Panasonic HDC-HS300

Auto Mode (10.27)

The lens ring adjusts a variety of controls, though it only works with focus and zoom with the LCD open.

One of the more highly publicised aspects of Panasonic's 2009 line-up is the user-friendly features bundled into the Intelligent Auto (iA) collection. In fact, the HDC-HS300 has a number of shooting modes that will seem approachable to beginners—despite the fact that it is a flagship camcorder with the manual controls and price tag suitable for more experienced videophiles. When you first turn on the camcorder, the default mode is a standard auto mode, which hides a lot of options in order to create a less intimidating user experience for novices. The trouble is, the button for activating and deactivating manual controls is hidden up front, near the manual control ring. So, if a beginner accidentally activates manual mode, it might be frustrating to figure how to get back into auto mode. We preferred the SD20's design, which featured a clear 'Manual' button right inside the LCD cavity.

When shooting in auto mode, you won't need to bother with adjusting focus, exposure, or white balance. Fortunately, the HDC-HS300 does an excellent job of making these adjustments for you. Focus happens quickly and smoothly, unless you are in very dim lighting conditions. There is also a tele macro option if you are shooting objects close to the lens. Exposure is also quite good: most slow pans were exposed with gradual and even transitions. Automatic white balance gives you surprisingly good colours, though it is not quite as good as the manual white balance.

If you want the camcorder to do even more heavy lifting, you can push the small iA button to activate the Intelligent Auto (iA) features. Intelligent Auto does more than make automatic image adjustments; it also uses Panasonic's AF/AE Tracking, Intelligent Scene Selector, Intelligent Contrast Control, and Face Detection.

The most fun feature of the 2009 iA line-up—and arguably the most useful—is AF/AE Tracking. This clever feature allows you to touch your main subject on the LCD and have the camcorder 'follow' the selected subject. Granted, the camcorder wont physically move, but it will keep the subject properly exposed and in focus as long as you keep it in frame. We found that the feature works surprisingly well, with a few notable exceptions. If your subject moves temporarily out of frame, for instance, AF/AE Tracking might have a hard time finding it again. There are also problems recording in a more crowded environment: if you're following the action at a football game and another player passes between you, the tracking will often lose one player to pick up the other. For recording at a school play, ballet recital, or gymnastics meet—anything where your subject remains relatively isolated—the feature is surprisingly effective.

The other iA features are less gimmicky than AF/AE Tracking, but can also come in handy. Intelligent Scene Selector automatically selects the appropriate scene mode for the subject being recorded. Back light Compensation keeps a subject from getting overshadowed by back light, while Intelligent Contrast Control moderates high contrast scenes to prevent dark shadows and blow-outs . Face Framing makes exposure and focus adjustments for up to fifteen faces detected in a frame.

Low Light Modes
The HS300 offers one full-fledged low light mode: MagicPix. It is not clear what exactly MagicPix does, but it is probably some combination of a 25p frame rate, increased gain, and slower shutter. If you don't want to change the frame rate, you can also engage the camcorders auto slow shutter, which drops the shutter speed to 1/25. There's also something called Low Light Mode, but that is just the scene mode that the camcorder may select for you if you're shooting with iA engaged. In the iA Low Light Mode, the shutter speed will drop to 1/30 of a second.

Scene Modes
You get the usual smorgasbords of scene modes with the HS300. You can select these manually or let iA pick the scene mode for you. Options include: Portrait, Snow, Sunset, Sports, Spotlight, Beach, and Fireworks.

Zoom (9.25)

When more real estate is available on the top of a camcorder, Panasonic supplies the user with a meaty sliding switch to control zoom. Such is the case on the HDC-SD20 and the HDC-TM300. On the HDC-HS300, we have the good fortune of encountering a slim, standard zoom toggle. While the toggle might not give you as much surface area to grip, it feels more responsive. The primary zoom control on every high definition Panasonic is pressure-sensitive to allow variable zoom speeds. The toggle on Panasonic's hard drive models, however, seems to make it easier to achieve a steady, slow zoom. That may just be our personal preference.

