Having used this camcorder for a couple of days I have to admit I was very impressed with the picture quality, considering this camcorder is one year old it can hold it’s head high.
I am a 720 50P man myself and set this camcorder to these settings and I was gob smacked. It was as good in low light as the EX-3, stood up to a wide open lens my only fault with this camcorder was the boxy design and the 4:3 lower rez LCD.
Panasonic have an obsession with designing shoe boxes with a lens and a 4:3 LCD, this design is dated please, please, please Mr Panasonic in Japan stop designing ugly camcorders. If you give me your design budget I will design one for you ! The 151 is not as boxy due to giving up the tape mechanism on the right hand side and gladly does not weigh the same as a Nori brick.
For years Sony rolled out the 12x lens, now good old Panasonic are stuck with a 13x lens, saying that, it’s a good 13x lens and is very sharp.
A chap commented yesterday in ER that people should look at the JVC HM100 for the same price but I doubt it will come near to the 151 in low light and it’s very surprising 9dB capabilities. The SDHC card works a treat and is a very low cost outlay and gives you cheap archive. As I heard Philip Bloom comment recently about the EX-3 and most of your pro HD camcorders where has SD recording gone, once again the 151 gives you everything but no SD recording.
The HMC-151 is a “Cinderella” camcorder it’s ready to go to the ball, but no one wants to take it. I personally think this camcorder has a bit of bad timing, saddled with the AVCCAM which is a professional version of AVCAM but coming from a domestic codec does it no favors, psychologically that is and maybe a design that people are tiring of.
The sad thing is that we have a camcorder that arrived a year ago, hits all the right spots yet never got the hype it dually deserved.
NOTE : The Panasonic HPX-301 is the only camcorder to date at it’s price range to give you 100Mbs all the way down to DV. Other manufacturers take note.
SEE THE VIDEO REVIEW HERE…
http://exposureroom.com/members/dvwarrior.aspx/assets/736ae26a767f4b4393542e6a53fed36a/
