Panasonic SDR-H80-S SD and HDD Camcorder (Silver)

I bought the Panasonic SDR-H80 digital video camera from Best Buy yesterday (May 23, 2009). It cost $399 + extra for a backup battery and a warranty.

The Good Stuff:

The optical image stabilization feature is quite adept at stabilizing a shaky image.

The 70x zoom is kinda cool, though you really need a tripod for anything over about 30x.

The camera looks attractive, is light weight, and has a relatively easy to use interface. The buttons are mostly positioned well, except the zoom lever, which I couldn't easily reach without jostling the camera.

The Bad Stuff:

The image quality of this camera is utter trash. Pure garbage. My picture phone literally takes better quality video at a higher resolution. I was absolutely stunned at how bad the image quality is. It looks like some kind of highly compressed late 90's webcam or something.

And it gets even worse in low light. And here, by "low light", I mean anything less than direct sunlight. My first attempts with this camera last night turned out so bad that I couldn't see anything.

I did have the camera set to the highest quality, and I followed the instructions for the different lighting types (fluorescent, mercury, etc) with no luck.

The camera claims to have an intelligent auto (iA) feature, but I didn't notice it doing much but fiddling with the white balance at odd intervals.

There is also a special low-light feature called "magic ..." something or other. I forget. But it reduced the frame rate to 1 or 2 fps, which makes it completely unacceptable as a video recording device.

I am surprised at how good the reviews are for this piece of equipment. Really, people, set your bar just a little bit higher.

I returned this product this morning to Best Buy. I brought my laptop, and while I was there, I tried out other cameras of this model to make sure that mine was not simply defective. They were all trash.

I ate the $60 Best Buy restocking fee, but that's okay because I'd rather be out $60 than $400 for a camera that won't do anything but sit in my closet.

Bought this a couple weeks ago as my old Sony MiniDV camera bit the dust.

So far so good excellent zoom, audio quality, nice to have so much recording time to the HDD.

Didn't notice till I got it that it does not have an eyepiece only the LCD screen other than that I couldn't be happier.

Note, I originally tried to save money by buying from one of those New York Electronics dealers guy tried to convince me it only came with a 30 minute battery and I needed to spend the extra $100 with him to upgrade. Looser -

It's good for at least a couple hours.

Buy Panasonic SDR-H80-S SD and HDD Camcorder (Silver) Now

After some research and because I own a Panasonic Camera. I decided to buy this camcorder. First impression it looks good (small and very light), the optical zoom 70X and 60GB hard drive make it very impressive.

The biggest downside to this camcorder is the video quality. I shot a couple of shots in the morning under daylight and the image quality was very good. However, with no sunshine the image quality is very shady and bad. Imagine even with a house that is brightly lit the image looked very grainy and not good quality. The backlit feature does not help either.

Am going to return this camcorder and would advice you to stay away.

Read Best Reviews of Panasonic SDR-H80-S SD and HDD Camcorder (Silver) Here

First off, I was looking for a replacement for my JVC mini-DV camcorder which I used extensively last year. It worked well until one day, it fell to the floor and since then, I would get errors while recording after 30 minutes of use. If I used a cleaning tape, I could get it to work somewhat. But, the biggest thing I disliked about it was that it would take 1 hour to transfer to my computer 1 hour worth of video using firewire.

So, I was looking for a good Standard Definition camcorder which would either use a hard-drive or flash memory card to transfer video to my computer for further editing and DVD authoring. And, this camcorder does that and very elegantly as well. I tried out some HD quality camcorders but to edit those would require a new PC, better software which doesn't seem to be available right now and more frustrations than I was looking for. I was looking for an easier way to do what worked.

I read where some do not like the quality ( primarily of photos ) which I'm not concerned with. The video quality to me is as good as my old JVC mini-DV. I have captured snapshots from the video taken on this camcorder and, considering all, they're not too bad but if I want a good photo, I'll use my digital camera. The software supplied with this Panasonic transfers the .mov files from the camcorder to the PC and renames them .mpg files. The files are identical so I'm assuming the camcorder records in mpeg format using a .mov file extension on the camcorder itself. I have thought I might just copy to my PC directly but the software is fairly straight forward enough, I use it. For editing video ( and photos ), I use my regular video/photo editing software once the files are on my PC. I used Sony Vegas Movie Studio 8 Platinum for video and PSP X2 or Photoshop Elements for photos and they work well.

What I like most about the camcorder are:

1. the zoom -I recorded our son's football game and from across the field up in the video booth, I could zoom in on players and see their face quite easily zoomed in,

2. optical stabilization -at zoomed in level, the stabilization worked very well. I held the light camcorder in my left hand as steady as I could and used my right index finger to zoom and thumb to record/pause the video. This worked very well,

3. audio -I picked up audio from below, close up and far away while recording and was truly impressed with the resulting DVD I created from the captured video,

4. transfer to PC -instead of 1-to-1 time transfer with a mini-DV, I could send 15 minutes of video over to my PC in 2-3 minutes max time -and I didn't have to view/listen to the video being played while transferring.

What I like least about the camcorder are:

1. it is light -almost too light but I'll get used to that,

2. the battery only lasts about 2 hours before charging so I've bought a longer-lasting battery which should help there,

3. the AC adaptor plug and file-transfer USB cable plug in under the battery. Somewhat awkward yes, but to do file transfers properly, I should be using AC anyway so it's impossible to mess that up using a low battery and losing power in the middle of a file transfer,

4. there is another feature called aI which I haven't completely figured out yet but from what I can tell so far, it may be something I would add to what I like Most about the camcorder. If I find this is so, I may wish to update this review.

So, for my purposes, this is a great camcorder!

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I've read the other reviews and have to say, the one's that claim the image is bad quality or grainy need to go to school. Just read the manual and learn how to adjust the settings to the surroundings. It's a camera, not a box of ready to eat cereal..... it takes a bit of talent and practice to make a good video.

I also have a Laptop that's running 64 bit Vista and had no problem with the software, as well as on my 32 bit desktop with XP. I'm not sure what her problem was.

Take the bad revues with a grain of salt, these people probably can't tie their shoes right.