Panasonic Professional AG-HMC40 AVCHD Camcorder with 10.6MP Still and 12x Optical Zoom
The Panasonic AG-HMC40 camcorder provides most of the features and the look of a full professional camcorder, with the convenience and light weight of a consumer camcorder. What sets it apart from something like a palm sized camcorder is the image quality and the amount of manual control. The main thing missing that would make this an excellent pro camera is the full manual lens. While the HMC40 does have a manual focus ring, it controls the focus electronically and not mechanically. Also, there is no dedicated manual zoom or iris ring on the lens, although the focus ring can be programmed to control these functions one at a time.
That being said, the image quality of this camcorder is excellent, even when compared to prosumer camcorders costing double. The lens maintains crisp focus right out to the edges, with no noticable chromatic aberration (false color fringes around objects). The lens on my similarly priced Sony FX7 had this problem.
Low light capability is very good. It does get a little grainy at 36 db gain but the image still remains sharp. At 18db gain, the image is crisp with very little grain. Changing the various video settings from default in the menu can lower the grain and bring out more contrast. Outdoors, or indoors in bright light, the image is simply stunning. Colors are very true and well saturated, and you can add more or less saturation in the menu setup. In a dimly lit room like a wedding reception, you can get by without lights if you have to.
There are hundreds of combinations of image adjustments in the menu system, and if you are new to prosumer camcorders, some of these terms may not be familiar. The camcorder has a cinema gamma mode, a native 24 frame progressive mode, cinema matrix, skin tone softener, detail coring, manual DRS and three preset Knee controls. When you combine these settings, you get a very film-like image. You'll need to read the online manual, or just experiment with different settings in different light until you see what you like. There's enough settings to keep you playing for days. One in particular, the waveform monitor, is very useful in setting up the manual iris for the brightest possible exposure without hot spots.
The internal mike and switchable audio level controls and the ability to turn AGC on or off provides good audio for most purposes. With AGC on, the audio will not overload even when a few feet from the speaker blast of a loud DJ. The AGC is gentle, without the harsh pumping action found on consumer camcorders. An XLR shotgun mike and XLR audio adapter with better manual audio level control is optional and plugs into a dedicated audio port on the camera. It does not simply convert to unbalanced 1/8 inch jacks as many of these adapters do. It's truly a balanced line or mike input all the way through, with or without phantom power. You'll need the XLR adapter and a good boom mike for film production, of course.
Battery life is three hours with the included battery, and six hours with an optional pack. Enough to get you through the day.
The camcorder uses the AVCHD format, which is a better compression technique (at the 24 meg mode) than the MPG 2 of HDV tapes. You can set it for 1080 60i 1080 24p, 1080 30p, 720 24p, 720 30p and 720 60p. There are four data rates. 5 meg/sec, 13, 17 and 24. The differences are minimal from 13 to 24. The image is slightly softer and slightly blocky at the 5 meg setting when there is a lot of motion in the subject, but even at that setting you can still create an excellent image for making a DVD. It's a good choice for recording long programs on smaller memory cards when there isn't much motion, like a speech.
The best feature is recording to inexpensive SD and SDHC cards. There are no moving tape transports or hard drives to fail, so this camcorder will last until you drop it on the sidewalk or into a swimming pool. Image quality will probably not improve much in newer camcorders in this price range for some time to come. With ever increasing memory size SDHC cards getting cheaper every week, this camcorder's recording capacity grows by the month. It's a great choice for recording events for hire as well as smaller TV station news departments.
Rick Bennette, [...]
Panasonic Professional AG-HMC40 AVCHD Camcorder with 10.6MP Still and 12x Optical Zoom Feature
- HD formats: 1080/60i, 1080/30p, 1080/24p (Native); 720/60p, 720/30p, 720/24p (Native)
- Three newly designed 1/4.1" Progressive 3MOS Imagers for full HD resolution
- 12x Leica Dicomar lens (13 elements in 10 groups), 43mm filter, zoom range of 40.8 - 490mm (35mm equivalent.)
- Extremely slow, smooth zoom for the precise control needed for dramatic sequences
- Time Date Stamp enables shooting Legal Depositions or Surveillance
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*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Aug 24, 2010 06:46:55
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