Hitachi DZ-BD7HA Camcorder Review
Hitachi DZ-BD7HA is the world’s first BluRay camcorder and was launched with a promise of ultimate combination of capacity and convenience. It is a Hybrid camcorder, meaning it can record to a BluRay disc. It has 30 GB built-in HDD that records approximately four hours of 1920×1080 high definition video in HS mode.
The one feature that makes DZ-BD7HA stand out is its BluRay format. To view footage recorded to a BluRay disc you need a BluRay player that will cost you hundreds of dollars. If you choose to shoot to HDD, you will have to deal with the compression format, which is more stubborn than AVCHD. The only way to export movies is through the provided HD Writer software as 1920×1080 H .264 files or 720×480 MPEG2 files. The H.264 files are not compatible with a lot of playback software. The stills can be captured only to SD card and not HDD.
DZ-BD7HA is priced at $1,600 and for that amount of money it is the poorest performer of its class. It features a 1/2.8-inch CMOS sensor. It has a gross pixel count of 5,300,000 and an effective pixel count in video mode of 2,070,000. One of the biggest guff ups of this camcorder is its low light performance. If you are shooting outdoors in bright sunlight, its performance is good but in any other situation where the light condition is any less than sunny the video quality is absolutely poor. The video looks grainy, badly colored, and blur. One of the reasons for this disappointing performance is the combination of auto controls with the lack of manual controls.
When compared with other camcorders that record in AVCHD in similar bit rates, like the Canon HR10, Panasonic HDC-SX5, and Sony HDR-UX7, the DZ-BD7HA was sabotaged by all of them. The video quality of all the other camcorders was much better than Hitachi, in all aspects like color, sharpness, motion, and compression. DZ-BD7HA is equipped with electronic image stabilization (EIS) that operates by creating a digital buffer from pixels on the perimeter of the imaging chip. The Optical Image Stabilization (OIS), that functions with a gyroscope, without reducing the effective pixel count, is superior to the EIS. The use of an inferior feature in this $1,600 camcorder is unexplainable.
The Auto controls of DZ-BD7HA are as disappointing as the manual controls. The auto exposure response lags and then all of a sudden jumps into action. The transition from one setting to another is not at all smooth. The auto exposure also seems to have a bad metering system. The camcorder has a hard time finding focus for subjects that are away. The camcorder features a few one-touch controls for image correction. There are four Program AE modes in the main menu: spotlight, sand and snow, portrait, and low light. In the LCD cavity, a button labeled BLC activates the Backlight Compensation. This Backlight Compensation increases exposure to bring out details of subjects that are strongly backlit.
The manual controls of DZ-BD7HA are equally inadequate. It has expose controls, few white balance options, basic manual focus, zoom, and an option for guidelines on the LCD. It features a 10x optical zoom and a digital zoom that can be extended to either 40x or 500x, 40x being better than 500x. The manual focus is as bad as the auto focus. You can activate the manual focus by the push of a button on the LCD after which you are prompted to move the joystick left or right, without any indication of where exactly on the focal range you are. Hitachi also does not include any type of focusing tool to assist with the adjustments on the LCD. The exposure control is not all that effective because it offers a range of +/-6 only. And even in this range neither is the darkest setting very dark, nor is the brightest one really blown out. All the other camcorders, other than Sony, have a shutter speed control, but not DZ-BD7HA. Since there are very few manual controls, the user will not have to go through the pain of understanding and using them, all at the same time. This may work in favor of beginners and the DZ-BD7HA, since not many professionals might be interested in the model. With all the major manual controls being activated from the LCD, it is strange that the white balance controls need to be activated from the menu. The options for white balance include Auto, Set (Manual), Outdoor, Indoor 1 (incandescent or halogen), and Indoor 2 (fluorescent). The presets are comparable with Sony and Panasonic, Canon’s are the best. The manual controls simple, because there are a few of them.
The Audio options are not very impressive either. It has a mic filter to reduce wind interference. The built-in stereo microphone is placed on the camcorder, above the lens. This placement is not very apt for most of the camcorders, but in the case of DZ-BD7HA this is not the case, since it is big enough for the hand to not interfere with the microphone. It does not feature a headphone jack. It does, however, have a hot shoe and mic input. But then from a $1,600 toy we at least can expect to have as many features as possible, let alone the performance.
The USB and HDMI terminals are located within the LCD cavity. Most of the ports are placed on the left side of the camcorder in places which are difficult to find and to top it the ports are not labeled either. The flaps covering the ports are not at all sturdy and dangle by thin plastic strips. The thin battery shaped DC adapter fits in the battery chamber. The battery cannot be charged when the camcorder is plugged into the external power supply. Once the battery is discharged the camcorder takes a pretty long time before it restarts after you have shut the camcorder off and inserted the new battery. The SD/SDHC card slot is located under the camcorder, not making it easy to change cards when mounted on a tripod. The still pictures can only be recorded to a card and not the HDD or DVD.
The menu does not seem to be very complicated for a camcorder with three different recording media and hence three different playback methods. Look wise and functionally the menus are identical whether recording to HDD, BluRay, or SD/SDHC card. It features an Auto mode, but since the performance of the camcorder isn’t great, the Auto mode is of little use. It also features a Quick Start button.
Over and above Hitachi DZ-BD7HA has got it all wrong. This $1,600 hybrid camcorder has the poorest image quality, very few manual controls, no optical image stabilization but instead an electronic one, and a very poor auto response system.
Best Prices on the Web
Technical Details
- Brand Name: Hitachi
- Model: DZBD7HA
- Media Type: Hard disk drive, 3″ BD-R, 3″ BD-RE, DVD-RAM (8 cm), DVD-R (8cm), DVD-RW (8 cm)
- Lens Type: Zoom lens
- Optical zoom: 10 x
- maximum_aperture_range: F/1.8-3.0
- Shooting Modes: Digital photo mode
- Video Input: Camcorder
- Display Size: 2.7 inches
- Optical Sensor Resolution: 5.3 MP
- Optical Sensor Technology: CMOS
- optical_sensor_size: 1/2.8″
- Viewfinder Type: LCD
- Audio Input: Microphone
- microphone_operation_mode: Stereo
- Height: 3.4 inches
- Weight: 1.4 pounds
- Depth: 6.5 inches
- Width: 3.3 inches
Leave your response!