Panasonic HDC-TM300 Twin Media HD Camcorder (Black)

Almost a Prosumer Camcorder

I bought this camcorder to replace a Sony DSR-PD170. I needed to switch to from miniDV/DVCAM to HD and in the process I wanted to go to flash media. There are very few choices right now. Panasonic's AG-HMC70U is a gigantic monster compared to my DSR-PD170 and the new Panasonics and JVCs aren't getting the greatest reviews - so I looked at the consumer camcorders.



I wanted 3CCDs and XLR inputs but no XLR on a consumer camcorder so I'm using a Studio One stereo mini to XLR box. The CCD vs. MOS isn't important to me as long as I get 3 sensors. This is the only 3-sensor consumer camcorder using flash media I could find.



The quality is good and I would say it's at the top of the consumer camcorder heap at this point. AVCHD is great for good quality with a very small file size but make sure your editing software can handle the MTS format.



Panasonic supplies a utility that gives you some preformatting options when you download your video from the camera but I'm not using it.



Here's how the camera records: Each time you record it creates an mts file (AVCHD) if you pause and then continue it writes the first file and starts a new one. So you end up with a lot of sequentially numbered MTS files. I just download them to my PC without any pre-processing and import them into Premiere Pro CS4 (it reads the mts files with no problem). You just put them in order on the timeline.



I am so happy to be done with tapes. The last vestiges of an ancient era in video processing. No more capturing video from the camcorder. Just lay the files into the timeline and edit them there.



Just for the heck of it I tried to upload the mts files directly to YouTube. YouTube accepts the files and transcodes them but they are very choppy dropping frames left and right once on YouTube. So I bought a batch converter that converts them to 720p MPEG 2 files and that makes YouTube happy.



So is the Panasonic HDC-TM300 a pro camcorder? Not hardly. Is it a prosumer camcorder? Not really. But it's a good choice if you want good quality HD video at a low price (compared to pro camcorders).



On the other hand I just used this camera to record a 6-hour workshop in a hotel with not-so-great lighting. The video was very washed out - not even close to the low-light quality of my Sony DSR-PD170. The TM-300 has a manual iris/gain feature that lets you open up to 18db. Surprisingly the brightness improves significantly without getting too grainy. Still not close to the PD170 in auto mode but significantly better than the TM-300's auto mode.



I would have liked to have replaced my Sony with a Panasonic AG-HMC150 but at $3800 I just wasn't ready for the price. Although the TM-300 isn't quite good enough to cause me to get rid of my PD170 it's good enough to make it my camcorder of choice in well-lit shooting environments.



The Panasonic HDC-TM300 is a really great consumer camcorder that's well-worth the price.More detail ...