The HS300 actually has two additional methods for controlling zoom: the manual lens ring and two membrane buttons mounted on the LCD panel. The lens ring is a great control for making slow or fine zoom adjustments, but a fast zoom is tricky to achieve. If you don't like the action on the toggle, however, you'll be surprised by how smooth the lens control can be. The membrane buttons, on the other hand, are really only useful if you're shooting with two hands and can't comfortable reach the ring or the toggle. They do not offer variable speeds based on finger pressure.

The zoom toggle is a bit small, but it is very responsive.

When zooming, a progress bar appears in the upper-right corner to indicate where you are in the available zoom range. If you have digital zoom enabled, that portion of the scale will appear in blue, while the optical zoom range is white. Next to the bar is a number indicating the current zoom ratio. Unfortunately, the zoom ratio only appears in whole number increments, but at least there's a number at all—more than we can say for the competition from Canon and Sony.

While Canon does not offer numerical zoom increments or the option of lens ring zoom control, it does have one distinct advantage over the Panasonic flagship camcorders. The Canon HF S100, HF S10, and even the HF20 sport three fixed zoom speed settings and a variable speed option. This a great feature, especially when you're trying to replicate a shot. With the models from Panasonic, you'll just have to rely on the precision of your own fine motor skills to achieve constant zoom speeds.

Zoom Ratio (4.34)

Most high resolution camcorders do not have the whopping 60x or 70x zoom ratios that you'll find on several standard definition models. The HDC-HS300 does, however, offer a modest 12x optical zoom, which is more than enough to keep up with the competition. The Sony HDR-XR520V also has a 12x optical zoom, while the high-end Canons top out at 10x.

There's also the usual digital zoom, which can be turned off or capped at 30x or 700x. We typically recommend you avoid using digital zoom, since it degrades image quality.

Zoom Comparisons
Wide Angle	Mid Zoom	Tele Zoom

Focus (7.0)

The thought of making fine focal adjustments on a touch screen is enough to make most videophiles shudder. When we learned that Panasonic was switching over to touch screens, there was a moment of alarm—and rightly so. Panasonic's 2009 mid-range models, like the HDC-SD20, require all focus adjustments to be made with the touch screen. That means that you have to block part of your image with your finger in order to manipulate the touch screen slider. And with no viewfinder on the SD20, it is a shame to block precious LCD real estate.

Fortunately, moving up to Panasonic's flagship models gives you more than just improved image quality. Not only do you have a viewfinder—which often makes focal adjustments easier anyway—but the HS300 does away with awkward touch screen focus. Panasonic has replaced this with the buttery smooth action of the manual control lens ring. This is the same lens ring that was featured at the top of Panasonic's 2008 line-up, with great success.

With such a versatile tool at your disposal, it is too bad that Panasonic does not offer the excellent focus assistance that you get on high-end Canons. The Canon HF S100, for instance, offers a focus assist zoom tool (in colour or black and white) and three colours of peaking. The HDC-HS300, however, offers just the most basic focus assist box, which magnifies the centre of your image to help you find the best focus.

Exposure Controls

-5 to +5 (11 increments overall)

Aperture Controls

f/1.8 (open), f/2.0, f/2.4, f/2.8, f/3.3, f/4.0, f/4.8, f/5.6, f/6.8, f/8.0, f/9.6, f/11, f/14, f/16 (and additional increments in-between)

Shutter Speeds

In Auto/Manual mode (60i frame rate): 1/60, 1/100, 1/120, 1/180, 1/250, 1/350, 1/500, 1/750, 1/1000, 1/1500, 1/2000, 1/3000, 1/4000, 1/8000 (plus 1/30 in Auto Slow Shutter) In Digital Cinema mode (24p frame rate): 1/48, 1/100, 1/120, 1/180, 1/250, 1/350, 1/500, 1/750, 1/1000, 1/1500, 1/2000, 1/3000, 1/4000, 1/8000 (plus 1/25 in Auto Slow Shutter)

