Review on Panasonic X2000 4K Professional Camcorder: 24x Optical Zoom, WiFi HD Live Streaming, 3G SDI Output, HC-X2000 (USA Black) by David Butterfield

Preface: I've had the camera for about 2 months now and I have to say that it comes with a lot of reliable and versatile features. the picture quality is just ok. Let's face it, this is a small-chip camera, so it naturally sucks in low light and is quite grainy on overcast days. Try to keep the gain as close to zero as possible, as anything above 6dB is almost useless. As such, noise correction software such as Neat Video is a must for this camera and should be considered if you are new to your workflow. I already had the Neat Video plug-ins for Sony Vegas which I have been using with my Sony AX100 for a while and they also work well to clean up grainy footage from the X1500. The Sony AX100 and 700 are very similar to this camera, so I will use them in my review. I am also amused by negative reviews complaining about management and customer service. It's 2020 folks, find out how to search google for a complete guide that is very detailed, helpful and available on the Panasonic website. Value: buy used. The new product costs $1,699, almost $500 less than the Sony AX100 released in 2014, adjusted for inflation. It is clear from the reviews that many people did not take the time to look at this camera and immediately sent it back. So there are already some good new cameras out there and to be honest I'm jealous. I didn't wait to buy one of these to save a few hundred bucks. Target Audience: I'm not sure who Panasonic was thinking of, but I'd say this camera is best suited as a B-camera for a film crew. for wildlife and bird watchers due to the long zoom and for the general hobbyist or semi-professional videographer who needs compact recording equipment and is not always commercial. That's not to say you can't get film-quality footage from this camera if you know what you're doing, but I'd recommend it for general ENG or documentary scenarios where you just need to take a shot and move on. I don't think the live stream reviews have anything to do with the people actually fielding these cameras. Pro Features: First and foremost, the excellent incorporation of Panasonic's reliable scene file control and custom buttons into a compact, semi-professional camera. And it's compact and light! Programmable custom buttons are a must (check out Sony), they really allow for customization and ease of use. User 1, 2 and OIS (3) and 5 are conveniently located and I have provided an image for my settings. I changed AE(4) to Zebra because I don't use automatic settings. User 6-12 is only in the menu and I don't find it useful, but it's there when needed. As for the scene file, I find CINE D with KNEE mode on MID the most useful, adjust detail and color as needed for your color grading result. 4K 60p and 10-bit H.265. Finally! 4K 60p in a professional build that Sony has neglected for years. I photograph a lot of trains, sometimes Amtrak bullet trains, and the combination of high shutter speed and frame rate is a MUST. Finally good news for budget action shooters. About the ZOOM range, obviously another advantage of small chip sensors that offer a magnification of up to 600mm (35mm equivalent). It's a bit over the top, however, unless you're a bird watcher zooming in on a tree. Most of your real-world daylight shots will be affected by thermal distortion, so I think a 1-inch sensor with a smaller zoom range would suit a lot more people. Let's not forget that there is a full color correction menu that allows you to adjust the camera to almost any parameter, making the picture look like another camera's picture. The monitor is bright and setting it to 2 is good for outdoors. It may take a while to get used to how the image looks on the LCD compared to what the camera actually captures, I recommend setting Zebra to 90 and KNEE to MID to avoid unnecessary overexposure and to test several times before taking it up the day of the shoot. The knob for adjusting gain and shutter speed is similar to that on the Sony AX100 and is fairly simple, although I haven't found a way to turn ICON off, which is annoying as I only want to adjust gain, shutter and white balance. Another ring is helpful and I programmed it for IRIS which removed it from the dial making it faster and easier to use. Variable zoom speed seems good, but you have to enable fast zoom separately, which is odd. I made this setting 5. I'm using a Magnus VC-20-SCP LANC controller and so far so good (although it only works when installed on Sony, how about this?) The full manual available online in PDF format is very detailed and unlike the physical manual. You can use the F button to quickly find what you need. Gain settings can be adjusted 1dB at a time, unlike the Sony, which jumps 3dB at a time. faster vertical scanning. I've taken several wide shots of Amtrak trains traveling at 110 mph and have seen virtually no distortion. The Sony AX100 is terrible with a rolling shutter, but it's a victim with large sensors. Focus settings are solid, autofocus seems surprisingly good for a Panasonic. I'm still experimenting with this, but the area/touch screen focusing is really cool. When setting area focus, you can also manually lock it so it doesn't refocus as you pan your subject. However, leave it on Auto in scenarios where you want to change focus, and if a pane is panned closer or farther towards an object it should adjust without touching the screen, although it's not always responsive. Experiment with it again. The lens hood design is very convenient with a switch to open. I like it much more as a cap that can be easily dropped and lost. Of course, if necessary, it will be removed. Cons: The small chip sensor