Panasonic HDC-TM350 High Definition Camcorder

Basic description

The Japanese HDC-TM350 is a more advanced camcorder. It includes 64GB of internal flash memory, a larger 1/4.1-inch CMOS with a 3,050,000 x 3 gross pixel count, a 12x optical zoom, and also offers optical image stabilization. It weighs 390g without the battery.

Not only does this model offer all the manual controls that a serious user and video-making enthusiast will always require but it provides the option of recording and playing back full-specification HD movies and stills using either a high capacity (SDHC) memory card or – more significantly – its own built-in 64GB flash memory.

When you consider that you can now buy SDHC cards at capacities up to 32GB in one go, you’ll see that the TM350 offers the potential for users to take it out shooting and pre-loaded with a total of 96GB of solid-state flash memory.

In addition to being given many of the features associated with other members of the “300″ series camcorders, Panasonic has provided a hot shoe adaptor to enable those of us who use external devices to connect our favourite microphone or battery light to the camcorder. The slot for this can be found at the offside front of the body, and is a useful addition which the true enthusiast will welcome.

Detailed description

  Features

The TM350 uses three MOS image sensors (3MOS in Panasonic-speak) each of which is dedicated to one of the red, green and blue primary colours. The total number of pixels available on each MOS image sensor is 2.07 million pixels (Full HD) for both video and stills. Panasonic has given it three 1/4″ image sensors, which is consistent with other models in both the company’s 300 and the 200 ranges.

Here’s a brief summary of its most notable features:

• 12x optical zoom (30x and 700x digital)
• Pre-REC (enables you to record a 3-sec standby loop of video so as not to avoid an unexpected action or event)
• OIS (Optical Image Stabilisation) – and very good it is too
• Touch Screen LCD control; touch the menu icons to select, scroll through menus, set manual focus and exposure points in the frame by touching
• External Microphone input jack with full manual level control (using LCD display) and accessory shoe adaptor
• Shooting Guide (onscreen prompts to help you to shoot better video – such as “Camera Panning Too Fast” etc)
• Dedicated Headphone Output in addition to AV (Composite Analogue and Component Digital) output port
• iA Intelligent Auto – lots of electronic help to get the best colour, contrast, colour balance and performance
• Face Detection – tracks up to 5 faces in frame and keeps tabs on the overall colour control of each one
• Target Frame – use the LCD touch screen to set a target (eg: face, object in frame, focal point) to lock the values to that reference even when it moves
• Guide Lines – menu-selectable option for assisting picture composition using frame guidelines
• Relay Recording – when one recording medium (eg: both 32GB built-in flash memory modules) fills up during a scene, the TM350 will automatically switch recording to the other available medium (eg: SDHC memory card) without your even noticing that it’s happened and with no interference to the playback
• Interval Recording – time lapse recording at pre-set intervals from 1 second through to 120 seconds. Great for shooting spring flowers opening!

Given the absence of large buttons and proper controls as are featured on professional cameras and camcorders, the TM350’s Touch-screen LCD is very welcome, also – even if it’s still not liked by all users. to be considered in context. And, let’s face it, the ability to lock the focus to a particular object in the frame simply by touching the relevant part of the LCD is a major boon.

The same principle is applied to Exposure and White Balance, too. Another excellent feature is the manual control ring which, when used to manually modify focus, acts like a proper focus ring.

When selecting the Manual Focus button (situated just ahead of the LCD on the left of the body) and turning the knurled and well-damped ring, a centre object box appears in the frame which magnifies the centre part of the frame; turn the focus ring and the box provides the user with a very clear focus guide which makes pulling focus a much easier job.

Brand: Panasonic