Product Reviews

At a time when increasing numbers of consumers are switching their allegiance to high-definition video, the major brands are having to work that bit harder to convince first-time camcorder owners that standard-definition products are a good buy. One such example is Panasonic's SDR-H280, a so-called 'Hybrid' camcorder that gives you the choice of recording either to high-capacity SD cards or to its own internal 30GB hard disk. This device is aimed squarely at those for whom standard definition remains an economic and practical entry point into home video.

The SDR-H280's three 1/6in 800,000 pixel CCDs produce 16:9 anamorphic widescreen movies at an effective resolution of 540,000 pixels, with standard-ratio 4:3 pictures coming in at 630,000 pixels. These compare to stills capabilities of 710,000 and 540,000 pixels respectively.

The Leica Dicomar lens offers a 10x (3.0-30mm) optical zoom range at between f/1.8 (wide) to f/28 (tele). Digital zoom options are a reasonable 25x and a less-impressive 700x, and if you're inclined to use optical lens filters, the screw thread diameter is 37mm.

The H280 also benefits from Panasonic's excellent and very effective Mega OIS (optical image stabilisation), which is designed to help iron out wobbly, hand-held camera work. Electronic shutter speeds vary from 1/50 of a second to 1/8000 of a second in movie mode. The mini-joystick at the rear offers manual control over focus, exposure and white balance via settings displayed on the LCD screen.

The H280 uses the same Mpeg-2 video compression as used by standard DVD to write its widescreen clips to a choice of recording media. The highest-quality setting is an impressive 10Mbits/sec, while the

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middle SP setting provides 50 minutes' worth of recording on a 4GB SDHC card or seven hours on the internal 30GB HDD. At the highest LP (2.5Mbits/sec) mode, it's possible to cram up to 27 hours on the HDD, although at the expense of quality. It's easy to import the resulting .mod files into a recent-model Mac via USB or card reader, too.

The H280 body styling is similar to several other comparable camcorders, especially the Everio G HDD range from JVC. It's a solidly built product that's nice and chunky to hold, thanks to the weight of its internal hard disk drive. Even without the litium-ion battery, it weighs in at 450g. There's no viewfinder on this model. Instead, users must rely on the 2.7in widescreen colour LCD screen.

Looking at the front of the camcorder, the knurled lens surround is misleading in that it looks like a focus ring; in fact, you use the mini-joystick to manually focus the H280. You can see your adjustments on the LCD screen's head-up display.

Given the limitations of using Mpeg-2 to generate original video recordings, the picture and audio quality is very impressive when recording at the highest-quality setting. Where it's practical to make manual adjustments during recording, the resulting images have a very good tonal range; saturated colours are reproduced well and, providing you don't pan and zoom too quickly, the Mpeg-2 compression doesn't produce noticeable artefacts.

Dolby Digital two-channel processing is applied to the built-in microphone's audio, which sounds fine on a good playback system or when imported into a Mac for editing. Thumbnail-based clip management makes it very easy to delete, re-order and even trim individual clips, and the added ability to move files between each of the recording media is also a major bonus.

Like its siblings in the Hybrid SD/HDD range, Panasonic's SDR-H280 seeks to provide an economical bridge for users who are looking for the ease and convenience of tapeless recording, but who are not yet willing to make the leap up to HD. Furthermore, its widescreen movie and stills images will easily import via USB to iMovie HD and iMovie 08.

In all, then, the Panasonic SDR-H280 represents pretty good value for money for those who really don't want the hassle of either tapes or DVD discs.