Panasonic SDR-H80 -Blue- Hard Disk Based SD Camcorder
Sum and Substance:
Thumbs Up:
Big hard drive (60 GB), 70x optical zoom with stabilization
Thumbs Down:
Video quality is average, power input and USB port are behind the battery.
Inside the Trunk:
Included softwares - Panasonic VideoCam Suite, Drivers & Utilities. Cables included are USB cable and A/V cable.
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
SDR-H80 has 3500 x digital zoom, 1/8” optical sensor, videos are stored in MPEG-2 format, minimum shutter speed is 1/30 second, maximum shutter speed is 1/8000 second, shooting programs include portrait mode, surf and snow, spotlight, low light, scenary. Effective still resolution of the device is 0.38 megapixels, images are stored in JPEG format, the camcorder has built in 60 GB hard disk, resolution option for images are JPEG 640 x 360, JPEG 640 x 480. For storage flash card or hard disk drive can be used.
The SDR-H80 has zoom lens – 1.5 mm – 105 mm – F/1.9-5.7, has 1.5 mm – 105 mm focal length, Lens Aperture is F/1.9-5.7, has 70x optical zoom, minimum focal length is 1.5 mm, maximum focal length is 105 mm, Additional features include Dolby Digital AC-3 (2 channel) recording, Backlight compensation, USB 2.0 compatibility, YouTube capture mode, PictBridge support, Face detection, Direct print, DPOF support.
The camera has 2.7 inch TFT LCD display. Connectors on the camera include Composite video/audio output, USB. There is an expansion slot for SD memory card. The device is powered by 725 mAh li-ion rechargeable battery.
Razzle Dazzle:
Considering this is a hard disk based camcorder, the H80 is pretty small. The exterior of the device is sturdy and the body is quite compact. It is not as stylish and sexy like other camcorders that you see in the market.
Inside Dope:
We have seen quite a lot of SD camcorders; they are still around even if they have inferior quality than HD camcorders. It is made for people who are looking for cheaper alternatives, who don’t care about quality and just want to capture no matter what. Our eyes popped out when we saw the 70x zoom lens label on the body of the camcorder. It ridiculously zooms in extremely close to distant subjects. The camcorder has optical image stabilization but there is no way you can keep the videos from shaking when you zoom the lens to the fullest. Using a tripod is the only way out.
The controls on the device are typical of camcorder and nothing has been placed that will make you uncomfortable. The mode/power dial at the top of the device lets you toggle through the record movie mode, play back or photograph mode. Underneath the LCD is the menu button and the five way joystick button. If you hate going to the menu to change the options, there are buttons on the body which let you choose, however these buttons don’t give you everything, just basic controls. The buttons on the body include optical image stabilization key, Panasonic Intelligent Auto (iA) button and there are keys manual control access. You can switch off the stabilization if you are using the camcorder on a tripod.
There is a slot of SD/SDHC cards if you want to put more memory for photo or video recording. We didn’t like the fact that the power input and USB port are housed at the back of the battery. This means you will have to remove the battery if you want to plug this device in to a computer in order to transfer files. This is obviously quite irritating if you use the USB port a lot. The battery also bulges out of device which makes it a bit uncomfortable to handle while shooting. Lastly the manual lens cover is located at such a place that it might come into the way when you are shooting.
Panasonic includes both full auto and full manual shooting options. You can control the focus through the joystick by tapping the MF/AF key. From here you can control aperture, shutter speed and white balance with the joystick. You get to change the aperture settings and optimize shutter when you choose scene mode from the manual mode.
The camcorder has a web mode button for making clips to upload to sites like YouTube. You get to record a maximum of ten minute video which is the limit for such sites. Panasonic also gives a soft ware called ‘one-click’ which automatically uploads videos to such sites.
When it comes to quality, the H80 isn’t the best and primarily it is because the camcorder doesn’t support HD recording. For SD videos, the quality is average; the videos look soft with a lot of green and purple fringing around subjects of high contrasts. The color reproduction too is strictly OK. Videos in low light conditions look pretty bad. Remember to use a tripod when you use the zoom function to the fullest or else the videos will look a lot shaky. The videos don’t shake much till 20x zoom but for anything above that you will need a tripod.
Nitty Gritty:
If you are the kind of person who doesn’t care if the video quality is really good and just want to get out and start shooting, get the Panasonic SDR-H80. The two things that we liked about this unit were the high zoom feature and the button for web recording.
