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Panasonic Pro AG-HSC1U AVCHD 3CCD Flash Memory Camcorder with 12x Optical Zoom | 
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| Brand: Panasonic
Category: Photography
List Price: $2,099.00
Buy New: $1,569.95
You Save: $529.05 (25%)
New (8) Used (3) from $1,223.66
Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 21525
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Optical Zoom: 12
Shipping Weight (lbs): 6
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 7.2 x 1
MPN: AG-HSC1U
UPC: 791871303054
EAN: 0791871303054
ASIN: B000NAW2PS
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | Record HD video direct to SDHC cards; up to 1 hour on a 4 GB SDHC card | | • | 3CCD system delivers improved color, detail, and gradation | | • | Leica Dicomar lens with 12x optical zoom; built-in O.I.S. | | • | 5.1-channel audio recording; Zoom mic function adjusts audio to match camcorder movement | | • | Includes 40 GB portable hard disk drive and 4 GB SDHC memory card |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Included Accessories: Panasonic AG-HSC1U Camera, 4GB SD card, AC adaptor, power & DC cables, A/V cable, battery, wireless remote, USB cable and software CD-ROM. Panasonic's AG-HSC1U PROLINE Camcorder is the world's smallest, lightest 3 Chip HD Camcorder around. This little Palmcorder has all kinds of professional features. On board is a three inch Widescreen (16:9) LCD monitor. It can capture 2.1 megapixel 16:9 still pictures, even during video recording. The AG-HSC1U comes standard with a portable 40GB media storage unit for off-loading content from the 4GB SDHC memory card. A 12X Leica Dicomar lens captures vibrant, accurate color and minimizes harmful reflections -- making images crisp, clear and free of flare and ghosting. It also provides slow, smooth zooms for remarkably professional playback. Audio is recorded to 5.1 channels, immersing you in sound and bringing you into the action. A Zoom Mic zoom in and record the sounds related to your shot's main subject. The lightweight, imaginative design makes it easy to carry and use anywhere - even mounted on a helmet, robot or a small animal! Use your imagination; the possibilities are endless. Faster record startup. (only 1.7 seconds from the time the monitor is opened) Record high quality widescreen still images (even during video recording) Fast, accurate Auto Focus (Manual Focus as well) No noise from a tape or disc transport to get into the on board microphone 5.1 channel surround sound audio recording with 5 microphones on board (Dolby AC-3) Super directivity Zoom Mic function. 2 channel external Mic input (3.5mm phone plug) 3 widescreen LCD side screen, Digital Zoom Off, 1-30X, 1-700X Uses the latest MP4 compression scheme (MPEG-4 AVC/H.264) Five program AE modes in manual mode, Fades to Black or White with Audio Fade Three modes of Audio - Auto / Manual / Manual + AGC audio levels Directional keys make it easy to navigate
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Excellent video camera, but some small quirks July 3, 2008
I love this camera. It's tiny, but does not feel like a toy. The auto-focus is very good and fast enough for my needs. The 12x optical zoom with Optical Image Stabilization is great. The image quality is amazing (though I should say I jumped a number of technologies as my previous video camera was S-VHS).
The lack of broad AVC-HD support did cause me some pain (mostly financial) as to solve it I switched from Adobe Premiere to Sony Vegas (for a number of reasons including the lack of AVC-HD support in Premiere). So far I haven't been successful in being able to view AVC-HD videos in any Media Player so I have to load Vegas just to view the raw video on my PC. I also purchased a much larger 16Gb SDHC card since the included 4Gb card was just too small for my needs, and after using the camera for a while I plan to buy a second battery (I get about 80 minutes out of the battery).
Speaking of the battery, the charger has a strange quirk in that you can't charge the battery at the same time you are powering the camera. This seems weird to me, and I have forgotten to unplug the cable from the charger once or twice and not ended up with a charged battery (it doesn't matter if the camera is actually connected, or on, there is apparently a switch that is hit when you plug in the camera's power cable so it must be unplugged in order to charge the battery). Also, the camera itself will not charge a battery in the camera, so you can either power the camera or charge a battery, never both.
The microphones (all 5 of them) on the camera work great when recording video, as long as the action is fairly close. This isn't a complaint as I would have been shocked if the camera did well at recording far away (it's not magic) and thankfully it does have an external microphone jack (which I admit that I have yet to use as I usually digitally record the audio on-site with my Wolverine or Nomad Jukebox 3). For family videos it is does great at capturing very reasonable audio.
