Hitachi DZ-BX35A DVD Camcorder with 25x Optical Zoom

I have had off and on again problems with hitachi hybrid, and now the dvd will not eject disc and i can't access dvd mode. I have many discs that were not finalized(which means no playback!!!!!) Plus almost every time I recorded onto disc, I had disc error, and had to stop recording and repair, and missed many special moments. DO NOT BUY!!!!!

I can't believe this camera has been so highly-rated. This camera wasted lots of my time recording important events and then was unable to reliably "finalize" my discs for display on my DVD players. I recorded 5 brand-new discs at an event last night, everything seemed fine, and then later that night two of the five discs failed to finalize and gave messages about the discs being corrupted or unreadable. The only options were to fix the problems by re-formatting the discs and permanently losing contents of two of the discs. (That's a 40% rate of loss!) I used the recommended Maxell DVD-RW discs to avoid exactly this sort of problem and still got very poor results. In advance of a big vacation in two weeks I'm going out to shop for another camera tonight. DON'T BUY THIS CAMERA unless you TEST THOROUGHLY in advance of your vacation or special event. I may have a lemon, but this could be the current state of Hitachi quality and performance. It may also be a problem inherent in recording to mini-DVDs. All I know is that I am very frustrated after following all directions and instructions carefully. I lost some important video memories when I used this camera and I'm not letting it happen on my big vacation in two weeks.

I purchased this Hitachi DZ-BX35A DVD Camcorder at a clearance price on the spur-of-the-moment one day prior to my departure to Egypt for a 2 week Holiday. The clearance price was $149 and I figured the worst case was that I'd get some video images from our trip and I'd learn a bit about camcorders and be better educated for a future purchase when the prices drop for the HD flash memory models. Despite the quick purchase decision, I did attempt a bit of background research on DVD camcorders and this Hitachi model in particular. Because we would not have access to a computer during our travels, the DVD models seemed a good bet as I could take along a supply of discs and do the transfers later on return home. On checking reviews of this model at some of the online camcorder sites I saw several reviewers who totally panned this model giving it very low ratings across all aspects of its performance. This almost disuaded me from buying but then I noticed one comment on one of the reviews noting that the reviewers were comparing this to $500-800 models. He noted that he was a beginner and was happy so far. The $149 price was too much to resist so I went back and bought the Hitachi and 6 DVD+RW discs the day prior to my departure. I could not find the highly rated Maxell disks and bought Sony instead. They have worked fine. They play on my computer DVD player as well as on my home theatre DVD player.

So with that prelude, how has it worked? I am totally satisfied so far (but recognize this is my first experiecne recording any kind of video). I suspect some of my quibbles are common to many camcorders - for example, the 100x zoom is great (even astonishing) but you have to learn to control the speed of the zoom and a tripod or some camera support is almost essential at the longer focal lengths. In the bright sun wearing sunglasses, I found the view finder virtually impossible to use; the LCD display was usable but very hard to see any detail. The focus seems to lag a bit sometimes while panning on objects at different distances. Battery life seemed adequate and the ability to run the camera in the hotel off the DC cord was helpful for reviewing the prior day's shooting, formatting disks, etc. The AC adapeter worked fine on either 110 or 220V. Again, speaking as a beginner with nothing else to compare it to the image quality seems fine for a 640x480 resolution and played on my 42" plasma with adequate resolution. Some of clips I shot seemed to be a bit off on the color rendition and some in the Egyptian desert sun were kind of wahsed out (but then again it was incredibly bright out there).

My only complaint at this point is with the power switch - its too easy to accidentally turn on or off. There is supposedly a lock button but on my model it does not seem to work. This is mainly worrisome regarding the time it take the camera to write the images just shot onto the disk.

Some minor stuff: the menus seem a bit awkward to use and the still photo option records only to an SD card at only 1.3 megapixzels but this is not unique to Hitachi models. Overall, I am delighted with this camera so far and have found a an excellent learning experience.

During the summer of 2007 I checked with a good consumer magazine and saw this camera fairly well recommended. Then I visited this site and read more reviews. After purchasing the camera I have found the reviews I read were very accurate. It is easy to use, a nice size, has great zoom capability and I feel it is worth the price.

One observation I made was the same as what I remember from the review - that is that the microphone is very sensitive. I plan to keep that in mind and use it to our advantage when I video my son playing piano.

Another note is that the still pictures are not that good but since that is not what we bought the camera for that is of little importance.

It has an amazing zoom lens! The down side of that is when zoomed in on a subject it is very difficult to hold the camera steady.
I've noted that the auto-focus is quite sensitive as well and changes the focus if any little thing comes into the picture.
To that end I highly recommend using a tripod while videoing important things. If you don't have a tripod available then try to find a fence post, bench back, car hood, anything that is stable to rest the camera on.

I am looking forward to using the camera for videos for years to come!

We're very happy with the video quality of this camcorder. However, there are a couple of rather large design flaws:
1. There is no auto shut off when the camera is powered on but not in use. To make matters worse, the power button is easily turned on accidentally. Consequently, we very often excitedly reach for our recorder only to find that the battery is dead. This happens so much that we've taken to removing the battery when the camera isn't in use.
2. Ok - I can't be the only person who forgets to remove the lens cap. How hard would it be to prevent recording until the lens cap is removed? As it is, I've got quite a few minutes of "black cats at midnight" footage.
3. Power is required to eject the DVD. So, when your battery is dead because the poorly designed power button turned on an drained it, not only can you no longer record video, you can't even watch what you have already recorded!