High-quality video; solid performance; electronic viewfinder; full manual feature set
Touchscreen isn't responsive enough
The Panasonic HDC-TM300 shoots excellent video and boasts a full set of manual features, but is let down by an annoying touchscreen interface. It's still a very good prosumer HD camcorder, though
7.9 Very good
Reviewed by Lori Grunin
Panasonic's pair of top-of-the-prosumer-line high-definition camcorders -- the £850 flash-based HDC-TM300 and £900 hard-drive-based HDC-HS300 -- in many ways vastly improve over older models like the HDC-HS100 and HDC-SD100. Panasonic has jettisoned most of what we disliked about those models, including the too-low-resolution CMOS sensors and connector placement, and retained everything we liked, notably the breadth of manual controls and eye-level viewfinder. While the company has replaced the awkward ring-based manual operation with an equally awkward touchscreen, the improvement in video quality and performance makes these camcorders a far better bet.
The two models incorporate the same 12x zoom f1.8-2.8 lens as the HS100 and SD100, as well as the same trio of 1/4.1-inch 3-megapixel 3MOS sensors, with an effective resolution of 2.07 megapixels each, for 16:9 video. The real 3 megapixels for the pre-downsampled AVCHD video finally breaks the resolution barrier -- normally, three-chip systems use lower-than-HD-resolution sensors, which don't seem to produce terribly sharp HD video.
Because of the different recording media, the camcorders have slightly different designs. But they have the same feature sets and should have identical video quality. As such, for the purposes of this review, we ran our standard video tests on only the TM300. The highest video quality they offer is at a 1,920x1,080-pixel resolution, at 30 frames per second, at 17Mbps. At those settings, you can record about 8 minutes of video per gigabyte of storage space. The next level down, 13Mbps, records about 10 minutes of video per gigabyte.
Design
The TM300 and HS300 share the same higher-end features as the HS100 -- a manual focus ring, electronic viewfinder, accessory shoe and microphone input. The HS300 has a 120GB hard disk, while the TM300 records to SD cards or the built-in 32GB of memory. They both include the optical image stabilisation and 'intelligent automatic' features of the older versions.
Weighing just over 450g, with dimensions of 71 by 71 by 140mm, the TM300 is the lightest of the pair, but is larger than competitors like the Canon Legria HF S10. It's comfortable to hold, especially thanks to the slight upward curve towards the back that makes the zoom switch and photo button easier to reach. The earlier models had a toggle to switch between the LCD and EVF. With this one, you pull out the EVF to enable it, which is a more pleasing and utilitarian design.
In contrast to the older models, only the optical image stabiliser button lives inside the LCD recess, and most of the controls have been replaced by a hybrid button and touchscreen interface. Within the recess, under hard covers, are all but one connector -- AV, component video out, mini HDMI and USB -- and the SD card slot. In an interesting design move, Panasonic has added an accessory shoe to the TM300, but put it in the side rather than the top -- a more practical location, given how far your hand covers the top. Mic and headphone jacks are on the front right side, beneath the flash and adjacent to the shoe.
Under your right thumb lies a traditional mode dial for choosing among power, video and still recording, and playback. Above the LCD on the body are the intelligent auto and 3-second pre-record buttons. On the LCD's bezel are zoom and record controls, a delete button, and 'quick menu' and menu buttons. Through the quick menu you can alter video quality, time lapse, picture size, on-screen display options, LCD brightness and guidelines. Via the menu button, you can select options such as where to record (built-in memory or SD card), choose from a handful of scene modes, 'digital cinema' (24p) mode, mic options (surround, zoom or focus; bass settings; and levels), and display options like 'zebra' and 'histogram'.
To the left of the lens are two buttons for invoking manual controls. Pressing the manual focus button switches the lens ring's operation between zooming and focusing. The function button brings up three options on the touchscreen: white balance, shutter and iris.
Primary operation occurs through the touchscreen menus, which pop up from a small icon in the lower-left corner. In auto mode, there's spot auto exposure and autofocus, backlight compensation, intelligent contrast, fade, soft skin mode, telemacro, and 'magicpix' night mode. In manual mode, you select via a scrolling menu on the left.
White balance offers the typical options, and shutter speed and iris are as broad and flexible as you'll get on an entry-level pro model. For instance, the iris opens as wide as 18dB in 3dB increments and closes to f16 in half stops. Although the shutter speeds start at a rather high 1/60 sec (in auto modes they'll drop lower, and 24p mode drops to 1/48 sec), they go as high as 1/8,000 sec.
At 69mm (2.7 inches), the LCD is a typical size for this class of camcorder. Overall, it's fairly good but it's not very effective as a touchscreen. There's visible feedback when you press one of the virtual buttons -- it turns yellow -- which helps when you're frustrated and pressing them repeatedly, attempting to get them to register your touch. We found the system in the HS100 and SD100 awkward, but at least you could use it with the EVF. Since this model uses a touchscreen, you can't change any of the manual settings while using it, which is a major drawback.
Performance
The TM300 performs relatively well and boots quickly from a cold start. The EVF, while coarse and not particularly colour accurate, is far better than nothing, which is what you get on most competitors. The zoom feels relatively precise and easy to control, and the camcorder focuses reasonably quickly in all but the lowest light. The audio sounds slightly thin, but it's acceptable. And Panasonic's optical stabilisation works solidly out to the end of the zoom range.
Video quality is quite good, showing none of the artefacts that plague the older models. Video looks sharp, although slightly softer than that of competing models from Canon and Sony. Colour and exposure live up to what you'd expect for a camcorder in this price range. Low-light video looks rather soft, although not nearly as soft as we've seen in previous models, and remains quite noise-free. While the stills look quite good zoomed out and printed as large as 11 inches by 16 inches, you can see all the interpolation artefacts when viewed at 100 per cent on screen. Although Panasonic claims a 10.6-megapixel resolution, the real resolution is only as high as any individual sensor.
Conclusion
The Panasonic HDC-TM300's annoying touchscreen interface holds back a solid prosumer HD camcorder that otherwise effectively competes with models like the Canon Legria HF S10. Between the TM300 and HS300, we favour the TM300 -- it's cheaper and most people don't really need the overwhelming storage capacity on the HS300's hard drive.
Additional editing by Charles Kloet
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