White Balance Controls

Auto, Sunny, Cloudy, Indoor 1, Indoor 2, Manual

Gain Controls

0dB, 3dB, 6dB, 9dB, 12dB, 15dB, 18dB (and additional increments in-between)

Exposure (6.6)

As with last year's models from Panasonic, manual exposure is the one tool that really irks us. The option is buried deep inside an obscure menu, when it should be one of the easier features to access. On last year's models, it took fourteen button presses to even reach the exposure option. On the Panasonic HDC-HS300, the touch screen allows you to get there in one button press and eleven screen taps (see below).

Once you do uncover this hidden feature, you can easily choose from one of eleven brightness increments, from -5 to +5. Since exposure is buried in the Picture Adjust sub menu, you can't use the live histogram or luminance meter when making exposure adjustments.

Adjusting exposure is a chore on the HS300.

Aperture (9.5)

The 2009 models from Panasonic continue the company's trend of combining aperture and gain into a single 'iris' feature. You can use the touch screen to select one of about thirty different increments between f/1.8 and f/16. Fourteen of those increments are associated with an approximate aperture setting (displayed on the left side of the touch screen). It is a little bit unusual to only number half of your increments, but this is something that Panasonic has always done. The touch screen simply draws more attention to the oddity: when you touch the arrow and the number does not change, it feels like the touch screen is not responding.

Thankfully, Panasonic does offer a couple of tools that help with their odd numbering system. A live histogram and/or luminance meter can be activated to give the user a more precise idea of metering in their shot. This is a helpful tool for setting up external lighting, framing a shot, or making image adjustments. It also means that the luminance meter can help confirm each aperture step, even when the numerical aperture value does not change.

Aperture is called iris on the HS300.

We were disappointed to find that Panasonic made a slight change to the way in which the manual control lens ring works. On last year's models, you could easily use the lens ring to shift white balance, shutter speed, or iris. This year, the ring is reserved for zoom and focus, unless you have the LCD closed and are using the viewfinder. True, changing the function of the ring wasn't very intuitive in 2007, but instead of streamlining the process, Panasonic has simply removed some functionality and left the same unwieldy interface for anyone using the viewfinder.

Whether you're using the touch screen or the lens ring to adjust aperture, when you've exhausted your options for aperture by bringing it to a fully open position, you can further boost the exposure by increasing gain (explained in the Gain section, below).

Shutter Speed (10.0)

Like Iris, shutter speed can be controlled via either the touch screen or the manual control lens ring. The lens ring, however, only allows you to control shutter speed when the LCD is closed. In either case, there is a scale on the left side of the LCD—with all increments numbered, instead of the ambiguous half steps of the Iris control.The aperture range is quite wide, including a total of fourteen increments when shooting at an ordinary 50i frame rate. When you engage Auto Slow Shutter, the range of options widens to include 1/30. Shooting in Digital Cinema mode changes the frame rate to 25p, which means the slowest shutter speeds are now 1/25 and 1/48 (with and without Auto Slow Shutter engaged).

Shutter speed control is part of the Function Menu.

White Balance (7.75)

The HS300 has just four white balance pre-sets to choose from: Sunny, Cloudy, Indoor 1, and Indoor 2—about average for consumer camcorders. The outdoor white balance options respond fairly accurately, but the auto white balance is even better in some outdoor lighting conditions. The indoor pre-sets don't give any indication of what type of indoor lighting they're designed to accommodate and aren't very reliable.

