Here is the camera I have been blogging about since IBC during September 2010. One word…FANTASTIC…Panasonic have done a great job on this camcorder, I have shot some footage with various lenses from the Lumix, Canon and the Nokton. So far I am still in love with my Nokton it produces some great HD shallow depth of field pictures.
I did a piece to camera and played back the footage on my 50″ Panasonic 3D TV and the pictures are nothing short of stunning, the Nokton lens has to be one of your standard lenses in your AF101 lens kit, it produces better video footage at f0.95 than it does on a G2 at the same f stop.
So far I have found one niggle…the position and type of white balance switch, it’s a push button rather than the conventional micro toggle switch. I was filming my wife and noticed that she was slightly over exposed so I put my hand back to adjust the exposure wheel and hit the WB button. Future AF cameras please use a toggle switch.
I hunted for the quality settings in the menu but looking at the manual discovered the quality is dependent on what you are filming with eg. I was using 720 50p therefore defaults to top quality mode which is PH 21Mbps.
A DSLR quirk is the camera does not activate if you use a non Lumix lens unless you do the following first…
Scroll down till you find the OTHER FUNCTIONS, then you will find the words…
LENS CHECK, in this menu turn the “Lens Check” to off, then your camcorder will ignore the fact that the lens has no electronic functions. I hope to let you see some 1st play footage tomorrow evening.
Hi,
If it’s like the HMC151 then the AWB button is actually really effective button – let me explain:
I noticed in your pictures the camera has the bog-standard toggle switch for white balance on the left side with A, B and Preset. When it Preset mode, a couple of presses of the AWB and you can switch the preset from tungsten to daylight & vice versa. Fantastic!
On most cameras in this range, eg Sony NX5, you have to go into the menu to change the preset – a right pain in those run & gun situations. Prob was one of the most underrated feature on the HMC151 – more cameras should have it.
Hi Philip! First I want to say HD warrior is very interesting and I’ve open it everyday.
What about AWB button… here I just can say – You are SONY guy, so for us, who used Panasonic for years, it’s in the right place – you always find it right there, not in the “field” of buttons and switchers… brrrr