Panasonic HDC-HS700K

[Scott Hayes]

anyone used one of these little babies? 3 cmos chips.

[Phil Holland]

I'm pretty impressed by it so far. Great camera for the price. For me 1080/60p is worth it alone. There's really nothing else out there that does this for the price point.

Surprisingly good low light performance and OIS has been improved too.

[Bruce Phung]

The only down side I see this camera is that Panasonic don't offer a high capacity battery like Sony. Panasonic highest capacity battery for this cam is 2 hrs. I am tore between this two cams, Sony CX 550V. You can shoot all day long with CX550V and the high capacity battery 400+ minutes NPFV100 battery . The TM700 is a bad ass camera. Pany needs to offer a bad ass battery to go along with the TM700.

[William Gaffney]

Be careful, my new Pal TM700 has a green color cast even when manual white balance is used. Otherwise there are lots of things to like about the camera.

[Phil Holland]

Bruce, I had the same concerns. Especially with Sony's awesome long life batteries.
However, what I've found with the Panasonic camera is that it's quick shut down when you close the LCD screen and quick startup I find myself not shutting down the camera.

I'm using the larger capacity battery and so far am impressed.

Still testing, but so far impressed with battery life/performance.
It would be nice if there was something in the 10 hour range available though.

[Denny Lajeunesse]

TM700 is the pretty much the same camera.

Using 1080 60P I found it way to sharp on close to med shots and when you turned teh detail down, distance wide shots looked odd, farther away the subject the more muddy.

Not sure how much the latter is from CMOS and how much is from using a tiny chip.

Didn't get to play with it for more than a day or two, so I didn't get to find the right tweaks.

Otherwise not to bad for a consumer cam. Did not like that you could not use the focus ring while adjusting iris though. That was a deal breaker and I returned the cam.

Considering I spent as much in 2002 for a D8 with manual focus, It does show how far along consumer cams have gotten.

[Guy McLoughlin]

Originally Posted by Bruce Phung

The only down side I see this camera is that Panasonic don't offer a high capacity battery like Sony. Panasonic highest capacity battery for this cam is 2 hrs.

Actually, the highest capacity battery that fits on the TM700 / HS700 is the VW-VBG260, which provides about 3.5 hours of shooting time with the LCD, and 4+ hours using the viewfinder instead of the LCD.

You can also use an adapter pack for the large HMC150 battery ( looks like a big hassle to me ), that should give you more than 7 hours of shooting time.