Digital Trends

Hitachi DZ-HS300A April 16th, 2007 | by David Elrich

Setup and Use

Before getting into the actual performance of this camcorder, a couple of complaints are in order. Other manufacturers make the LCD screen the focal point for handling menu changes. Hitachi does too, but they neglect to tell you in the Owner’s Manual that you need to flip the screen into the proper position — it’s a reverse half-twist. That said, the menu system itself is straightforward enough.

I wish I could say that about the Owner’s Manual. This camcorder screams for a simple Quick Start menu so you’re not forced to wade through the supplied phone book. Guys, just pick up a Canon digicam and look at their manuals. This is not rocket science, but this manual makes you think it is.

I took the DZ-HS300A along with me to Opening Day of the N.Y. Mets to see how the camcorder handled bright colors (the Phillies’ red uniforms in particular) on a day filled with strong sunshine. I did most of my shooting in Auto, took stills, and then shot some footage indoors over the next few days to experiment with the manual options.

One of the real pluses of this camcorder is its ability to take the footage off the hard drive and burn it directly to a DVD. It worked fairly well. You just hit the Dubbing key and the camcorder asks you which scenes you’d like to burn (I used a DVD-R blank). I tried to figure out how to select individual scenes, but the onscreen guides were no help. I decided to Dub All, and then it kicked into gear. This unit records at 1.5x speed; it takes a while to burn a disk, and when you add in the finalization time, you can see why the supplied DC power connector is a godsend. There were some hiccups when finalizing the disc, but I’m a big believer in the “when in doubt, reboot” school of technology. When I got a finalization error, I simply took the disc out, reloaded it, and pressed Finalize again. It worked. I didn’t bother with the manual.

Now, for the $599 question: “How was the video quality?” For an SD DVD camcorder, it was good — in bright light. The footage I shot at Shea Stadium was fairly accurate, although the colors were not as rich and as saturated as I’d like. The amount of digital noise wasn’t very noticeable on my computer monitor, and even on my HDTV, it was much better than other single CCD DVD cams I’ve used in the past. Although the reds of the Phillies’ uniforms didn’t smear, they really didn’t mirror reality.

What was very noticeable was the amount of camera shake, especially with the maximum telephoto setting (which I needed, since I was in a semi-nosebleed seat). This camera clearly needed optical image stabilization like the Panasonic VDR-D300 DVD camcorder. What was decidedly weak was footage shot in low light, which was filled with digital noise with soft colors. I’d attribute this to the less-than-robust 680K CCD imager. Another downside of this chip is the very low quality of snapshots. As you’d imagine, the 640 x 480 pixel still photos were sorely lacking, more akin to cell phone camera images than something aspiring to greater things. On the other hand, the camcorder had a nice feel, and the zoom was in a good location.

Image Courtesy of Hitachi