Hands-On: Panasonic WA10 Upright Camcorder

Panasonic first launched its new waterproof camcorder at the start of June.  The fact that the firm acquired Sanyo at the end of 2009 goes a long way to explaining the form factor of the new upright camcorder, which takes after the Sanyo Xacti CA100.

Indeed, the Panasonic WA10 shares most of the same features, including:

Here are a couple of photos of the black version of the WA10 that we've been playing with in the lab:
 

The lens doesn't have a cap or an automatic cover, just a second protective lens.   The battery and SD card both slide into the handle, which is then locked shut to prevent any water getting in.  The arrow buttons and the menu controls also have a waterproof coating, and when we took it to our local swimming pool, the whole thing had no problems.

The Panasonic WA10's real strength is its 16 Megapixel rear-illuminated CMOS sensor.  That helps it reproduce colours more accurately and have better sensitivity in low light levels than the Sanyo Xacti CA100.  That's not just marketing guff, either: we could tell the difference straight away in the lab:
 

Even with just 3 lux, the equivalent to the light produced by a single candle, the Panasonic WA10 is better at picking out objects.  But despite having an extra two million pixels to play with, it picked out as much detail on our test card as the Sanyo in ordinary lighting.

The Panasonic WA10 uses the same recording formats: 1920 x 1080 pixels at 60 or 30 frames per second (60p and 30p) or 1280 x 720 pixels.

Panasonic also has two other upright camcorders, but this time they're not waterproof.  The HX-DC10 has a larger 3'' display but the same sensor, while the HX-DC1 has the older 14 Megapixel Sanyo sensor but costs less.