Hitachi DZ-GX3100A

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Hitachi rates the DZ-GX3100A's battery life at as much as 145 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.

The DZ-GX3100A's video quality is about what you'd expect from a midprice MiniDV camcorder with an equivalent sensor. 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.

Low-light footage exhibited more grain than did well-lit scenes, though the DZ-GX3100A yielded pleasing low-light video that was brighter and more colorful than you'd expect at this price. The low-light mode helps to brighten dim scenes, though it does noticeably lower the frame rate, so moving objects and pans look choppy.

Stills weren't very impressive, though that's to be expected from a 1-megapixel camcorder. The auto white balance produced slightly warm results with our lab's tungsten lights but fared better than the tungsten white-balance mode, which had a magenta tinge. Manual white balance turned in the most neutral results.

If you're looking for a relatively inexpensive DVD camcorder and you don't need the DZ-GX3300A's 3-megapixel stills, the Hitachi DZ-GX3100A might be for you. Of course, if you want a little more sharpness in your video, then you may want to take a look at this camcorder's slightly more expensive sibling, the Hitachi DZ-GX3200A.

See more CNET content tagged:: camcorder,; Hitachi Ltd.,; sensor,; footage,; CCD

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