You should know that the external backup hard drive is big. The hard drive is nearly as long and as wide as the largest dimensions of the camera itself (not as thick in the third dimension) and while the camera is heavier, the hard drive gives it a good run. The hard drive does work, and it works well, but my feeling is that if they are going to force you to buy this as part of the package, it should at least have been a large (100Gb or larger) hard drive (especially since the retail price for 40Gb drives are well under $40). It should be optional or an accessory. I'll stick with my Wolverine for this as well.
My biggest complaint is that the camera constantly resets the image numbering. All of the other digital cameras I have owned keep a running count of videos or still images taken and numbers the files accordingly until I specifically reset them (for example, my Sony F-828 is currently generating images like DSC08428.jpg, which means that I've taken 8,428 photos with that camera since I last reset it). Having the file numbers constantly starting from 0 on the media means that I have to renumber them all before I copy or take a chance on accidentally overwriting a previous file.
Another complaint about the camera is that it refuses to record more than about an hour at a time in "normal" quality. I'm guessing that this is a file size issue and when it comes close it starts blinking the display and then just stops recording. How dumb is this? I understand that the file system on the card might have limitations, but how hard would it have been to simply open another file and keep recording until the media was full (hopefully without a video skip between the files)? If there is an option for this I haven't found it yet. This limitation caused me to miss a few minutes of video in the middle of a performance I was recording, so I was very annoyed. Now that I know about the limitation I can likely work around it, but why should I have to?
The camera takes still pictures that look reasonable, but many of them have a strange "cut-out" quality to them (like the foreground and the background are disconnected). I'm not sure whether this is a haloing affect or something else, but I didn't buy the camera for stills and for the occasional still it's good enough. It will definitely not replace my F-828 for still photos.
I can't comment on the software that comes with the camera as I don't use it. I did download the "AVC-HD to DVCPRO Transcoder" from the Panasonic web site (they didn't make the software easy to find) from https://eww.pavc.panasonic.co.jp/pro-av/support/desk/e/download.htm. Note that you'll have to go through some significant annoyance because they must send you an e-mail with a custom password (which didn't work for me the first time but did the second).
Summary: In general I think this is a great camera for HD video in a very small package with the features I needed. There are a few quirks and I have a few other minor complaints, but they are, so far, all easily worked around. All-in-all I am very happy with this camera and now that I know about the file size limitation it's not too hard to work around it. Support for the AVC-HD encoding is sparse but growing quickly.
Comprehensive little pocket camcorder April 27, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The AG-HSC1U is a VERY small camcorder, for my particular use the size and solid-state recording was a big part of the choice.
Once in use the camcorder impressed with beautiful pictures, however for interviews one need to mount a bracket to hold the microphone, I got one with 2 shoe mounts for a video light to pop the faces and also a microphone, it would be nice to have a headphone jack, but there is no such thing, instead there is a recording level indicator on the screen, I was a bit apprehensive about this starting out, but in practical everyday use this works well.
This camcorder is a "Pro" version of the older Panasonic SD1 camera, the colors have been tweaked to match the look of other professional cameras, this works well and I find the shots to play nicely with much more expensive panasonic pro cameras.
Unlike most serious camcorders this camera is mostly menu driven, there is no exposure-compensation. however there is a small joystick which makes it easy to adjust the lighting. the most common used adjustments are accessed by sliding the mode slider to Manual and then pressing the joystick once, this will let you toggle through the settings one at a time, you can select a option by moving the cursor sideways - once selected you can move sideways to increase or decrease a setting such as aperture, gain, or shutter speed, press downwards to exit a option. in practical use this works easy and are simple to figure out, I use the aperture all the time and it is the first option when I turn on manual because it was used last. The camera have zebra stripes so it is easy to judge exposure.
The camera could possible have a bit more dynamic range, but I have not found it being a problem, I typically shoot outdoors interviews with a graduated ND filter to control the sky and use a reflector to pop some light in the top of the face which also is in the ND filter, the result look great and do not look like something from a cheap camcorder.
The lens is longer than the other SD cameras with 12x zoom, which really is about as long as you can hold still any way, I use this camera mostly on monopod or handheld in the cockpit of airplanes. The lens is sharp and with no vignetting.
The AVCHD files edits well with Vegas Pro 8, I have not tried the economy compression and only use the best quality setting which looks beautiful on the screen. A added bonus is the 40gig portable harddrive which ships with this camera model, the drive is battery powered and I have successfully dumped 5 days worth of cards to the drive with no recharge required.
