Panasonic HDC-HS300

I am a wedding and event Videographer and I use this as a secondary camera to my Sony Z1. I’ll start by saying this is a great wee camera. It is small, light and fairly durable. It is a fantastic handy cam.

The Camera has a built in 120GB hard drive which is a great size and does not make the camera bulky in any way. If you find that is not enough storage space it is a hybrid camera that can use SD cards as well which is a great feature. ...
...different picture quality modes, full HD 1920x1080 which is the highest and best quality, down to 1440x1080 which is the lowest quality but still fairly good in my opinion. The mode you shoot will affect how much memory is used. The higher quality obviously uses up more memory but with a 120GB hard drive I have never had to reduce the quality.

Panasonics big selling point for this camera was the 3MOS Sensors, which means it has 3, 1/4 ... more

I am a wedding and event Videographer and I use this as a secondary camera to my Sony Z1. I’ll start by saying this is a great wee camera. It is small, light and fairly durable. It is a fantastic handy cam.

The Camera has a built in 120GB hard drive which is a great size and does not make the camera bulky in any way. If you find that is not enough storage space it is a hybrid camera that can use SD cards as well which is a great feature.

The camera can record in four different picture quality modes, full HD 1920x1080 which is the highest and best quality, down to 1440x1080 which is the lowest quality but still fairly good in my opinion. The mode you shoot will affect how much memory is used. The higher quality obviously uses up more memory but with a 120GB hard drive I have never had to reduce the quality.

Panasonics big selling point for this camera was the 3MOS Sensors, which means it has 3, 1/4 inch sensors, which is for producing real to life colours in anything you shoot. Many handy cams only have the one sensor and you have to go up to semi professional cameras to get 3 sensors. This wee baby has three and it shows; the colours it produces in the daylight are incredible. I was blown away by how bright and real the colours that it produced were. With worse light conditions the colour quality does reduce like any camera but if you are shooting in good lighting conditions you will not be disappointed by the colour quality. The camera lens (Leica) also helps to add to the quality. The Leica lens is one of the best you can get and it allows to to get really close (1-2 inches) to a subject with auto focus and it will focus no problem at all.

The other big selling point, for myself anyway, was the focus ring on the camera around the lens. This allows you to manually change the focus using the ring instead of a fiddly button in the touch screen. It has a focus assist, which brings up a box with the imaged zoomed in so you can focus easier. This can be turned off if you wish like many of the features. The camera can simply be used as a point and shoot with everything on auto which is great if you are not sure what all the features mean but if you like to control everything, you can, like white balance, iris, focus and shutter speed. All this can be turned on and off through the touch LCD screen. The LCD is bright and although I am not a fan of touch screens it is made slightly easier by the plastic pointer you get with the camera that you can use to access the menus and stops finger prints on the screen. The camera also has a viewfinder for the more professional user but can only be used when the LCD is closed.

The sound quality for me was never a factor as I have said it is my secondary camera but I was fairly surprised by the quality of the sound. You are never going to get incredibly sound for an in-built microphone but it is not bad. you also have the option to change the mic to zoom mic which will focus on the audio from what you are pointing at and tries its best to lower the surrounding noises. You can also attach an external mic via mini jack and attach it to the top of the camera using the hidden horse shoe attachment.

The down side to the camera for me are the menu, which I find a bit fiddly and you have to go into menus to turn something on or off, which I do find annoying but many people I am sure will find this no problem. The other down side to this camera is the battery, it last perhaps 2 hours tops and you can’t seem to buy a larger long life version which I find hugely disappointing. A new additional battery of same size will set you back about £60 - £70.

Overall, this is a great camera. It is not a semi or full professional camera but it is a great camera none the less. For family videos or wedding videos like I use it for, it is a great quality camera. The image quality is top notch and even the still images you can take with it are 10.6 megapixels and look fantastic. You can attach the camera to your computer/tv via various options, A/V, component, HDMI and USB. You get editing software with the camera but it does not work on Macs to my great annoyance, however you can transfer the footage from your camera to Mac using IMovie but if you use professional editing software like myself you have to import it in to these from iMovie. There are down sides as I covered and with a pretty hefty price tag, it may take an enthusiast to pay that. I would say it isn’t great value for money but I have also found it is much better than most lower priced cameras.
 

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