/100, 1/125, 1/250 For Still Photography: 4, 2, 1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/15, 1/30, 1/60, 1/100, 1/125, 1/250

White Balance Controls

Auto, Sunny, Cloudy, Fluorescent, Incandescent, Manual

Gain Controls

ISO 50, ISO 100, ISO 200, ISO 400, ISO 800, ISO 1600 (ISO 3200 available for still photos only)

Exposure (7.3)

The camcorder's Recording menu might lead you to believe that exposure can only be adjusted through Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, or a combination of full aperture and full shutter speed control. However, buried in the mysterious depths of the menu system, you might stumble across the Shortcuts feature. This allows you to map a number of functions to the four directional clicks on the joystick. By default, Sanyo has assigned Exposure Compensation to one of these shortcuts. It's a bit ludicrous that you can't find this setting among the rest of the manual controls on the HD2000. We thank Sanyo for the breadth of manual controls, but begrudge Sanyo for making some of them so hard to access.

Once you've successfully discovered the Exposure Compensation option, you adjust the exposure according to a meter on the bottom of the LCD. The scale ranges from -1.8 to +1.8 in thirteen 1/3-stop increments. This is very common among point-and-shoot digital cameras and is becoming more common among consumer camcorders as well.

Aperture (8.5)

The VPC-HD2000 gives you full control of both aperture and shutter speed. There's also an Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority Mode. All three of these options are located under Exposure in the Recording menu. In Aperture Priority mode, you can manually adjust aperture and the camcorder will automatically adjust shutter speed to compensate. In Shutter Priority mode, aperture will be automatically adjusted as you manually alter shutter speed. In full manual mode, you can change the aperture and shutter speed will remain constant at whatever speed you've manually selected.

There are 10 available aperture settings ranging from 1.8 to 8.0. A warning about the manual aperture controls: we found that it took a full second to display the selected aperture as we were using the manual aperture tool. This is excessively slow and was often frustrating.

Shutter Speed (8.0)

As described above, the HD2000 breaks exposure into four options: Program (also known as auto), Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, and full manual aperture and shutter speed. One peculiarity of the shutter speed controls is that only a portion of the range is available for video. Since there's no separate photo mode on the camcorder, the shutter speed tool displays all possible shutter speeds, but anything under 1/30 of a second is only available for still photos. When you're adjusting shutter speed, you'll notice that 1/8 and 1/15 look identical to 1/30. That's because in video mode, they are identical.

For shooting video, there are just five shutter speeds available, ranging from 1/30 to 1/250. For still photos, you have the option of a full four-second shutter speed as well as a few other long exposures. If you want to gain access to the 1/15 shutter speed for video, you'll have to put the camcorder into High Sensitivity mode or the Lamp scene mode.

White Balance (8.0)

The VPC-HD2000 comes with just four white balance presets: sunny, cloudy, fluorescent, and incandescent. This isn't the worst we've seen—some camcorders offer just indoor and outdoor or no white balance control at all—but several camcorders come with more options, especially for indoor lighting. Most Canons, for instance, have seven different white balance presets available.

Unfortunately, most of these presets (and the automatic white balance) don't do a great job of producing accurate colours. For this, you'll want to rely on the camcorder's blessedly simple one-push white balance system. Sure, you have to delve into the menu to find the option, but it's not buried too deep. Once you find it, simply point the camcorder at a mostly black and white subject, push the button, and you're done. The resulting colour balance is quite good and this quick action will save you the headache of orange- or blue-tinted video.

Gain (5.0)

Sanyo is one of the only camcorder manufacturers to offer users some control over gain, though it's not done in the traditional way. The VPC-HD2000 has a manual ISO feature, much like what you would find on a still camera. A few other camcorders have started to incorporate this feature for still photography modes, but on the HD2000, ISO adjustments impact video recording as well. If you want to boost the gain for low light situations, you can set it anywhere from ISO 50 to ISO 1600. There's also an ISO 3200 setting, but this will only work when taking still photos. If you're recording video, ISO 3200 will behave exactly like ISO 1600.

Manual ISO options on the VPC-HD2000

Panasonic is the only other manufacturer to offer gain control; several camcorders in Panasonic's consumer line allow you to boost gain once you've fully opened the iris. Sanyo is unique in allowing completely separate control over gain.

Colour & Image Controls (4.5)

There's just one image control on the Sanyo VPC-HD2000, labeled as the Image Settings feature in the Option Menu. This lets you choose between Normal, Vivid, Soft, and Soft & Vivid. There isn't a lot of a difference among the various settings, but if you're going for subtlety, it's a nice option to have. (You can see the small difference in the Colour Performance section of this review.)

Colour/Image Control	Description
Image Settings	Normal, Vivid, Soft, Soft & Vivid

Other Manual Controls (2.0)

Sanyo includes a robust offering of the traditional manual controls, but we were surprised to see that the HD2000 doesn't have some of the tools that serious videographers like to see, including zebra striping, guide frames, or histograms.

Control	Description
Noise Reduction	On, Off (separate noise reduction for still photos)
Super Macro	Allows you to focus on items close to the camcorder (focal distance is approximately 1cm to 1m)