Hitachi DZ-HS300A Hybrid Camcorder

The Hitachi DZ-HS300A is a hybrid camcorder that combines DVD and hard disk drive recording plus it's pretty inexpensive with the lowest price around $299.99, but does this hybrid budget camera delivers in terms of picture quality?

First, let's go to the specifications. This device has a 1/6 inch CCD optical sensor, .3 mega pixels effective resolution, 8 GB built-in hard disk drive, supports SD Memory card, 2.7 inch LCD display, built-in microphone, 25x optical zoom, and 1200x digital zoom. It also has USB, composite video and audio output, as well as an S-Video output.

The Hitachi DZ-HS300A has a pretty solid design and weighs around 1 pound. It's not exactly compact but the bulk feels like you're holding a solid camcorder. Design-wise, it won't really turn heads or would I recommend showing it off to your friends.

What's good about the Hitachi DZ-HS300A is that it's a hybrid camcorder which means you can record your videos unto a DVD disk or to the 8 GB hard disk drive. The advantage of having a hybrid camcorder is that you have limitless recording capabilities. If you don't want to carry around DVD disks, then record to the hard drive and if you run out of space, you can pop in a DVD disk to continue shooting. The 8 GB hard disk drive on this camcorder can record around 110 minutes of video set to the highest quality settings and it supports DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM media.

Frankly, that's as much as what I can say about this camcorder's good side. As for the video and picture quality, For the video quality, it's pretty mediocre. It's almost comparable to the videos shot on my Canon digital camera. Low light shooting is abysmal, you can hardly see anything but the camcorder focuses at a good speed. The specifications on this device says that it has an electronic image stabilization, I had to double check since when I used the full 25x optical zoom on this device, the video was pretty shaky that I doubted if it has an image stabilizer, The Hitachi DZ-HS300A takes 640 x 480 digital stills which I have to say has very crap quality. My old Nokia Mobile phone with a non-mega pixel camera takes better stills than this camcorder.

Hard disk drive and DVD recording capabilities is a pretty good option when it comes to camcorders and if you don't really mind the dismal photo quality and mediocre video and you're looking for a budget hybrid camcorder, then try the Hitachi DZ-HS300A, however...You've been warned!