Hitachi DZ-GS300A Camcorder Review
By Michael Perlman
Reviewed.com Editorial Staff
August 28, 2007
A Hitachi camcorder captured the hearts and wallets of Japan last year with a unique ability to record video to both DVD and an internal 8 GB hard disk drive (HDD). Hitachi has since sent the concept abroad, arriving at our shores as the Hitachi DZ-GS300A. Dubbed a “hybrid” camcorder, this emerging class offers a lot of convenience but can scrimp on video quality to keep costs down. The DZ-HS300A seems alluring, but Hitachi’s execution is far from great.
In terms of video quality, the DZ-HS300A produced some of the worst images from a camcorder in its price range this year. Its 1/6-inch, 680,000 pixel sensor couldn’t handle itself adequately in either bright or low light. The image is blurry, colors are oversaturated, and the resolution is frighteningly low. Shooting indoors or in environments with dim lighting is practically out of the question. As the lights dim, so does the video quality, heightened by rampant fuzziness and loss of color information.
The DZ-HS300A offers a standard set of manual controls, including focus, exposure, and white balance. However, you won’t find shutter speed, gain, color, sharpness, or image assist controls like guidelines or color bars. This is certainly one of the slimmer arrays of manual controls offered by a manufacturer. In addition, the side-mounted control panel’s awkward placement makes adjustments vexing, particularly in regard to focus.
One would hope when a camcorder is deficient in manual controls or handling, it compensates with good automatic responses. Unfortunately, the DZ-HS300A doesn’t deliver there either – its auto controls perform very poorly. Auto Focus only does its job under adequate lighting, and the exposure and white balance lack the ability to perform in less than ideal conditions, which accounts for nearly all indoor shooting. In short, the DZ-HS300A cannot be trusted. With a poor side-mounted navigation system and scattered button layout, even wading through the menu becomes daunting. On the plus side, the menu design itself is well organized – a small consolation.
As mentioned previously, the biggest draw to the DZ-HS300A is the hybrid recording capability. The 8 GB drive stores up to 100 minutes of video in the highest quality, and 18 minutes on a single-sided DVD. The same quality of video is recorded to both media, so choosing which to use is simply a matter of preference. One of the biggest criticisms lobbied against HDD camcorders is the lack of archiving options. Conveniently, the DZ-HS300A features a dubbing button, which allows for one-touch HDD-to-DVD transfer. No outside hardware or software is necessary. Of course, the files can also be transferred to a computer when connected with a USB cable. Still photos are limited to a 640 x 480 resolution and can be recorded to SD cards, which load from the bottom.
The Hitachi DZ-HS300A is a charmer. The convenience of a hybrid recording system is undeniably geek chic, but a look under the hood reveals that this camcorder comes up short in most other areas. Don’t get fooled. The hybrid category is still in its infancy, and better models are due to appear soon.
|
|
