The picture quality of a '90s cell phone
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.More detail ...
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