Photo mode on HD2000

To answer some questions asked by viewer Kobi, I tried some photo shots and this is what I found. You half-press the photo button to focus and full-press to capture just like in normal camera. In low light, the auto-focus takes a bit more time to focus since there is no assist-lamp in the HD2000. In bright light , the auto-focus is comparable to Lumix FZ-18, my de facto still camera. After the capture, the screen turns blank, presumably the file is being saved during this time. The captured image then appears for review (or Post View as Sanyo call this) for a while and the screen turns blank a second time before it becomes live again. Thus there is some elapsed time before you can take a second shot. The timing is about the same with or without flash but I cannot give the actual timing itself. You can hasten the process by turning off the Post View since it is defaulted to 1 second.

I am not too concerned about this since the main purpose of my HD2000 is for video and not for the photos. As in all camcorders, I presume you can capture shots while shooting a video without pausing. It may be better to use the remote control unit that comes with the HD2000 for this purpose since pressing the photo button on the camcorder itself while recording may shake it a little if you do not have steady hands.

The only dock function that you can do on the HD2000 itself without the dock is charging the battery inside the unit by connecting the AC main to the DC-in using the AC adaptor. All other connections to the outside world (TV, PC, external HDD, etc) must be done via the docking station. All connecting cables are supplied except for the HDMI cable and this is the normal size cable and not a mini HDMI as used by some other camcorders. Note that you need to purchase a separate battery charger if you want to charge the battery outside the camcorder.

Hope this answers some questions viewers may have.

Ronald Kwok
http://cbpirate.com/s/cbp/ronaldkwok