If you don't like the results of the white balance pre-sets, you can easily perform a manual white balance. Unfortunately, the manual white balance does not always work perfectly. Under certain fluorescent lighting, the manual white balance produced a washed out and/or blueish tone. Fortunately, this was an uncommon problem; in most lighting conditions, the colour balance turned out to be quite good. If you're really searching for the best white balance, we recommend you compare the auto and manual balances, then simply decide which you prefer. Unfortunately, the HDC-HS300 does not have the white balance level control that you have on the Sony HDR-XR520V.

If you're shooting with the viewfinder (LCD closed), white balance is one of the options that can be controlled with the manual control lens ring.

Adjusting the white balance

Gain (4.0)

Panasonic is still one of the few manufacturers to offer a manual gain setting. This allows you to digitally boost exposure beyond what you can accomplish with shutter speed or aperture alone. While this does offer some nice versatility, the tool is somewhat limited. On Panasonic's consumer camcorders, gain is linked to aperture: you can only adjust gain once the aperture has been fully opened to f/1.8.

This 'Iris' feature is more limiting than the full gain control you'll see on prosumer camcorders, but full gain control is practically unheard of on ordinary consumer cams. The most versatile out there is probably the Sanyo VPC-HD2000's ISO feature. It was designed for still photography, but it can be used when recording video as well. The JVC camcorders allow you to turn auto gain control on and off, while top-of-the-line Canon camcorders offer a Gain Control Limit feature, which lets you limit the gain boost automatically produced by the camcorder.

As was the case for aperture, there are actually half-step increments between each numbered gain setting (i.e. there is a distinct gain level between 6dB and 9dB.) With a range of 0dB to 18dB, that means there are about thirteen total increments available.

Gain is linked to iris on the HS300.

Iris is one of the controls that can be manipulated via the manual control lens ring—but only if you operate the camcorder with the viewfinder extended and LCD panel closed.

Colour & Image Controls (7.5)

There are a couple of options added for extra flexibility over image control. Panasonic's don't give you quite as much flexibility as the Canon camcorders, which have vivid, neutral, low sharpening, soft skin, and a small amount of control over brightness, contrast, sharpening, and colour depth. However, the sharpness and colour options on the Panasonic are more versatile than similar options on the Canon. Each of these features have eleven increments to choose from, instead of just three, as on the Canons. A single increment produces a very subtle change, but the range from -5 to +5 can create very different results (see below).

Panasonic HDC-HS300 colour and Sharpness Controls 3000 lux at 100% Crop
Auto	colour -5	colour +5	Sharpness -5	Sharpness +5

The HDC-HS300 also has a Soft Skin Mode (see colour Performance), which is the same feature that was found on last year's models and several competing camcorders. Finally, there is Digital Cinema colour, which is Panasonic's version of x.v.colour. Last year, x.v.colour was only available in Digital Cinema mode; now you can use the expanded colour gamut without recording at a 24p frame rate.

colour/Image Control	Description
Soft Skin Mode	a cosmetic effect that enacts a soft focus on any skin tones, essentially blurring out wrinkles and other skin imperfections
Digital Cinema colour	Panasonic's version of an x.v.colour mode, which expands the available colour gamut for x.v.colour-compatible televisions
Sharpness	allows the user to manually sharpen or soften the image
colour	allows the user to increase or decrease colour saturation

Other Manual Controls (5.0)

Control	Description
Tele Macro	allows you to focus on items close to the camcorder (focal distance is approximately 1cm to 1m)
Guide Lines	on screen lines that help you frame your shot (can be set to three horizontal lines, a 9-sector grid, or a 60-sector grid)
Zebra	a common professional feature that assists with manual exposure adjustment: black and white stripes appear in overexposed areas (not on your final footage); unlike on the Canons, there is no option to set zebra stripe sensitivity
Luminance	a small target at the centre of the screen, give you a luminance value from 0% - 100% (can be set to always on, on adjust, or off)
Histogram	helps you determine how much of your shot is currently in brightness, shadows, and mid tones (can be set to always on, on adjust, or off)