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(More customer reviews)2 years ago I bought my first AVCHD format camera when I could see that adobe premiere pro cs5 would support it and infact use the cuda cores on the graphics card to speed up video rendering (it blazes through post edits now in less time than the shot takes)
I bought the canon VX10 - this little tiny handheld camera - must have weighed 1.5 lbs at most. It had its fair share of limitations like the total lack of a hotshoe or even a deadshoe to mount all my old DV video gear from my canon GL-1. It used this s-hotshoe or sub/small hotshoe as I like to call it with about 10 pins that do everything from audio to lighting and flash. Great idea, would have liked to keep the full size shoe though.
The canon lens left a bit to be desired, but with 64 gb of ram on board it could shoot at max resolution for 6 hours, longer than the battery could operate it.
I bought alot of expensive canon accessories to make up for my now obsolete accessories, but the one thing I could not fix was the lack of an XLR input for mics. I use mostly sennheiser professional camera mounted RF mics with a belt transmitter and lavaliere mic or a stick mic transmitter combo. Those were gone now down to a mini 3.5 mm stereo jack for external mic in, and controlling the levels was a chore.
Hapily this year Panasonic came out with their professional 3-ccd (10MP) AG-HMC80 camera that sits on your shoulder, uses your right hand through the strap to move the zoom and start/stop switch and has both a screen viewfinder as well as an eyecup viewfinder, along with a full array of manual buttons, including 3 user defined buttons you can choose from a selection of 14 or so features available with just a tap. The center user button has a bump in the middle so you can find it with your left hand while looking through the viewfinder. I choose button 1 to be high gain video (which does not introduce noise), middle button to switch focus to manual (with a 10x zoom and a focus meter bar), and I rotate different features in the right most (3rd) user defined button.
The audio section is the best i've seen with both front mic, aux in mic, and XLR mics in the rear, with 48V phantom power available (and switches for both mics on/off) - an audio monitor port for standard 3.5mm headphones, and even RCA level audio outputs. In the configuration you can crank in 10dB of attenuation, and there are adjustments for each channel on the side panel. I'll add photos and a video of the camera when I get a second one to do it - right now I just have the REAR panel with the XLR in's showing.
The top AVCHD rate is equal to the canon HF 10 - about 25 MB/s into a 32 GB card, however the panasonic can only hold one card. The canon could only hold one card too, but it had 32 GB of internal ram for 64 GB total (that's 6 hours or 6 tapes folks!). With one sd chip holding 3 hours I don't find the need to have 2 or even 4 comming out now. Plus there is rumored to be a 64GB sdhc class 10 comming for us digital shooters.
Watch the photos section on the camera as I take more photos and explain how the buttons all come together to work. My final addition to this review will be with a second camera. I may use my HF 10 and a/b the two so you can see the difference in video. It's slight, but the panasonic has the better video picture.
I did make a small change to my panasonic by removing their 2nd deadshoe bracket for a microphone and replaced it with a 2 deadshoe bracked for 2 mic receivers. The HMC80 has cable management clips all over the side of it so that your XLR cables from wireless receivers will stay close to the camera body and not snag on things as you carry it around -- that's a professional touch.
FINALLY - the stability you gain with the right hand on the lens, the left hand on the viewfinder, and the camera on your shoulder makes for a solid system. Short of a $50,000 ENG camera this has all the features I would want for at a price I can afford. It deserves serious consideration in selecting an avchd cam as the tiny little ones just do not have the stability that the shoulder mounted cams do. I can zoom in digitally + 12x optical for 120X zoom which isn't 400x, but at 400x you can't make out the detail anyways. I had my HF 10 set to stop at 10x + 4x digital because beyond that was noise. The 120x I get here is all usable up to the last little bit which is a little noisy.
I have more AG-HMC80 cams on order for work because of their features and quality, so I will be able to study their lifetime longevity. And on that note, if you register within 30 days of purchase (electronically or phone) your warantee goes to 3 years. That's almost unheard of in a commercial camcorder.
The AG-HMC80 is much more than a prosumer camcorder - it's a 3-ccd professional camcorder and has all the features you would expect (see my still photos as they come in above in the pics section with notes on what the buttons do)
UPDATE 5/7/2011 I've added several macro photos so you can see the controls offered. All these buttons can be pressed without disturbing a recording in progress which was impossible on the Canon Vixia HF 10 due to its small size (which I do miss)
If you have questions, email me please - my address is in my profile.
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