Panasonic HDC-HS100 Flash Memory High Definition Camcorder with 60GB Hard Drive & 12x Optical Zoom

by Panasonic

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 9.2 x 4.5 inches ; 1 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B001BFLIWC
• Item model number: HDC-HS100
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #13,213 in Camera & Photo (See Top 100 in Camera & Photo)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: October 2, 2001

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

From the Manufacturer

Panasonic is proud to present the latest edition to it's High-Definition suite of products, the HDC-HS100 -- one of the world's first AVCHD camcorder with a 3MOS system which provides superb video image quality. The hybrid HDC-HS100 records to SD Memory Card and to it's internal 60 GB hard drive. HDC-HS100 includes manual functions for the user wanting more precise control over zoom, focus, iris, shutter speed and white balance. HS100 also includes Panasonic’s new Intelligent Auto (iA) mode, an intuitive set of technologies that automatically activate, making video shooting an easy, seamless process.

HDC-HS100 Highlights

3MOS System

New 3MOS sensor

The HS100 features Panasonic's new 3MOS sensor. With about 2 times the light-receiving area of a CCD sensor, this high-sensitivity, high-precision imaging element captures vibrant, faithful color and provides an outstanding performance in low lighting. The 3MOS system uses separate MOS sensors to capture the red, green and blue light components, so no light is wasted. You capture rich, expressive video with vivid colors and super-fine details that make your images come alive.

Advanced O.I.S. (Optical Image Stabilization) Panasonic's advanced O.I.S. suppresses the effects of hand-shake as you shoot. This extraordinary system uses gyrosensors to detect even tiny amounts of hand-shake, then shifts a lens and adjusts the optical axis to compensate -- all at an astounding 4,000 times per second. Because the system is optical, there's no loss of image quality. You get all the beauty and none of the blurring. The HS100 takes Panasonic's advanced O.I.S. a step further, with a correction area that's about 3 times as large as in previous models. With this enhanced correction capability, even zoomed images are incredibly clear, sharp and beautiful.

Advanced color engnie

HD Advanced Pure Color Engine We took the advanced imaging circuitry used in Panasonic professional equipment and adapted it for home use. The result is the HD Advanced Pure Color Engine, a high-speed processing unit that handles huge volumes of data and virtually doubles the dynamic range. This advanced imaging engine helps prevent blown highlights and blocked shadows, so the images you capture on video look just the way they do in real life.

New Leica Dicomar Lens HS100 also introduces a new high-performance Leica lens in which both resolution and contrast have been improved by refinements to our low-dispersion lens and aspherical lens. The lens is highly refractive too, making it possible to pack a powerful 12x zoom into a compact body. A multi-coating process applied to all lens surfaces helps suppress ghosts and flaring, so you get sharp, crisp images even in strong outdoor lighting. The superb rendering ability of this advanced camcorder lens makes it ideal for capturing expressive full-HD images.

Manual Ring The manual ring gives you easy, fingertip control over the focus, zoom and exposure settings. You'll find using the ring a much more intuitive, comfortable, user-friendly process than accessing a menu screen. With the manual ring and manual operation, the HS100 is a pleasure to use and gives you the freedom to craft unusually expressive images.

Manually control focus, zoom, and exposure settings

• Zoom You have full control of the zooming speed and can zoom in or out to the precise degree you want.
• Focus Moving the focal point back or forth lets you guide the viewer's gaze just like in the movies.
• White Balance Select from Auto, Indoor, Outdoor and White Set according to the location, weather or type of lighting. You'll always get the best possible coloring even if the light source changes.
• Shutter Speed Use a fast shutter to catch sports and other fast-action scenes without blurring, and slow it down for greater emotion, like images of flowing water. Try your hand at all kinds of versatile expressions.
• Iris Open up or close the aperture to get just the right amount of brightness from the surrounding light.

On-Screen Assist Ideal for making fine brightness adjustments that are difficult to see in the LCD. A handy guide for correcting the exposure is shown right in the monitor.

• Zebra Pattern A "zebra pattern" is displayed in areas of the frame where the lighting is excessive and the image is over-exposed.
• Brightness Level The light level is metered at the center of the frame and displayed as a percentage (%). This serves as a guide when you're shooting a subject that's backlit, or when you want to keep the light level the same even though the lighting conditions change.
• Histogram The Histogram displays in graph form the exposure and contrast conditions over the entire frame. This lets you determine fine gradation details that are difficult to tell by just looking at the screen.

Mic Input and Headphone Jack Sounds that are hard to pick up with the internal mic, like birds singing and water flowing, are clearly captured by an external mic. Connecting a headphone also lets you monitor the mic on the spot, to ensure that you get exactly the sounds you want.

1.9-sec Quick Power-On Switch the power on and the HS100 is in standby mode in just 1.9 seconds, ready to shoot when you are. This fast startup also helps reduce battery consumption.(HS100: in card recording mode only).

0.6 sec Quick Start Use Quick Start mode when you want to start shooting even more quickly. Just flip open the LCD and you're ready to shoot in just 0.6 seconds. Also, power consumption in Quick Start mode is less than in normal shooting mode, so you save battery time.

iA (intelligent Auto) In iA mode the image stabilization, contrast correction and face detection functions are automatically activated. The Scene Selector function analyzes the shooting situation and automatically switches the camcorder to the Scene mode that will give you optimal results.

Face Detection This mode captures faces beautifully. Face Detection automatically senses the ambient lighting and adjusts the exposure accordingly, so faces are bright and easy to see. The focus also prioritizes the faces, and skin tones are smoothed. Faces in the center of the frame serve as the reference for adjustments, but the function can detect up to 15 faces in all.

