Customer Reviews

Panasonic HDC-HS700K Hi-Def Camcorder with Pro Control System & 240GB HDD (Black)

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I've only had this for a week but everything good that can be said of the Panasonic HDC-TM700K Hi-Def Camcorder with Pro Control System & 32GB Flash (Black) can also be said of this one. It's slightly larger because it has a hard drive and that's not a bad thing. The hard drive holds 40(!!!) hours of 1080/60i and 20 hours of 1080/60p video. Plus you can always use the flash slot to store more video/pictures and export. I need to play with the picture mode more but the pictures are just as good as my normal digital camera so far. Most amazing camera I've ever owned.

Cons:
USB is slow, I still find FireWire to be faster, it works, what can I say.
When plugged into a Mac, the hard drive is READ ONLY, no file management from a computer. The file management interface on the camera sucks.
1080/60p videos are too much for most software to handle. At this point they are nice to have since the camera is basically forwards compatible with future software but right now it's not too useful since you have to down convert your videos to edit them. iMovie HD can't read them for example, you have to shoot in a standard format.
Some of the features should be more accessible, as some are buried in a menu somewhere.
Battery charger cannot charge and be used as an AC adaptor for the camera at the same time.
It could startup faster, but it's still fast to me.

Pros:
Amazing image quality.
Easy to use.
Love the remote

Just got back from a vacation (Canada) where we used the Panasonic hs700k in various lighting conditions - even a day of foggy mist. Returning home, I was disappointed that the accessories lacked an HDMI cable. Looks like Panasonic is stealing play book pages from dishonorable printer companies that short change you on toner/ink.

The packaging included low rez patch cables - but this is an HD camcorder and it didn't come with an HDMI cable. Unacceptable!!! This is like buying a car without wheels.

I recently purchased a Droid-X Smartphone - which oddly enough does come with an HDMI cable - but Panasonic picked a strange form factor and it even though I have a "mini" HDMI to "full sized" HDMI from the Droid...it won't fit on the Panasonic's special sized port.

But now that I'm done venting about the bumbling business decisions made by the incompetent Panasonic Management staff; individuals with ACTUAL JOB SKILLS have exceeded my expectations on the build and image quality.

After burning my videos to a Blu-Ray disk, I was mesmerized by the quality of the pictures. Summarizing to one word...Wow!! Crystal clear and simply wondrous on my Plasma TV. All our scenes were shot in 1080P - yes it is a storage hog but the clarity and resolution from the Panasonic is outstanding and I'm glad I did it.

Color saturation was excellent in this raw footage state. I burned the disk in a raw format without massaging the color/hue/contrast etc. Most people aren't aware that Hollywood uses Avid, etc. to color amp the scenes and even out the lighting between takes. Obviously I don't own this type of high end gear/software so those options were not available to me. As such, I detected a slight cold tint to the videos. Even during late evenings where Fuji chrome 35mm-film would have rendered warm colors an hour before sunset; the Panasonic was slightly `blue' (for a lack of a better word). Because the files are so large, editing is a severe problem - but oh well - welcome to Hi def.

The image stabilization was excellent. A few scenes where I purposely left it off made the video jiggle; but once re-enabled - the zero to middle zoom was rock solid. The Zoom button is a tad awkward to manipulate (I have large hands) - but it worked well and was relatively fast. We didn't pickup any zoom "noise" from the onboard mic, but wind did make for a blustery audio recording at times (sounds like a flapping flag with hiss). A camcorder of such outstanding quality really deserves a boom-mic with a fuzzy wind sock - so I won't fault this issue.

Mist and cold temperatures (40F) didn't affect the unit. Battery life was surprisingly good and the portable charger worked well. Still photos are soft, and I recommend bringing a 2nd camera. Overall I highly recommend this unit - it worked flawlessly, the lens is ultra sharp at all physical magnifications (ignore the gimmicky digital zoom) and the cost is in-line with results.

