Panasonic has expanded its professional AVCCAM line with the introduction of a more compact, lighter handheld camcorder — the AG-HMC40. Weighing less than 2.2lbs, the new AVCCAM camcorder features full HD 3MOS imagers, high-resolution 10.6-megapixal still photo capture, 12X optical zoom, and high-quality, solid-state AVCHD recording on widely-available SD cards.
The HMC40 is an AVCHD-format based camcorder that uses MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 high-profile encoding. AVCHD high-definition recordings look clean and crisp, even during fast motion, reducing the image degradation or dropout associated with older HDV recordings.
The camcorder’s full-resolution, 2-megapixel, 1/4.1in 3MOS imager produces 1920 x 1080 HD images with high sensitivity. The camera captures still images with 10.6-megapixel resolution directly onto the SD card as a JPEG image. The handheld offers a 12X optical zoom (includes 2X, 5X, 10X) and professional image functions such as Dynamic Range Stretch (DRS) that helps compensate for wide variations in lighting, and a Cine-Like Gamma mode, which gives recordings a more film-like aesthetic.
The HD camcorder records in all four professional AVCCAM recording modes, including the high-quality PH mode, the HA mode (approx.17 Mb/s), the HG mode (approx.13 Mb/s) and the extended recording HE mode (approx. 6 Mb/s). It supports 1080/59.94i (in all modes) and 1080/29.97p, 1080/23.98p native, 720/59.94p, 720/29.97p and 720/23.98p native (in PH mode only).
Using just one 32GB SDHC memory card, a user can record three hours of full resolution 1920x1080 video and audio in PH mode, four hours at HA mode and 5.3 hours at HG mode. In the HE mode, the camera can record up to 12 hours of 1440x1080 HD content — all on a single 32GB SDHC card.
