Samsung SCA-30 - Budget Meets... Budget
Sep 05 '00
Can you get a good picture after spending $250 for camcorder? This was the question that I asked myself before buying Samsung SCA-30. This model cost $250, which was almost the lowest price I’ve seen for the camcorder.
It is a known fact that in majority of cases the camcorder is used for the first three days after being purchased and after that, it sits somewhere in your closet accumulating dust.
If this is a type of usage you expect, and you don't want to spend much money on camcorder that is going to be used rarely, search no further. In fact I bought it after considering this, but I expected the video quality be a little better.
Samsung SCA-30 is 8mm camcorder. It has 16x optical and 320x digital zoom, automatic and even manual focus, 6 Program AE, 6 special effects, backlight compensation mode, 0.3 Lux shooting capability. It also has flying erase head for editing.
There is also a fade mode. The camcorder has power adapter that works in any country (110-240V, 50/60Hz) if you get a power plug adapter – I used it in Europe. It also has "Refresh" mode that drains your battery before recharging to avoid "memory effect" when capacity decreases if you don't discharge the battery fully.
The charger allows you to either charge the battery or power the camcorder directly, but not the both at the same time. The battery is “old type” Ni-Cd, the capacity is quite small – you can shoot for about 1 hour till it dies. It takes ages to recharge it, especially in “Refresh” mode. The display does not show the accurate remaining battery power – just “full”, “half” or “empty”. Weak.
The camcorder does not have compactness of digital models, but it is quite convenient. The lens cover is not built-in, but attached to the camcorder’s hand strap. I would prefer to have it built-in and operated by the Camera/Off/Player main switch as on SONY models.
SCA-30 has a titler with common phrases in several languages, including even Russian. The manual focus mode can sometimes be useful, I used it a couple of times – the B&W viewfinder makes it harder to use. The zoom is really powerful.
The viewfinder is B&W, so it is sometimes hard to see dark colored objects on dark backgrounds and other things. There is no remote control and no LP recording speed. For this price you also will not get an image stabilizer. No surprise.
The picture quality is good. Not very good, just good. Visually, it is a bit worse than even 8mm SONY TR-416, don’t even compare it to digital models. The sound (mono) from the built-in microphone is good.
I would recommend it if you want a budget model and are not going to use it often - it's a very good value for this price.
But digital models provide significantly better image quality and are getting cheaper every day. If I were to buy a new camcorder, I would definitely get a digital model, maybe Sharp VL-SD20U (http://dkozin.epinions.com/elec-review-1F58-E9F17BA-38EE0916-prod4).
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dkozin
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I love to push buttons on electronic (audio and video) equipment. It makes me happy.
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