Just out of the box the Panasonic AG-AC160…I look forward to producing a full in-depth review of this fantastic AVCCAM camcorder, the first of a new breed of solid state cameras from Panasonic.

I have had very little time to play with the AC160 today but here are a couple of frames from me messing about this evening. Firstly the camera copes very well in mixed lighting, the shot above has 5000K LED down lighters giving an almost daylight light, the fridge light on my wifes face is as good as 3200K.

I caught the coloured fridge door magnets and was pleased to see how natural the colours were especially is such mixed lighting. I have done some preliminary low light tests but nothing very scientific so I will refrain from comment till I have done further testing.

I hope to give the camera a thourough run-through over the next few days and produce a video review by the end of the week. We hope to have a bit of a coo by interviewing an old Celtic Lisbon Lion player as part of the review.

I have had a few emails recently all with the same message…DSLR stopped working ! Are we now seeing the major limitations of this cheaper video technology.

No one ever thought for one minute that we would see video work being produced by a stills camera especially at weddings, but quite a number of you have been putting the DSLR through it’s paces at least twice a week throughout the wedding season.

We are now on year 2-3 with the DSLR being used as a video tool, people like the “look”, “Shallow depth of field”, “”Compactness” but all this form factor is at a cost, not one DSLR manufacturer to date will compromise the photographic side of these cameras so for at least 90% of you that means moire and aliasing.

Sound is poor and in most cases uncontrollable so you are having to use an external sound source like a zoom etc.

Up until a week ago the only DSLR giving hassle free video was the Panasonic GH1 but one of my readers had the following…

” The GH1s not a whole lot better. I shot a wedding with 2 of them and a HMC151 recently. The 2 GH1s crashed during the ceremony. One was restarted by the operator, the other was locked off to the rear of the church so we didn’t know about it til after the ceremony.

DSLRs are fabulous filmmaking tools but not really sorted for live video work, yet.”

This chap was lucky he was also using a Panasonic HMC-151 camcorder so the instant 2 camera failure was a bad blow but the video camcorder saved his bacon.

This also happened to a company I blogged about recently using two Canon 60Ds and a Sony FS100 once again a two camera failure during the speeches and the Sony FS100 saving the day.

It seems obvious to me there is a short longevity with the DSLR using it in video mode, the overheating is never a good sign in any electrical equipment and I think it’s also causing irrepariable dammage, in other words temperature = camera problems.

If I take my straw pole of unsatisfied DSLR users to date it equals 70% not happy having had a major let down at a live event and out of that 70% only 30% had a video camcorder to fall back on.

My advice is obvious either take a video camcorder or a spare DSLR body to all your weddings and keep them at arms length…just in case !

Chrosziel has a prepared the new 3DA1Kit (456-203DA1KIT) for the new S3D Camcorder Panasonic AG-3DA1 (seen here), consisting of a LightWeight Support (401-415) with 15mm rods, the MatteBox 456 Academy Double and the Retaining Ring (410-65) shaped to tightly fit the camera’s twin lens.

Those who already have the LightWeight Support for the Panasonic HVX200 can continue using it. It also fits on the Sony PMW-F3 (version shown in 2010) and the Canon XF300/305.

The MatteBox 456 Academy is equipped with two rotating filter stages with multiformat filterholders (510-01) for 5×5″ and 4×5.56″. When using the 5×5″ filters, both stages rotate without restriction.
All 2/3″ TV and Cine MatteBoxes with 142.5 mm connection can be used on the AG-3DA1 with the retaining ring 410-24 also shaped to fit the twin lens.