Panasonic i-PRO SmartHD WV-SC385 Surveillance/Network Camera - Color, Monochrome (WVSC385)

Update: In firmware 1.46 Panasonic seems to have improved the auto tracking feature so that the movements are less erratic. Although the auto tracking remains of limited usefulness in this model because it doesn't have any settings to adjust tracking parameters or to continue to the next preset sequence after the sequence is interrupted by tracking etc.This camera has the new Panasonic MOS sensor. I see much better results with the MOS sensor compared with CCD or CMOS. The low light ability is outstanding - this camera can see just fine in moonlight without an IR illuminator. In pitch black darkness, a 15W LED IR illuminator will light up a large area. The color dynamic range with Super Dynamic turned on is superb. I've never seen another camera series reproduce the rich color range of the scene so nicely.The firmware, on the other hand, is lacking in some basic features and needs improvement. For example there is no way to specify which presets will be included in the auto preset sequence or in what order, but the Panasonic consumer cameras such as the BB-HCM715A support this feature. When H264 video clips are saved to an SD card, access is via a very simplistic "alarm log" with pages to flip through, with no ability to browse using a date and time range.The auto-tracking feature is barely useable because it jumps around in a jerky fashion instead of smooth movements and frequently loses the tracked target even when it's an easy track. I am hoping Panasonic will fix this in a future firmware update.I found that you can achieve the best balance of low light ability and night focusing by selecting AGC On (Mid) with auto slow shutter set to 10/30s. If you set AGC high and/or 16/30s shutter than it will create too much noise for the camera to be able to latch onto a clear focus in darkness.Finding the best video streaming rate for saving the H264 video motion capture clips onto an SDHC card took quite a bit of experimenting. I got the best results with image capture size VGA, constant bit rate, max bit rate 1536kbps, image quality Fine. This is with a SanDisk Extreme SDHC card 40MB/s.Sometimes the firmware is very frustrating. For example when I use "auto return" to go back to the preset sequence after auto tracking detection, I cannot override this behavior in the viewer if I want to manually view a certain scene for a while. There is no way to temporarily override the auto return. Panasonic, please update the firmware!!