Taking videos made easy

Before reading this review of the Panasonic SD Video Camera Model SDR-s26 you should know one thing - I am not a technophile. I don't know the difference between a megapixel and a regular pixel and I don't really care. I am not impressed by 70 times optical zoom, since I don't even know what that means. What I do care about is that my equipment does what I want, when I want.

People ask my advice about taking good images all the time, and I usually start by telling them that the key to taking a great photo is reading the manual for your camera so that you know what it can do. Proving myself to be the biggest hypocrite of all time, I happily charged the camera, turned it on and started filming.

Luckily it starts in auto mode - auto exposure, auto focus, auto conditions. Just press the record button and go. The results were - surprisingly - good quality video, which showed the camera's ability to focus on images that I had zoomed into tightly.

I finally sat down to read the manual and discovered some great functions that immediately improved the quality of my video.

To mention just two, a super-imposed grid on the view screen helped me to keep my shots straight and the fade function lets you fade to black at the start and end of filming, giving a nice transition between scenes.

I can't tell you about all the fancy techie words that others might use to describe this camera, but it did do what I wanted it to do - which is all it takes to keep me happy.