Hand-Shaking Detection - Advanced O.I.S. When hand-shake is detected while shooting, the Advanced O.I.S. system is automatically activated to compensate for blurring and produce beautiful recorded images. Blurring is also prevented while zooming, so images look incredibly clear and sharp even when they're viewed on a large-screen HDTV.

Contrast Detection - Intelligent Contrast Control By detecting the intensity of the ambient light and adjusting the exposure accordingly, Intelligent Contrast Control prevents blown highlights and blocked shadows. This helps render natural-looking, highly nuanced images with proper contrast.

Scene Detection - Intelligent Scene Selector The shooting conditions are detected, and the optimal scene mode is automatically selected. Even if the subject should change, there's no need to manually redo the settings, so you can concentrate entirely on your shot.

• Face Using the face as reference, the exposure is adjusted to correct the brightness level. Focusing priority is also placed on the face, and the skin tone is smoothed.
• Scenery The exposure and contrast are optimized to give you clear images, without blown highlights in strongly lit areas like the sky.
• Spot Light When darkness and a spotlight create strong contrast, like in a stage scene, the brightly lit subject is captured clearly without losing highlights.
• Low Light A slow shutter speed is automatically selected to give you clear, vivid images even in dark places.

Record three seconds of images before shooting

Rre-Rec Function This clever function records three seconds of images even before you actually begin shooting. The images are held temporarily in the camcorder's internal memory, before recording onto the HDD/SD Memory Card begins. This helps ensure that you won't miss the start of a moment you want to record, such as when an event begins all of a sudden. For example, if you're waiting to snap a shot of a jumping dolphin, you can press the REC button after you've made sure that the dolphin has cleared the surface of the water. The camcorder will record the entire scene, from the instant of the dolphin's jump until it disappears again into the sea.

5.1-Ch Surround Sound & Zoom microphone & Focus microphone Each of the five built-in microphones of the HS100 works individually to record sounds from the front, sides, and back. When viewed on a system with Dolby Digital 5.1-channel sound, the real-life acoustic field brings even greater power to images such as festival parades, concerts, or birds in nature.

• Zoom Mode In Zoom mode the microphones are linked to the lens action. When you zoom in on a subject, the microphones focus on the sound in that same direction, minimizing the capture of incidental sounds.
• Focus Mode Regardless of whether the lens is zooming or not, the microphones pick up only the sound of the subject in front of the camera, minimizing all surrounding sounds.

12x Optical Zoom Distant subjects can be enlarged so they appear to be right up close. This allows dynamic shots of both motion and still pictures.

Advanced O.I.S.

24 Frames/Sec High-Speed Burst Shooting This function lets the camcorder snap up to 24 consecutive 2.1-MB-resolution still images in a second, or up to 72 consecutive shots in 3 seconds. You can use it to analyze a golf swing, tennis stroke or other motion. You also can use it to get good shots of subjects in fast motion. Just fire off a number of shots without stopping, then keep the best ones and delete the rest.

Product Description

HD CAMCORDER - AVCHD - 3MOS system- 3CCD 60 GB Hard Drive /SDHC SLOT

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not Really 1920x1080 HD, October 22, 2008

By 

Jeffrey Ammon "computer_geek386" (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Panasonic HDC-HS100 Flash Memory High Definition Camcorder with 60GB Hard Drive & 12x Optical Zoom (Electronics)

The marketing is a bit deceiving. It states that it is full 1920x1080 HD. While it is true that it records in this resolution, the sensors' native resolution is not even close to 1920x1080, so the recording is up scaled. It's not even 1280x720. If you read the specifications on the Panasonic web site, each sensor is only 610k (1280x720 is 900k and 1920x1080 is 2025k). The x3 they advertize does not mean that the total resolution is 610k*3, because each sensor is for a separate color channel. Even if it was 610k*3, it still falls short of 1920x1080. The color contrast is really impressive, but the low native resolution produces an image that is grainy (even with sufficient light levels) when compared to other HD content on my 1920x1080 Samsung television. I have since returned the unit.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good camera - pain in the butt to unload videos., November 19, 2009

By 

P. Carboni - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Panasonic HDC-HS100 Flash Memory High Definition Camcorder with 60GB Hard Drive & 12x Optical Zoom (Electronics)

For the price I suppose it's a quality HD video camera you can get. Image quality is solid and the built in 60 gig storage is awesome.

If you have a mac, it will easily sync with any version of iMovie after iMovie '08. I had iMovie HD on my 3 year old mac and was disappointed when I found out I had to purchase a new version of iLife to unload the video files.

Another horrible design is in how you have to hook it up to the computer or TV. Apparently the designers are chronic crack heads because all ports are behind the battery. You have to remove the battery, use the charging cord to plug the camera into an outlet, then plug in the video cables or USB cable where the battery was. It's quite possibly the worst design ever because it makes it impossible to sync the camera with battery power.

If not for this horrible design flaw I'd love this camera. Every other aspect has made me happy. Well, the built in microphone isn't great, but it is okay. Due to the battery issue I do wish I had done a little more research to see if there's an alternative HD video camera.

*UPDATE (July 19, 2010): I originally rated this with 4 stars. I paid around $600 for this camera about a year ago. Now that I see it costs up around $1000 I'm dropping my rating to 3 stars. This is nowhere close to being a $1000 camera. Actually, due to the fact that all the ports are behind the battery I'm not 100% sure it's worth $600.

4.0 out of 5 stars Good choice for this money, November 6, 2011

By 

Alex - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Panasonic HDC-HS100 Flash Memory High Definition Camcorder with 60GB Hard Drive & 12x Optical Zoom (Electronics)

This camera has a good options and very good for a home use. Great lenses and compact size make this camera very handy