AVCHD Camcorder Review:
Panasonic AG-HSC1
Click to Enlarge
Click to Enlarge
Smallest Pro in Town
If you are looking for a small, and we mean really small, 3-chip high-def AVCHD camcorder with professional features, then you really have only one choice: the new AG-HSC1 from Panasonic. As it has features like three 1/4" native 16:9 CCDs and manual adjustment of iris, focus, shutter, white balance and mic input levels, we found ourselves forced to reconsider what really defines a "professional" or "consumer" camcorder.
The AG-HSC1 records a 1080i AVCHD signal to SD memory cards and the new higher-capacity SDHC cards. The camcorder kit comes standard with a 4GB card and a 40GB external HDD for storage and transfer to a computer.
Pint-Sized
The camcorder fits in the palm of your hand and has very few external controls and no viewfinder. The only controls on top of the body are a still capture button and a rocker switch for zoom that doubles for volume control in playback mode. Yet, despite the small rocker, it takes only a little practice to control the zoom on the 12X Leica Dicomar lens and develop very smooth zooms. On the back, there is a multi-selection dial with record button in the center, a micro-joystick and buttons for menu and trashcan access. A selector switch for full auto and auto/manual focus and an LCD brightness button are beneath the LCD panel.
The camcorder tends to twist counter-clockwise in your palm, because it is so small. To solve this problem, Panasonic engineered something we could best describe as a "dorsal grip." It's a small rubber ridge at the top of the camcorder body that gives your fingers a natural leverage point. It works surprisingly well.
A small internal fan, designed to keep camcorder components cool, vents near the rear of the body. This does produce a very small amount of noise, but it is still less than the whir of camcorder tape transports and even some HDDs we've tested.
Big Features
The AG-HSC1 includes several features usually reserved for professional camcorders, such as manual adjustment of focus, white balance, iris, shutter and mic input levels. Of course, you'll need to access these functions through menus, but they are all quick, and most are easy to navigate using the mini-joystick. We were also glad to see an external mic jack, lens filter threads, optical image stabilization, color bars and zebra indicators in such a compact camcorder.
The AG-HSC1 has three recording modes, from low- to high-quality: HE, HN and HF. HE and HN modes both record with variable bit rates, while HF uses constant bit rate of 13Mbps. Recording times on a 4GB SDHC card vary from 40 minutes to an hour and a half, as you move from high- to low-quality modes. To achieve these long recording times, the AVCHD format, even more so than HDV, is highly compressed, which means there are (currently) unavoidable trade-offs. During our tests, the most notable were the temporal artifacts that show up as stuttering movement in pans and tilts at moderate and fast speeds. This really is no more apparent on the AG-HSC1 than on other camcorders in this class, but you need to keep it in mind when assessing any new camcorder.
Digg This!
del.icio.us
Technorati
StumbleUpon
Reddit