Panasonic’s idea of HD

I decided to do some research on the latest hd camcorders available for commercial and personal use. Today, I’m going to take a look at what Panasonic has to offer.
Panasonic HD cameras cost depends on their ultimate uses. The consumer HD camcorders start around $2100 and then skyrocket to $48,000 for a top of the line commercial camcorder. All of these models are 3ccd camcorders that have increasing level of hd image and audio resolution.

The basic consumer camcorder is the 1/4″ ProLine trademarked camcorder with hdmi interface and miniDV capabilities.

Next in line is the 1/3″ 3-CCD HD/DVCPRO/DV Cinema P2 Camera starting at $5995. It employs their CineSwitch ™ Technology, which allows for variable frame rates up to 60fps all in 720p. The CineGamma ™ Software allows for eight specific gamma settings. But what’s a gamma setting anyway?

According to this source, “The gamma function controls the general brightness or luminance and the contrast curve. This control allows an operator to set what is known as the characteristic curve of the camera, or the way in which it reproduces various tones along the black-to-white scale. Again further it can be stated that the black gamma controls the contrast and detail in the shadow and black areas of the picture. This may be further subdivided into a black stretch control for enhancing shadow detail, and a black press function that increases contrast.”

So I guess this setting controls the tones of the picture, which I’m sure is key to filming in HD.

The next P2 solid state HD camcorder is the 2/3″ AG-HPX500 with much of the same features as the last model. However, this one costs 14K and records in 1080i.

After that Panasonic jumps into the commercial market with the AJHDX900 that’s a full HD camcorder ($26,500). With the AJHDX900 allows you to capture images that can integrate special effects seamlessly in HD. The next commercial full hd model is the VariCam that has easy button access variable rate capabilities at $45,000.

And lastly, the AJ-HPX3000 which Panasonic’s catalog states “is the industry’s first native 1080p one-piece camcorder to capture master-quality high definition video.” It has 1920x 1080i res and records on a solid state p2 card with the “Film-Rec mode (made popular by the VariCam), film-like shutter controls, intuitive film camera-like operation.” Basically, it’s the closest to a 35mm film camera with the portability of a camcorder. Sounds great, if I had the dough to throw down on it.

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