Customers Reviews
2009-08-12
It's a great value!
We bought this camcorder just before going on a "hiking vacation" in Southern Utah & the Grand Canyon North Rim. We hiked over 50 miles of the North Rim, Zion, Bryce & Red Canyon trails and returned home with over 24 GigaBytes of .MOV's & JPG's.
We had no idea as to what to expect, as to image quality on a 1080P Hi-Def TV, until after we returned home. Quite frankly, we didn't expect very much considering the very low price. We were amazed by the vivid, sharply detailed images that we saw displayed on our TV!
Some of the pluses:
It is very small & light weight and appears to be well-made.
It's very "user friendly" & the controls are all very conveniently located.
The battery is extremely small, so we bought a spare (for about $16) but we never had to use it, even on all-day hikes.
The SD-HC flash memory is very compact and inexpensive. Make sure that you buy Class 6 Hi-Speed! (the "Class" rating is located inside of the large "C" on the SD-HC label.) We bought (3) 8GB chips, (about $16 each) but never completely filled 1 chip during an entire day's hiking and off-loaded all of our files to our laptop each evening.
It appears that the "Zoom Noise Update" mentioned in C. Trent's revue has been incorporated in recent production units.
There are a few short-comings: (but what can you expect for $179?)
Only 5X optical zoom - not a problem when filming landscape scenes.
(Actually, we found that the detail was so sharp that we didn't need to zoom.)
It does have a rather small field - a wider angle lens might be needed for some uses.
No optical viewfinder - but many smaller camcorders omit this feature.
Image Stabilization isn't very effective in 1080P mode.
A few hints:
The best way to store and play Hi-Def movies from this (or any other)Hi-Def camcorder is to buy a "WD TV HD Media Player." (about $85 to $119) It connects to your Hi-Def TV with an HDMI cable and can connect to 1 or 2 USB hard drives, thumb drives or the Flash Memory chip from the camcorder (when installed in a USB adapter) and play Photos, AVI's, MOV's & many other formats. This is an awesome addition to any Hi-Def TV!
(Make sure that you update the WD TV firmware to the latest version to get rid of some of the glitches in the earlier versions and to make it compatible with additional media formats. A Western Digital support rep can help you do this.)
You can also connect the camcorder to your TV with component video cables for play-back.
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2009-02-28
High Def Camera
The camera works great. We had a problem in that the camera came with the wrong battery charger and getting the correct one was a bit of a challenge and took several weeks, I am hoping that I don't need any more help from their "customer service" department.
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2009-02-21
It's good, but only if you know what to expect
I am an Amateur visual effects artist and I work with a lot of different applications. One thing that is crucial to me is motion tracking. I've been using a 10 year old Sony Handycam for a long time to shoot test shots for special effects, and while it's been enough for doing the job, I really needed something higher quality.
The DXG 595v sounds really good on paper; 1080p, 5 megapixel shots, really cheap. But unfortunately, it's got a couple flaws that make it unusable for my needs. Video quality wasn't that important to me, after all I was using a 10 year old 480i optical camcorder.
#1 flaw was optical distortion. Since there is no motion compensation when shooting in 1080p, the slow sensor filmed distorted images that differ between each frame (short, stretched, skewed, etc). This made motion capture impossible. If you plan on using a tripod, then it might work fine, but that beats the purpose of motion tracking.
#2, the average bitrate at 1080p was about 1.7 MBps (MegaBytes), which is about 1/4 of the standard 1080p and 1/2 standard bitrate for 720p. Daylight shots are fine, but anything indoors will immediately be very grainy.
#3, the widest angle possible on this camcorder makes it very difficult to work in close quarters. Even in a 24x18 foot room, I had to squeeze against the wall in order to get full character shots. My handycam was 35mm wide angle, this is more close to 47mm.
For a lot of people this camera might work, I wasn't expecting much, but I was expecting something slightly more usable than my Handycam. Build quality was better than I expected, and the features were enough to hold my interest until I shot some video.
Be advised that this is a TOY. Not even close to amateur level, and no where near professional level. For that price I would look for a great digital camera that also did 720p, than a really cheap camcorder.
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2009-01-09
Very good for the money.
I am writing this review based on the price of around $200. Im sure a 600$ + hd video camera would be better in every way. Same as you cant complain your new Kia dosent have all the features or is not as nice as your friends new BWM.
