Review on 📹 Panasonic HDC-HS700K Hi-Def Camcorder: Pro Control System & 240GB HDD (Black) - Unleash Your Filmmaking Potential by Shawn Jimenez

Just got back from a holiday (Canada) where we used the Panasonic hs700k in various lighting conditions - even on a foggy day. Back home, I was disappointed that the accessories didn't include an HDMI cable. Panasonic appears to be stealing pages from unscrupulous printer manufacturers' playbooks, which they trade for toner/ink. The package includes Low-Res connection cables, but this is an HD camcorder and did not come with an HDMI cable. Unacceptable! It's like buying a car without wheels. I recently bought a Droid X smartphone which oddly comes with an HDMI cable, but Panasonic has chosen an odd form factor, despite the fact that I've upgraded a "mini" HDMI to a "full-size" -HDMI from Droid got . It doesn't fit in the dedicated Panasonic port. People with CURRENT PROFESSIONAL SKILLS have exceeded my expectations for build quality and image quality. After burning my videos to Blu-ray Disc, I was amazed at the quality of the images. Summarized in one word. Wow! Crystal clear and simply wonderful picture on my plasma TV. All of our scenes were shot in 1080p - yes it takes up a lot of storage space but the Panasonic clarity and resolution is superb and I'm glad I did. Color saturation was excellent in this raw state of the video. I recorded the disc in raw format without massaging color/tint/contrast etc. What most people don't know is that Hollywood uses Avid etc. to enhance the colors of scenes and balance the lighting between shots. Obviously I don't have that high end hardware/software so those options weren't available to me. So I discovered a slightly cold tone on the video. Even late at night when Fuji's 35mm chrome film would have rendered warm colors an hour before sunset; Panasonic was a bit blue (for lack of a better word). Since the files are so large, editing is a big problem, but c'mon, welcome to Hi def. Image stabilization was excellent. A few scenes where I intentionally left it out made the video shake; but after turning it back on, the scaling from zero to medium was stable. The zoom button is a bit awkward to use (I have big hands), but it worked well and was relatively quick. We didn't pick up any zoom noise from the built-in mic, but the wind did produce a noisy audio pick-up at times (sounds like a hissing flag flapping). A camcorder of this outstanding quality really deserves a boom mic with a fluffy windproof sock, so I won't blame the problem. Fog and low temperatures (40F) didn't bother the device. Battery life was surprisingly good and the portable charger worked well. Photos will be soft and I recommend taking a second camera with you. All in all I highly recommend this device - it works flawlessly, the lens is very sharp at all physical zooms (ignore the useless digital zoom) and the price matches the results.