I bought the Camcorder with some hesitation knowing that this is Toshiba's first Hard Drive Camcorder and that they are not noted for making camcorders. My investigation indicated that it basically has Canon lens and optics with the Hard Drive from Toshiba. First some of the bad things that i have encountered:1. The camera has a focus problem. There is significant difficulty in getting the camera auto focusing especially in dim/low light. In daylight it is much better. Placing the focus to infinity helped a great deal.
2.Does not perform well in Low light, problem common to most Canon Camcorders. I recorded a Graduation Ceremony in a dimly lit hotel hall. With the bright light focused on the people the camera tends to produce too much white for the face. Adjusting the exposure helped somewhat but not very satisfactory.
3. The Hard Drive does get hot working it for some length of time and this places some discomfort on the hands. Not unbearable though.
4. There is indeed some Zoom lens noise picked up by the speaker when no other sound is present. This is however not a major discomfort.
5. Not too good quality stills in Low light dispite the flash. Everything looks too white.
6. Does not have a viewfinder. One has to rely on the screen. Thought that this would affect the battery life significantly but it did not.
7. Does not have an audio or Mic input port. This is a disadvantage for those wanting to record audio from a Mixer or other device.
8. The ACDSee software is really quite basic but gets the job done and a welcome for the novice.
Good things
1. Very well built. Fits the hand nicely. Good feel and weight.
2. Good Quality video in Outdoor lighting. I was indeed surprised at the accuracy of the colors.
3. Very easy to operate. Accessing the menu functions and features were really simple.
4. The output to DVD was very easy and fast. The included software is reasonable but has no editing features. DVD authoring is very limited. Tested importing a clip with Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 but it had difficulty in conforming the audio. Maybe i need an upgrade to Pro 2.0 to dealt with Dolby Digital.
5. The audio quality is surprisingly quite clean and very sensitive. Has three options to selecting the volume sensitivity.
6. The Battery life is excellent for such a small battery.
7. Very slim and Good Capacity hard drive.
8. No Tapes and limit to recording long events.
9. The included Cradle is very useful for charging and connecting to a the computer and network.
With the price and features compared to the competition Sony's i believe that this is a good value for money buy. This is certainly version 1 stuff from Toshiba/Canon but i am sure that improvements are on the way. Since HHD camcorder are relatively new except for JVC, i believe that all the makers will be tweeking and improving on this new technology and as such no brand will have the ultimate at this time.
For those willing to take the plunge into the HHD video world this is a good start.
Other Negatives:
-Terrible in low-light conditions. Camera Light it comes with is nearly useless as it can only pick up objects close up.
-Settings were very bad. If anyone complains all video comes out very white/bland looking, its because the default settings suck. You need to set it to Flourescent 1 or Flourescent 2. This adds a LOT more color. Also change the color setting to Vivid. You will see an amazing difference.
-Photos suck, but thats because its only 2megapixel, which is understandable.
-What I find to be extremely dumb design is that although it allows you to capture photos while recording video, it actually records the flicker of the photo being taken. In otherwords, you can be recording something nice, and want to take a photo. However, during playback, you will see the video flicker or 'black-out' for a second. I find this very annoying. And I would have to stop recording, take the photo, then start a new recording just to avoid this annoying flicker. Same thing with the pause recording feature. It allows u to pause recording if theresnothing interesting, but when it resumes, it does not make a smooth segway, instead u see the same black-out flicker that brings the two video together.
-The batter power is displayed in three portions, White/Yellow/Red. White lasts about an hour, which I was pleased, I figured the other two portions must last somewhat the same. I was very wrong. Yellow lasted about 15-20 minutes and the red lated about 5-10 minutes. I was shocked. I couldn't believe how misleading that was.
Pros:
-Battery life was maybe 90 minutes. I don't believe I hit 2.5 hrs like some other online reviews claimed. Keep in mind, the White/Yellow/Red Battery LifeGauge is not proportional. White means fully charged. When it hits Yellow, it means about 15 minutes left, and Red means about 10 minutes left. So if u have a lot to record and your on Yellow, ur screwed.