This review has been written on 08-12-2010. Recorded about 4 hours of movies and 50 or so pictures on the Hdc Hs700k. The movie quality when recorded at 1080 x 1920 at 60 frames/s just blows you away it is better then what you will get from a blueray dvd. Still picture quality is not as good as my canon 7D but still better then most consumer cameras. This camera is way ahead of its time. I use a top of the line HD TV and i suspect the camera actually supplies more then the tv can even handle. The only downside short batt. life. Get 2 extra batt. The other downside : As of this date there are no real choices of editing software. You have to use the software that comes with the camera. That works but is somewhat limited in editing variables. All the other newest type software out there starts getting the hickups when transcoding the m2ts files at 1080 x1920 60 f/s. I know its the software because my computer is an i7 quad-core with 8 gigs of ram.
But its only a matter of time before the software makers catch up and give us more choices. So go ahead and by it. If you been waiting all your life for supersharp homemade video,like me, you going to love this one.
BTW it has a slot for an SD card. If the hard drive fails (dropping it on a concrete floor while its running may do just that) you can still record up to 4 hours of movies on one 64 GB card. They are still expensive as of today but by the time the hard drive goes the will be dirt cheap. Holger

We bought a Panasonic HD camcorder around 4 months ago so that my parents could record my graduation.. Unfortunately, it stopped working when we tried to watch my graduation a month ago! I contacted Panasonic and they want to charge me approximately 120 dollars to fix it even though it is less than a year old (and still under warranty) for labor. What kind of company charges you for labor under a warranty repair? Looks like they don't stand behind their products as they want to charge me 120! Buyer Beware!!

So far, I love this thing, and I haven't even had a chance to get into all the bells and whistles. I needed it for an event that occurred less than a week after I got the camera, so I just charged the battery, turned it on, and recorded. The automatic features worked for me just fine. As soon as I spend some more time with it, I'm hoping to learn all the manual functions and settings too. The end result of the footage is crisp, clean, and beautiful. It's already gotten me some noteriety from the event I filmed, everyone wants a DVD copy. Transferring the footage is easy with my PC and Adobe Premiere, CS4. I jost copy the files to my hard drive and load them into my program. I bypass the program that came with the camera. I like that with the hard drive, the footage is already broken down into scenes, since it makes a "scene" everytime you record and stop. Great product, light weight, nice to those who don't do a lot of manual touches, worth the money!!

This is my third prosumer video-camera from Panasonic and I have been using this model for about six months now. Prior to using this camera I rented a couple of professional cameras, e.g. the Canon XH G1 and the Canon XL H1A and I have to say the quality of this video-camera is close to or even better than some of the low-end professional video cameras.

As other reviewers have stated, the quality of the image is awesome. I record in 1080 60P and I use this version on my Windows 7 workstation with no issues. To be fair, I'm using an 8 core PC with 8 GB of RAM but I purchased this machine specifcally for video processing. With my other video cameras and the ones I rented I used a Mac but I've read (not sure if this is still valid) that the 1080 60P may not be support in the Mac OS as yet.

When using this camera, if I am indoors, e.g. my kids school gym for plays, or at home, etc..., I frequently take it off of automatic mode and switch to manual mode. This gives me greater control with WB (white-balance) and IRIS (amount of light entering). The amount of manual controls provided with this prosumer camera is truly awesome and is another reason why I believe it can give some of the low-end professional video cameras a run for their money :).

I also use the facial recognition setting in the camera and I have to say I have never had any issues with the camera being out of focus. My pictures are consistantly clear and sharp. One of my reasons for picking this camera is that Panasonic in general makes excellent cameras that work well in low light. Every time I am getting ready to change my camera I always research the models from Canon and Sony but low-light is one of the key features for me and Panasonic wins hands down (or at least I have never been disappointed).

In terms of software I use Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 10 Suite. I recommend the suite because it comes with a niffty training DVD that gets you up an run in under an hour. In my opinion Sony Vegas 10 is similar to Final Cut Express for the Mac. I have not been disappointed in my switch from Mac to PC for video processing and the DVD Architect Studio 5 application for creating DVDs has some niffty features as well. At times I do miss iDVD, iMovie and FCE but I've been able to do the same things I used to do on the Mac on the PC.

