Manual focus using the touch-sensitive buttons was difficult. Even though the 2.5-inch LCD screen is sharp and served up a useful image under various lighting conditions, it was hard to tell from the small screen when the focus was perfect. A magnified portion of the viewfinder, as offered on many digital still cameras, might have helped in this case. Also, the buttons proved an uncomfortable interface.
Hitachi rates the battery life at as long as 105 minutes when using the best recording quality, though you can expect about half that with typical start/stop recording and occasional replay of scenes you've shot. Similar to last year's DZ-GX20A, the Hitachi DZ-GX3300A's video quality is about what you'd expect from a midpriced MiniDV camcorder. At low compression, video was sharp with some motion artifacts and edge crawl, along with a bit of blooming. At higher compression levels, banding showed up more often in areas with significant gradations in brightness. Overall, the DZ-GX3300A, with its higher megapixel count, was a touch sharper than its siblings, the Hitachi DZ-GX3200A and the Hitachi DZ-GX3100A. Colors, though accurate, were sometimes oversaturated.
As usual, low-light footage exhibited more grain than well-lit scenes, though the DZ-GX3300A yielded pleasing low-light video that was brighter and more colorful than one might expect at this price. The low-light mode helped to brighten dim scenes, though it does noticeably lower the shutter speed, so moving objects and pans look a bit choppy.
The Hitachi DZ-GX3300A's still images were impressive for a camcorder, though the auto white balance produced extremely warm results with our lab's tungsten lights. The tungsten white-balance mode worked better, but we had to set white balance manually to get truly neutral results.
What You'll Pay
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