I love this camera. It's tiny, but does not feel like a toy. The auto-focus is very good and fast enough for my needs. The 12x optical zoom with Optical Image Stabilization is great. The image quality is amazing (though I should say I jumped a number of technologies as my previous video camera was S-VHS).
The lack of broad AVC-HD support did cause me some pain (mostly financial) as to solve it I switched from Adobe Premiere to Sony Vegas (for a number of reasons including the lack of AVC-HD support in Premiere). So far I haven't been successful in being able to view AVC-HD videos in any Media Player so I have to load Vegas just to view the raw video on my PC. I also purchased a much larger 16Gb SDHC card since the included 4Gb card was just too small for my needs, and after using the camera for a while I plan to buy a second battery (I get about 80 minutes out of the battery).
Speaking of the battery, the charger has a strange quirk in that you can't charge the battery at the same time you are powering the camera. This seems weird to me, and I have forgotten to unplug the cable from the charger once or twice and not ended up with a charged battery (it doesn't matter if the camera is actually connected, or on, there is apparently a switch that is hit when you plug in the camera's power cable so it must be unplugged in order to charge the battery). Also, the camera itself will not charge a battery in the camera, so you can either power the camera or charge a battery, never both.
The microphones (all 5 of them) on the camera work great when recording video, as long as the action is fairly close. This isn't a complaint as I would have been shocked if the camera did well at recording far away (it's not magic) and thankfully it does have an external microphone jack (which I admit that I have yet to use as I usually digitally record the audio on-site with my Wolverine or Nomad Jukebox 3). For family videos it is does great at capturing very reasonable audio.
You should know that the external backup hard drive is big. The hard drive is nearly as long and as wide as the largest dimensions of the camera itself (not as thick in the third dimension) and while the camera is heavier, the hard drive gives it a good run. The hard drive does work, and it works well, but my feeling is that if they are going to force you to buy this as part of the package, it should at least have been a large (100Gb or larger) hard drive (especially since the retail price for 40Gb drives are well under ). It should be optional or an accessory. I'll stick with my Wolverine for this as well.
My biggest complaint is that the camera constantly resets the image numbering. All of the other digital cameras I have owned keep a running count of videos or still images taken and numbers the files accordingly until I specifically reset them (for example, my Sony F-828 is currently generating images like DSC08428.jpg, which means that I've taken 8,428 photos with that camera since I last reset it). Having the file numbers constantly starting from 0 on the media means that I have to renumber them all before I copy or take a chance on accidentally overwriting a previous file.
Another complaint about the camera is that it refuses to record more than about an hour at a time in "normal" quality. I'm guessing that this is a file size issue and when it comes close it starts blinking the display and then just stops recording. How dumb is this? I understand that the file system on the card might have limitations, but how hard would it have been to simply open another file and keep recording until the media was full (hopefully without a video skip between the files)? If there is an option for this I haven't found it yet. This limitation caused me to miss a few minutes of video in the middle of a performance I was recording, so I was very annoyed. Now that I know about the limitation I can likely work around it, but why should I have to?
The camera takes still pictures that look reasonable, but many of them have a strange "cut-out" quality to them (like the foreground and the background are disconnected). I'm not sure whether this is a haloing affect or something else, but I didn't buy the camera for stills and for the occasional still it's good enough. It will definitely not replace my F-828 for still photos.
I can't comment on the software that comes with the camera as I don't use it. I did download the "AVC-HD to DVCPRO Transcoder" from the Panasonic web site (they didn't make the software easy to find) from [...]. Note that you'll have to go through some significant annoyance because they must send you an e-mail with a custom password (which didn't work for me the first time but did the second).
Summary: In general I think this is a great camera for HD video in a very small package with the features I needed. There are a few quirks and I have a few other minor complaints, but they are, so far, all easily worked around. All-in-all I am very happy with this camera and now that I know about the file size limitation it's not too hard to work around it. Support for the AVC-HD encoding is sparse but growing quickly.
[update: 6/17/2009] I did finally find a codec to allow me to watch AVC-HD directly in Windows Media Player, Cyberlink HD264 AVC-HD codecs. It's not free (), but does a fine job of playing the videos back. Search for Cyberlink HD264 Pack for WMP.
[update: 12/15/2009] Windows 7's Media Player plays the files natively.
Product Description:
The new HSC1U records beautiful, detailed high-definition video images and clear, high-quality sound that make for exceptional viewing on today’s most advanced home theater systems. The HSC1U records directly onto high-capacity SDHC memory cards. This tough, compact model debuts as the world's smallest and lightest 3CCD high-definition video camcorder, and because there are no moving parts in the recording section, the HSC1U is also exceptionally resistant to impact. You can count on reliable, virtually error-free recording. The 40 GB portable hard disk drive is ideal for transferring and storing footage from your camcorder, and an included 4 GB SDHC card -- which can store up to one hour of high-definition video -- makes it simple to start recording right away.
Features:
- Record HD video direct to SDHC cards; up to 1 hour on a 4 GB SDHC card
- 3CCD system delivers improved color, detail, and gradation
- Leica Dicomar lens with 12x optical zoom; built-in O.I.S.
- 5.1-channel audio recording; Zoom mic function adjusts audio to match camcorder movement
- Includes 40 GB portable hard disk drive and 4 GB SDHC memory card
Available at Amazon
List Price: USD 2099.00
Lowest Used Price: USD 979.99
Lowest New Price: USD 1812.80
