While the future of cassette camcorders (standard definition) seems highly uncertain, it may be preferable to look towards an alternative storage system such as memory cards, hard drives or DVDs.  The Panasonic VDR-310 opts for this last support and does so with some success.

Handling

The VDR-310 represents the high end for Panasonic in the DVD media category.  Its design is both traditional and functional.  In hand, the camera is rather pleasant to hold and the few buttons on the back easily fall under the thumb or index finger. With its clean look, the VDR-310 has a number of adjustments (white balance, back-lit, and speed) only accessible via menus.  In practice, this means that modifying a parameter quickly becomes tedious – all the more so that the automatic mode produces good results.  This camcorder supports a number of formats notably that of double layer DVDs (which are currently hard to find) but unfortunately the + DVD format isn’t accepted.  Another small disappointment was that the finalization of DVDs requires plugging the camcorder into the wall meaning this is impossible to do “in the field”.  The VDR-310 is relatively fast and doesn’t suffer from any particular slowness.  Finally, a few last downsides: the absence of a real wide angle and this camcorder’s extremely classic 10x zoom.

Image quality

Once again, Panasonic offers a product that produces fine image quality.  Automatic settings are efficient and only autofocus suffers in poorly lit conditions (notably on our test Barbie).  Colors are harmonious and in the lightest compression mode, images show a good amount of detail.  On the other hand, we found sensitivity to be rather mediocre even if grain is actually quite well controlled.