Most other HD video cameras in the price range look like toys, with small 1 to 2" flip screens, mono sound that sounds bad, no optical zoom, the video quality is poor even at 720, colors washed out and just not worth messing with unless they are for your 10 year old to record his bicycle stunts.
I just got this camera and it seems very good for the price and is not built like a toy. Has a large 3" lcd, stereo sound, 5x optical zoom, latching SD card cover and uses common batteries. The colors look very accurate and bright, when played back on my 47" 1080 lcd tv, it looks very nice, everything is clear and sharp. The hand strap is adjustable and unlike my $500 JVC hard drive camera, this one adjusts big enough that my hand fits in it. Also unlike my more expensive JVC, you can close the screen and keep recording or keep the camera turned on. Even if its off you wont miss a shot, it power up and it ready to record in about 2 seconds. Besides white balance and night mode I dont think there are other manual control settings that would you find on a more expensive camera.
I have seen reviews on this camera with people saying the video playback is terrible, studders or is blocky. First, if you are going to play / edit this video on your computer, read the box & website. They recommended 3.0 ghz computer or faster. (To find out your speed, open your start menu and Right click on My Computer (or Computer) and select properties, it will say on that page 3.0ghz, 2.2 Ghz, etc)... If your computer is slower than that or has low end video hardware you will not be able to watch full 1080p movies on your computer. That is not a fault of the video camera and HD videos from any camera would be the same. You can however, use any speed computer for simply storing your videos or resizing them for youtube, email, etc. Just expect it will take your computer some time to convert the movies.
The camera does have standard composite out that will work on any tv with a single yellow video input plug, so no computer is required to watch movies. It also comes with a composite cable( 3 connector) that will plug into most HDTV's and you can watch your HD video right off the camera.
I purchased a 2nd battery when I bought the camera, it uses the same as a Fuji NP-120 and a good quality battery can be bought for under $20. The battery is suppose to last 1.5 - 2 hours and the charger is a 2 hour charger, so with 2 batteries should be able to keep recording forever if you have the charger with you. You can also get car chargers for this battery type for around $20 if you want to take a road trip.
For the technical parts: The audio records AAC 2 channel at 128k. 1440x1080p (HD) records around 8000-10000k, 1280x720p (HD) 4000-5000k, 848x480p (about the same size as a standard DVD) 2500-3500k and if you want to email or send a video right to youtube or myspace it records 320x240 at about 500-550k.
It officially supports SD and SDHC cards to 8GB, although some users said they have used larger cards on message boards. I would recommend testing them before recording anything important if you are tiring a larger card that officially supported. You are limited to a file size of just under 4GB per single video, this is the limit of the file system used on the SDHC cards and effects all card based video cameras. That works out to 50-60 minutes of continuous recording at 1080p & over 2 hours at 720p, you only need to stop for a seconds, then you can start again and keep doing that until your card is full.
I have only had one issue with this camera. The way it comes from the factory is the sound level comes down when zooming, so it dosent pick up the zoom motors, but you loose a few seconds of sound. The option is to use a slower zoom speed then the audio does not cut out. You can goto the dxgusa web site and download this update if you want it.
The directions were kind of unclear, to get it to work, 1. Take an empty SD card and put it in a card reader, format it for FAT32, 2. download the firmware from the website and extract or open the file, 3. drag or copy the file named like dvh596.bin to the empty card 4. Put the card in the camera, flip the mode switch to SET & press DISP & then ZOOM in at the same time, select FV VERSION, press enter (the joystick IN) and it should then update the camera. When it says Finished, you will have to turn the camera off and restart it.
Since updating the camera the zoom is slightly slower but the sound stays steady and you still do not hear any noises when zooming in / out.
In short, if you are expecting studio quality video, you should be looking at a studio quality camera, they start around $3000 and to shoot Hollywood movies expend to spend about $20,000, besides lenses, memory & battery backs, etc.... If you want a camera that looks much better than a mini-DVD camera or a digital camera shooting video, then here you go.
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2009-01-06
dxg 595
Great service in delivery. The camera is the best $250 camera possible. That's it. I was very disappointed with the stabilizer, but when on a tripod in a fixed position, this is a killer camera. Will have to eventually cough up and buy a true high definition camera. Did well with my Mac with no extra software needed!
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