''A compact camcorder whose price you'll like just as much as its performance'': that's how Ferrania sells its new Solaris Digital V596HD, a 1080p HD camcorder at a low price that certainly looks like a fully-featured model.

Handling

When you look at it, the V596HD doesn't feel cheap and nasty.  The frame uses a traditional horizontal form factor, and it looks just like camcorders from big brands with its black and silver finish and manual lens cap. In short, Ferrania hasn't scrimped on design or ease-of-use to save money on this camcorder.  OK, so switching it on takes a little while: starting from when you press the power button, you need to wait six seconds before the V596HD shows anything on the screen.  That said, the screen is quite big at 3'', though it isn't in the 16:9 aspect ratio. 

You navigate through the menus using arrow buttons at the back of the camcorder under the thumb.  Solaris has adopted the traditional user interface found on recent camcorders--with one exception.  The slot on the side, which looks just like it's for holding a DV tape, actually includes the Lithium-ion battery.  It lasts around an hour, but it's quite hard to tell how long you've got left because the battery life indicator is based on a series of blocks like on a mobile phone.  The camcorder can't be powered directly because the charger is independent.

Image Quality

This is where things go wrong.  On paper, there's nothing to worry about: the Solaris Digital films in high definition, producing video at 1440 x 1080 pixels with a progressive scan at 30 fps.  There's also a 720p (1280 x 720 pixels) mode to save space on the memory card as well as a 'standard definition' (480 lines) mode.  But it's when you actually start filming that strange things start to happen.  Let's start with the autofocus, which has significant problems that often result in misplaced blurriness and strange movements in the zoom.  The image isn't stable, even when it's a static shot and nothing is moving in front of the lens.  This problem is compounded by the fact that there's no manual focus, so you just have to put up with the erratic behavior of the autofocus.

In low light levels, video suffers from a lot of noise.  You can still make out what you're filming, but it's very grainy.  The field of view is very narrow.  Although the focal isn't given in the manual as a 24 x 36 equivalent (it's easy to see why), you can tell it's 50  mm, which is a long way from being wide-angle.  You'd do better not to trust the "20x Super zoom" proudly emblazoned on the side of the camcorder, either, as it's actually a digital zoom.  The real (optical) zoom gets stuck at 5x.  Finally, the icing on the cake: the digital image stabilization system only works at 720p mode.  The explanation for this strange feature is that a part of the 1/2.5'' sensor is used to provide the stabilization, which isn't available when you record in 1080p using the whole sensor.

The V596HD records on to a Class 6 SD card, which, as ever, isn't supplied. There is 32 MB of internal memory, but that won't get you very far, and the camcorder won't even record video if the memory card is not inserted. Videos are recorded in MPeg-4 using the H.264 codec in QuickTime (.mov) format that we managed to easily import into video editing software. You'll need quite a powerful computer to be sure you can decode these files though. One minute of 1080p video occupies around 60 MB, which is why the internal memory is reserved for saving 5 Megapixel photos, which are just about acceptable.

Let's end by looking at the connectivity options which are all grouped at the back of the camcorder underneath a flap. There is a USB port to transfer video to your PC, a composite video for watching your video on a TV or component video for HD TV. Unfortunately, there's no HDMI.