-Good Design, easy to use. I learned how to use most of it wihtout the instructional guide. I only used it to understand what the color settings meant, but that wasn't very helpful either More of trial and error.
-Video Quality, I guess is very good for the price.
-You can record w/o the LCD screen flipped up. However, if u change ur mind and want to use the LCD screen to view, but then decide to close the LCD, it powers off. Therefore making it possible, but difficult and confusing to work with the LCD screen off.
Overall:
If it wasn't for the damn white spec inside the lens that show up in the video/photo, I would be very pleased and would keep it, but I am going to return it for that reason. Otherwise, I believe, for the low price, this is outstanding. Battery life of roughly 1.5 hours is good. Takes so-so quality photos might as well bring along ur other digicam.
But I LOVE LOVE LOVE the fact that I dont have to mess around with miniDV's or miniDVD's (which I can imagine the amount of headache, buying, recording, transferring, editing, re-saving onto DVD would cause)
I would reccommend this if you are on a budget. I also reccommend this because its SO EASY TO USE, imagine no miniDV or miniDVD's that have limited recording time. I damn near recorded 15 hours before i transferred to my laptop, which then recorded another 6 or so hours. It was sweet. However, after seeing the photo quality, I want to hold off until these come down in price and quality moves up!
Cheers!
Buy Toshiba Gigashot GSC-R60 60GB 2MP Hard Disc Drive Camcorder w/10x Optical Zoom Now
It's just fine.Pro: A zillion hours of storage, good-enough battery.
Pro: It comes with a cradle.
Con: No other way to interface the harddrive to your computer, no quickie-cable.
Pro: It uses a hard drive
Con: Using the MPEG 2 files in a video editor is hard. The included video editor is SUPER AWFUL, clicking on things results in MINUTES OF FROZEN COMPUTER. Terrible. Am converting videos myself to dv then editing in another app. Am looking at SpeedEDIT too.
Pro: No hardware glitches.
Pro: Comes with a remote. Can take flash photographs with it. Easy and quick on/off.
Con: Its auto focusing is a bit indecisive. v1.0 firmware, japan has newer...Toshiba!!! You think you're focused, then it decides it wants to retry focusing. Much worse in the dark.
Con: UI, while fancy, is tricky to get used to. The rotating wheel thing is fine, but the joystick in the middle of the wheel is a bit too easy to accidentally choose things. Clicking in any direction might bring up, via some swirly special effects, the flash-photograph mode, and the only way to get out of that mode is to press the same direction again, but if you didn't realize you pressed that direction in the first place because it's too-easy to accidentally choose the thing, then you have to futz with it or look at the screen to read the on-screen instruction of how to close that screen.
Definitely worth $450. For $350 you get the 30GB one without the nifty cradle, a steal.
Pro: Sound quality even from the builtin mic is fabulous, spacious.I have been very satisfied with the results I have gotten from this camera. I wanted something that would allow me to record business and training presentations indoors in moderately lit rooms. This does a great job and lets me record a full week of training (55 hours) without changing tapes or discs. I have also gotten what I think are excellent family shots.
The 2 megapixel still photos are the best I have ever seen out of a camcorder. They are printable up to 8x10 or so.
I do not disagree with the previous reviewer who said the focus searches sometimes, and that you can hear the focus when sounds are low, but nearly all small cameras have this same issue. I am very pleased. A great buy at Amazon's price.
Want Toshiba Gigashot GSC-R60 60GB 2MP Hard Disc Drive Camcorder w/10x Optical Zoom Discount?
Terrific value, Intuitive features, simple file transfer and excellent software bundle make this a great average consumer video camera. Transferring movies right to DVD via PC is as simple as I've ever seen. Stability control is on the low end of effective and lighting conditions need to be reasonably bright for the picture to have full depth. That's not to say it doesn't video record OK in normal room lighting only that it is not as sensitive as say a Sony video camera (that costs 1/3rd more)
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