All in all, great video-camera, love the hard-drive so no more tapes. Very versatile and easy to use. Higly recommend this video camera !!

Video camera is very user friendly. Menu options are very clear and easy to use. Sound quality is great, except in windy situations. Surround sound mic is very sensitive. Even though we adjusted levels on Mic, it was still to sensitive in windy areas, opted to purchase a Rode Mic with dead cat. Only one other concern was location of accessory shoe. Had to buy adapter to fit Rode mic because it made zoom inaccessible. Easily fixed with $12 adapter. Still pictures are great.

Amazing piece of engineering. The picture quality is extraordinary. Easy to use -- and, this is my FIRST video camera. That's saying something because I'm a guy which means I didn't read the instruction booklet to any great degree. My only complaint is in making the camera Mac-compatible. That had to be accomplished with third-party software. The disk enclosed with the camera only sets it up for use with PC's. Memo to Panasonic: there is another operating system and it's called MAC OS! The supplemental software I purchased is called, "Voltaic". It's easy to convert the Panasonic file format to .MOV using Voltaic. However, a five minute video will take a couple of hours to convert so you'll want to bring a good book. Returning to the camera itself, the videos we make are all outdoors -- they're for a gardening web site, PlantersPlace.com. Wind noise is an issue under certain conditions. If anyone has a way to minimize the noise I would be pleased to learn about it.

We have just received our camera this weekend but when we ordered it we were very happy with the pricing of it. To us it was a steal when we were pricing it out. So far we have only had a little bit of time to try it out but we are enjoying it so far. We wish we would have been told that we needed a mini-hdmi cable when we ordered it but other that that we love it.

I won't bore you with the technical aspects because that's been covered by everyone else. Essentially you get the best image quality of any consumer size/price, manual features, powered OIS which is fantastic, and a large HDD that saves you significantly compared to getting high speed SD cards. Having the HDD also keeps you from having to constantly pull the videos off the cam and then to the computer since you have space to spare.

The video quality? Great. In low light it works wonderfully with little noise compared to my old Canon HF200. While the D7000 and other DSLRs can deliver a better quality low light image, in anything else the resolution of this cam is out of this world. Also the optical quality of the lens is quite impressive. Little to no aberrations nor fringing. Sharp image across the field. And best of all, WIDE ANGLE. Finally a cam that doesn't require a gaudy and expensive wide adapter to get to a sane 35mm equivalent field of view. The 60p is a must. You get the higher 28MB/S rate, and it minimizes the jello effect even more. Motion is super smooth, and you can slow it down for beautiful slo-mo. Only caveat there is for super low light 30p will allow for a longer shutter speed and half the noise.

The audio--this has been a point of contention for many. Those that complain about must not have owned a tape-cam before. Those old motorized camcorders had 10x the noise this cam does. And you have to keep in mind that this camera has auto audio gain, meaning in a silent indoor area it will amplify big time. You can turn it off, use an offboard mic in the shoe, or just completely ignore it since it is so quiet anyway. Don't let that stop you from getting this cam.

As for the comments that with a fan it might not last long--that is simply not true. The little fans in these things are precise and will outlast the camera and it's practical usability. By the time the fan goes we will likely have 5 mgpx 3d cams in our phones...

Another thing that is great about this cam is the size. It is not so small as to be very shaky, and fits in an adult sized hand very comfortably. The weight is right on as well; not too light as to shake badly yet not too heavy to hold up for a prolonged period of time.

The only downside? The LCD! Most other manufacturers have triple the resolution this one does. However this is a minor point and I'm glad panasonic put more thought into the optical quality rather than gimmicks.

Lots of folks are having issues with 1080 60p footage. You will need either an advanced blueray player capable of supporting it (not sure which ones). A PS3 can do it if you follow some specific steps, but ultimately the best playback is hooking up the cam to a TV via HDMI. Flawless footage then. A computer can play it as well but you will need one of the newer i5/i7 systems. My OC'd 9450 at 3.2 GHZ with 8gm ram and 2 x 5770 cards cannot do it without skipping frames.