Today I filmed my first Wedding Highlights in 3D using the Panasonic SDT750. This was indeed a challenge as I have little to no knowledge of 3D and how it works…which on reflection may have been a good thing, here’s why. Sometimes when you are too knowledgeable about the camera you are using you can waste a lot of time changing switches, being generally pernickety and loosing as many shots in the process.

When you use the domestic SDT750 the first and most important job is to set up the 3D Conversion lens. This is done by rotating three dials within the Conversion lens itself, the camcorder walks you through the easy 3 steps to ensure you get a clean, crisp, correctly aligned 3D picture.

As you can see from the front of the Conversion lens it has 2 rectangular holes, these produce the precise double image needed to make 3D pictures. This is why you cannot use the 10x zoom lens as by the action of zooming would drastically change the parallax.

Not one person at the wedding questioned the size of the 3D camcorder nor it’s strange looks but these ghosts remain fixed in some videographers heads who insist on using shoulder mount camcorders. George was using a relatively new Sony NX5 camcorder which he is delighted with and produces an HD wedding package that if requested gets burned onto Blu-ray.

The Sony NX5 is becoming the de-facto wedding camcorder as it produces clean pictures onto SDHC solid state memory cards. George was fascinated with the Panasonic SDT750 3D camcorder and can see the extra dimension that such a tool could enhance to his wedding armoury.

When filming with the SDT750 it’s important to remember…

Firstly it’s a domestic 3D camcorder so you don’t get full manual control of the camera while filming.

You only get a wide shot as the 10x zoom is disabled.

Get yourself a stick on Rycote patch for the 5.1 mic on top of the camcorder to prevent wind noise.

Use a pair of headphones firstly to listen to the sound and secondly to prevent camera noises as the camcorder is plastic and can produce handling noise.

Get at least 1 extra spare battery.

Editing…there is a short supply of editing packages for 3D at the moment but you can do some minor editing “in-camera”. Panasonic also supply basic PC editing software and Sony Vegas Pro 10 now ships with 3D editing as standard but once again PC only.
If you are a Mac person like myself you could install Windows 7 via boot camp that would at lease get Vegas on your system.

I had a lot of fun using the Panasonic SDT750 and the 3D effect is truly stunning, this camcorder can produce an amazing picture on a 50″ 3D plasma and is the way forward for domestic 3D. I will be showing my 26 minutes of 3D footage at the ProVideo show in Coventry on the 13-14th October just behind the IOV membership stand. My thanks to George and Maurine of GMW Wedding Productions for letting me hook onto their wedding.