Digital Trends

Toshiba Gigashot GSC-R30 June 5th, 2006 | by David Elrich

Performance

The GSC-R30 comes to life when you flip open the LCD screen. In about three seconds it boots up and you're ready to shoot. Setting the time and date is simple, giving you a chance to play with the jog wheel and joystick. If you'd like, the camcorder lets you choose the type of album you'd like to store your footage in. There are over 25 to choose from such as Drive, Party, Summer and so on. One is even called Sad but I don't know how many people take out their camcorders to record teary events such as funerals but Hollywood remade the Poseidon Adventure for $150 million so what do I know?

Surprisingly for a first generation product, the GSC-R30 has a nicely designed GUI for the initial setup. There are a few brain-twisters such as “LED” under Set Up refers to the AF Assist lamp on/off. Why not just call it AF Assist? Even with that, the rest of the settings are easy to access and adjust using the jog wheel and joystick.

After making all of my adjustments for initial Auto recording of video and 2MP stills with ISO 100 (200 is the only other option), it was time to try and fill the 30GB HDD. I took a load of video and it barely dented the capacity. And what did I experience on my TV screen and PC during playback? The good, the bad and the ugly.

Let's get to the ugly. There were several issues. The results when shooting in low light were poor with loads of noise and soft colors. Focusing was not a problem in most instances but the results were sub par even though the camcorder grabbed a bit before zeroing in. Even when using the LED light, video quality was disappointing because it pumps out a minimal amount of illumination. Indoor close-ups were O.K. using the light but wider shots were clear misses. And yes, I adjusted white balance, sharpness and ISO for better results but they were just marginal improvements.  

The bad had mainly to do with viewing video because getting to playback scenes on TV was not as intuitive as it should be. The software engineers created too many steps before you can highlight a scene (or album) and watch it. Instead of a group of thumbnails you have to scroll through them one-by-one. Yes, there's a way to get to the thumbnail view but you have to load the manual and read the PDF. Please fix this for V.2.0, please.

As for the good, the GSC-R30 did an acceptable job outdoors—although not great. Colors were fairly accurate but there was some delay getting a sharp focus. And that old bugaboo of digital noise reared its ugly head once again. I squawked about this with the JVC Everio too; the Toshiba is no exception. HDD camcorders record MPEG2 video and the compression rate is much higher when compared to MiniDV. This compression really taxes the MPEG encoders/decoders which results in video noise. On the plus side, the LCD screen worked well even in bright sunlight and the battery lasted a long time—2-plus hours--even with loads of zooming and auxiliary light use.  

Usually I have disdain for 2MP images but I have to admit the gigashot did a fine job, even with 8 ½ x 11 prints although that would be the limit. I took some close-ups (not macro) outdoors of blooming rhododendrons and they came out fine. For 4 x 6s you should have no problem with this type of shot. When it came to wide landscapes, the GSC-R30 had trouble focusing and the shots were bad.