With its new Xacti HD1010, Sanyo is ready to battle to keep its leadership in the handycam camcorder segment. The HD1010 (which replaces the HD1000), thanks to a large number of accessories that allow an impressive degree of customization, has a real advantage over its direct competition, the Sony HDR-TG1.

I won’t talk about bulkheads, external microphones, or the lights available on many accessories… No, today I’ll focus on what I find most interesting about the Xacti HD1000, the optional lens!

There are three different lenses, here are the details:

- 0.7x Wide Angle Lens: On one hand we have a very beautiful image quality and low distortion/chromatic aberration. On the other, this lens is very prominent and consequently, its weight is a drawback. The view angle is also not as impressive as you would expect.

- 0.4x Fish-eye Lens: is the most interesting lens! In full format, videos are very stylish (a little skate style), and when zoomed, this time we get a real wide-angle! Visible distortions are clear, however, with color fringing on the edge of the image. The Xacti’s sensor is also not perfectly centered on the lens.

- 1.6x TelePhoto Lens(coefficient 1.6x): we know how difficult it is to stabilize the image with this kind of HD camera, and we don’t recognize the usefulness of this lens… apart from special effects when we don’t use zoom…

Conclusion
Everything is a matter of feeling, and anyone can find pleasure… For me, it’s the fish-eye lens that excites me the most. If the price was under 420€, I couldn’t resist buying HD1010

You can download below some samples of our video test (720p / 30fps. Mp4):

Download a file. Zip containing a sample without lens (38MB)
Download a file. Zip containing a sample with 0.7x wide-angle lens (38MB)
Download a file. Zip containing a sample with 0.4x Fish-Eye lens (66MB)
Download a file. Zip containing a sample with 1.6x Fish-Eye lens (102MB)

43% The Wide Angle One

40% The Fish Eye

0% The Zoom One

13% All of these

4% None of these

(60 votes)