Generally the camera performs well and overall I am very pleased with this purchase, it plays well with other cameras and I am about to pick up a second for the company. In my personal opinion this camera is highly recommended as long as you realize that have have some limitations it will serve you well and deliver images you can use for production. Ultimately, only you can determine if this camera will "do the trick" for you, based on your needs and the performance vs price of the camera, you can find larger cameras with more features at the same price, but they are pretty darn hard to stuff in the pocket in the cockpit.
 If you do not have Windows XP or 2000 be very aware! April 2, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is a good produce except for a few things. The battery life on both the camera and the external hard drive is very poor. The software that comes with the camera can only work on Windows XP or 2000... sorry Mac or Vista users. However Panasonic does have an application that can work on Windows Vista but it is in Japanese's. If you do run Finial Cut Studio 2 in your Mac you can import it in to your timeline. I have not got it to work with Adobe or Avid editing programs. The audio is quite good give the nature of the camera. Unless you need a small 3 CCD camera that stores on a memory card I would suggest you consider something a little cheaper... maybe a Sony HDV cam? Hope this helps!
 Camera is great but beware the external Hard Disk Drive March 24, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The AG-HSC1UP is easy to use, light and compact, and takes great video. Transferring AVCHD footage from the camcorder itself to a Mac is a breeze. Do note that if you transfer video from the camcorder to the included portable Hard Disk Drive (VW-PT2), and then try to transfer those clips from the HDD to a Mac for editing in Final Cut, it can be confusing. Here's a solution:
Connect the portable hard disk drive to computer using USB cable and turn on the HDD. Icon "untitled" will appear on desktop.
Open Final Cut. Click Final Cut in menu bar > System Settings > Scratch Disks. Click "Set". Then select destination folder (for example user name > document > Final Cut Documents > new folder (and name the new folder). Then also click "Set" for Waveform Cache, Thumbnail Cache, and Autosave Cache.
Then on the menu bar, click File > Log and Transfer. When new screen appears, click icon "Add Folder" in upper left corner. then click "Untitled" icon > Pana > 080311_1 (or whatever number appears). Click Open. Drag clip from "Name" to "Untitled Project 1" where it says "Drag Media Here".
The next time you open Final Cut, click File > Import Files > Documents > Final Cut Documents > Capture Scratch > Untitled Project 1 > and there, by golly, will be Clip #1.mov. Click on Clip #1 (et al) and it will appear in the browser window.
It's easier just to get some extra SDHC cards and forget the HDD.
PanasONIC AG-HSCIU AVCHD CAMCORDER January 3, 2008
16 out of 16 found this review helpful
After reading many reviews of this camcorder and others, I decided to make the jump for this one. I had previous experience with other panasonic professional camcorders so I had some idea going into this what to expect. I rate it a full five stars because of the outstanding image quality, ease of editing, small form factor, and because it uses SDHC cards which are readily available and affordable. The high definition image quality is nothing short of fantastic. There is fineness in detail. When shooting into bright light with people between me and that light, it compensates very effectively so everything is naturally exposed. There is a film-like quality to it that looks fabulous. In bright sunlight I always use an ND and polarizer filters. This camera turns on instantly and I am ready to start shooting. It has a good selection of manual controls. There is no manual focusing ring. Why they left that off, who knows. I use a step up ring to use readily available 49mm filters. Battery life is excellent but get another one or two- that goes without saying. Better safe than sorry when you are in the wild. It is small, lightweight and easy to operate. I use it handheld most of the time with a flash bracket I bought in a second hand shop for $3. This bracket allows me to better hold the camera more steadily. I also use cinesaddles instead of tripods and fluid heads. The built in OIS works great. I like the variable speed zoom servo. I can get silky slow zooms and fast ones if needed. It is still photo capable and I have used it but it's of lesser importance to me.
Perhaps the best part is that it records 1080i/60 directly onto SDHC cards. No tape mechanism to jam. After shooting you pull out the card and place into your computer for fast and easy transfer. iMovie '08, Final Cut Express 4, Adobe Premiere CS3, and other software titles work flawlessly in handling the high definition footage. Editing is quick and easy. It does come with a handy self-powered 40gb HD for transferring footage in the field from the SDHC card. Very thoughtful of Panasonic to include this. It means you only need one or two cards to shoot with. An 8gb card will hold 83 minutes of HD footage or a 16gb card will allow you to shoot for two hours and twenty minutes. Remember don't forget spare batteries! The LCD viewfinder is large and bright. I have no trouble using it on the brightest of sunlit days. The 5.1 audio works great and does an excellent job when shooting interviews. I just love this camera and would not go back to tape ever again. We will be putting up sample footage on our website www.kineticimagefilmgroup.com soon.
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