obviously doesn't work well in low light. I found that using a scene file other than the CINE settings showed graininess or strange discoloration/artifacts even in dark areas on sunny days. You will have to spend a lot of time customizing the camera to suit your needs, but it is very customizable and I assure you that when you take the time to set it up, I too was initially very disappointed. They really overdid the performance of this camera, but compared to older sensors of this size, this is a definite improvement. Fast zoom does not remain activated when you turn the camera off and on again. Serious? Please fix this in a firmware update. There's an LCD level and image size indicator but no grid lines like the Sony AX100 for a quick rule of thirds, hopefully they'll add that as well. No shutter 1/50 or 1/90. speed, which I found very useful with the Sony AX100. Gain granularity over 3dB and no negative gain. A negative gain of up to -3dB would be very helpful when trying to open wide shots with great depth of field. Depth of field. Well that's fine, but you really have to zoom in to get decent bokeh, which is another downside of the small chip. But at least your wide-angle shots will look sharp! The sound quality through the 1/8 inch jack is POOR and UNSUITABLE. I connected the RODE Stereo Videomic X directly to the camera and no matter what gain settings I used on the mic with the camera gain at -30dB, the grainy audio noise was unusable. The same thing happened when used via the XLR inputs on the detachable handle, which I am returning immediately and rendering useless. Now I record on the Tascam DR70D with no problems. an additional budget of $200-300 for an external audio recorder is a must with this camera. I may have gotten a bad machine, but don't risk it. But I've found a couple of occasions where it was worth mixing with some of my tracks as I have a huge custom windscreen on my Rode mic that sacrifices some quality and range for suppressability. Wind gusts up to 30 miles per hour. 4K pictures are very boring compared to Sony. Honestly, the quality is like 2K or upscaled HD, but it's better than any HD picture from the Sony AX100. IM getting used to it. That's not bad by any means, but at such a high bitrate you'd guess the detail is higher. It may have been softened a bit to avoid showing how grainy this camera is in low light. People complain about blurry spots in the wide angle, although I didn't notice this ruining footage, it seems if you manually set the aperture and close it down a bit, this will diminish or go away altogether. image stabilization. I said it's a scam because it's a one way street. Manual image stabilization is also pretty good when zoomed in. I don't have a gimbal but I suspect this combination would be very reliable. As for a tripod, with or without optical stabilization turned on, things don't go so well. I wouldn't use optical image stabilization on a tripod unless I'm shooting static with zoom, but it seems that cameras are designed more for handheld use (WHY?) and not for use on a tripod, eh it should be. I don't know enough about image sensor and stabilization design, but over the years these tripod cameras have become much more susceptible to vibration and small bumps, resulting in a loss of professional image quality, which is likely due to the sensors now "floating" in the camera . Maybe it's a blessing in disguise, as maybe I should just ditch the tripod and get a gimbal, but I can't understand why a camera at this price point would pick up distortion so easily on an ash tripod designed to dampen vibration. H.265 is both a gift and a curse, at least for now. This isn't really a disadvantage of the camera, but be aware that these files are huge and you will need to allocate enough disk space for primary and backup storage, especially when most editing programs are currently unable to play H.265 smoothly (even on High -end computers) and you need to take the time to create an H.264 proxy, which I do with the free version of Davinci Resolve. This should be considered as part of an additional workflow, but the benefits of H.265 archival quality are huge. It's like 2006 when we struggled to reproduce HD lol. Conclusion /TL; DR: In my opinion, this is NOT a camera that can be used in auto mode with presets. I wish camera manufacturers would stop trying to do this. Learn the manual guys, or don't shoot at all. If you've never used such a camera and are upgrading a small home camcorder, it will take you a long time to learn, longer than the 30-day return period, but it's worth it. It's been two months and I'm still improving and learning new things and it's getting better after switching from a similar camera to the Sony AX100, trust me. The price is good but I never thought I would buy a small chip in 2020. Despite some nice extras, I think Panasonic would have appealed to a wider customer base by making the CX-350's little brother and cramming a 1-inch sensor into the design for better low-light performance and depth of field, and it does it doesn't say it's impossible because this camera is basically the same size as the Sony AX100. This camera resembles a 2015 design that's been delayed until 2020, but there's an interface and customization options for almost every application. Panasonic has clearly thought of a wide range of users and well-designed camera user interface, but what's the point of all this if the image quality isn't quite right? , solid 3.5 or 4 star camera, although I might like it better. Certainly lost a star due to unusable 1/8" audio jack (cm. above), so you'll need an external audio recorder. The camera as a whole really needs a firmware update, but I'd still recommend it (save your money and buy a used one if you can!).