Zoom Q8 Handy Video Recorder

A great camera with amazing sound re-production quality.

Does what's advertised. Audio quality is excellent - picks up rich, clear sound in true stereo. Blows your regular camcorder out of the water. Will be testing the XLR inputs soon. Video is OK, a little grainy. The lens is wide angle 160° but no optical zoom. The camera feels pretty solid other than the included lens hood, which doesn't really stay on properly. Obviously with the large flip out microphone and display there is a possibility for breakage, but the hinge action is nice. A nice plus is that it can be used as a webcam or USB microphone with the drivers from Zoom's website - no need for a capture card, and it's detected by any app that works with a webcam (Google Hangouts, Skype, Polycom Realpresence, OBS, Xsplit). I will be using it for live webcast of stage events.

Good audio but video quality is not so good But good design and easy to use

This is a good camera for recording live concerts. It has a few minor issues that annoy me, but for the most part, it's excellent. Issue 1: Battery life. Recording is NOT POWERED BY THE USB ADAPTER! I recently recorded a 10 hour, multiple band, live concert on this camera. at 720p/AAC 320 MOV, the camera crashed about every 2.5 hours. The camera was attached to mains power with a Zoom AD-17 AC Adapter to the onboard USB port, but still... battery only! Thankfully, I brought a pile of previously charged BT-03 batteries, so the problems were minimal. PLAN AHEAD. --- UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE! I debugged this and it turns out that my problem was using too long of a USB cable from the power adapter to the camera.. When using a short USB cable and a electrical extension to the power adapter instead; I can power the camera fine for hours and hours. Issue 2: digital 'zoom' capability. Even at 1.5x maximum digital zoom, I was barely able to zoom in on the stage from the soundboard, about 200 feet away. So, the video quality of the bands playing... not so great. This camera really would benefit from being a LOT closer to the stage, since it has such a wide angle lens, but then you have issues with the sound field and where you're going to convince the sound techs to let you plug in. Issue 3: Turn the -20dB PAD *on*. This comes set off by default, and you will experience 'digi-fart' distortion at an indicated -12dB signal level on the external XLR preamp inputs. With the pad set, the signal level indicators are correct. Issue 4: The level controls are digital encoder wheels, not potentiometers, so it's sometimes difficult to get good signal balance on the XLR inputs. The controls are very sensitive, and each "tick" is about 3dB of gain. The good stuff: The included camera's X/Y mic and foam wind shield were flawless. No wind noise on a somewhat breezy day. Also, I recorded ambient from the mic's and L/R house mix from the board, without bothering to split it into separate audio channels, and the audio is excellent. Getting the mix right on the camera makes everything simple.

Buen aparato

I M NOT SATISFIED, PRODUCT IS NOT COMMITMENT. THERE ARE TWO THING MISSING.. I M SENDING THE PICS OF BOX , ITS UNDERLINE.. NO TRIPODS AND NO ADDOPTER .. CALLING BACK TO SENDER BUT ALL THE NUMBERS ARE NOT IN ACTIVE .. DO FAVOUR WITH PROPER ACTION