This means that to upload a video while on the move, you’ll need to carry a power adaptor with you. However, you have to run it off mains power to access files via USB. The SDR-H80 is compact, comfortable to hold and easy to operate and its battery is capable of almost two hours of continuous recording. We’ve seen worse results from camcorders with small sensors in dark conditions, but there’s still a lot of noise here. In less favourable lighting, it really struggles. However, the results start to suffer when viewed on a large TV, as there isn’t enough detail to fill a big display. In good lighting conditions, the SDR-H80 performs admirably, with accurate colours and reasonable detail. The 1/8in CCD sensor is among the smallest you’ll find on any camcorder. Despite this, the huge zoom makes it a very flexible camcorder. However, even with stabilisation, we struggled to get a steady handheld shot beyond a factor of around 50x. Optical image stabilisation helps reduce camera shake on handheld shots. The 70x optical zoom is the biggest we’ve seen, making it ideal for wildlife shooting. It also has an SDHC card slot should you need yet more space. This will hold around 15 hours of MPEG2 video at the highest quality setting of 10Mbit/s, which makes it a good choice if you’re going on a long holiday. The SDR-H80 has a built-in 60GB hard disk. We’d rather see it run directly from the camcorder’s built-in storage, as on Flip’s Mino (What’s New, Shopper 250). Finally, the software must be installed on your PC before you can use this feature. We also see no reason why the software can’t include all clips of less than 10 minutes in length. These can then be uploaded directly to YouTube.ĭissapointingly, there are no basic editing tools for setting in and out points. Connect the SDR-H80 to your PC and the provided software launches automatically, showing thumbnails of any clips shot in Web Mode. You get a 10-minute countdown to remind you of YouTube’s maximum running time. Panasonic has designed its SDR-H80 camcorder specifically for this purpose and includes YouTube-friendly features.Ī small button activates the Web Mode. However, lots of video is shot purely for YouTube. I'm Josh Goldman and that's the Panasonic SDR-H80.For capturing events such as weddings, we’d recommend an HD camcorder such as the HDC-SD9.Įven if you don’t have an HD TV now, you probably will in the future. That said, if you still live completely in a low resolution world, the recordings are destined for video sharing websites or you simply want to capture the moment no matter how it looks, the H80 is an option and it does have that long lens. Video's soft with readily visible noise, digital artifacting and clipped highlights, lots of purple and green fringing around high contrast subjects and merely ok color reproduction. Unfortunately the video quality is typical of standard definition consumer camcorders. There's also a web mode button that limits the time on your recording so it fits within YouTube's 10 minute rule and there's included software for easy uploading to the sight. Other features include full manual control over focus, shutter speed and aperture as well as Panasonics intelligent auto which will handle everything for you so you can just concentrate on recording. Thankfully there is optical image stabilization but really there's no amount of stabilization that's going to prevent this lens from shaking when fully extended and used in your hands so you'll definitely need a tripod. However the H80's main attraction is the ridiculously long 70X zoom lens, which as you can imagine lets you get very close to your subject while you're very far away. It's a standard definition camcorder with a 60 gig hard drive for storing up to 14 hours of its highest quality Mpeg 2 video and if that's not enough there's an SD card slot on the side for adding even more. Hi I'm Josh Goldman, Senior Editor for CNET reviews and this is the Panasonic SDR-H80.
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