Panasonic HDC-TM350

Review: Panasonic HDC-TM350 (AVCHD)

The new top-end HD camcorder from Panasonic isn’t afraid of the competition – and with good reason. SimplyDV gets the first UK preview of this fabulous new 3MOS hi-def sensation.

Panasonic HDC-TM350 AVCHD camcorder

Panasonic flagship Full-HD camcorder pushes flash memory capacity to the max with 64GB of memory in addition to the option of recording to SDHC memory card.

First Impressions

Like the HDC-TM300 model it complements, the HDC-TM350 is chunky, bulky and not the lightweight many of its Panasonic AVCHD siblings are, but that’s a good sign in our books. That implies that it’s a serious camcorder aimed at enthusiasts looking for a solid build quality and full functionality who will expect all these qualities and more.

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 (as at November 2009) 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.

The HDC-TM350 accessory shoe adaptor slot

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.

The TM350's manual lens control ring and 5.1 channel mic

Like all other AVCHD camcorders in the current range, the HDC-TM350 uses the MPEG-4/AVC H.264 high definition video compression system to save 1920×1080 / 50i movies to the selected memory using the following settings:

• HA: 17 Mbps (1920 x 1080 VBR)
• HG: 13 Mbps (1920 x 1080 VBR)
• HX: 9 Mbps (1920 x 1080 VBR)
• HE: 6 Mbps (1440 x 1080 VBR

The 64GB built-in memory facilitates recording and playback of up to 8 hours at the highest (HA) recording setting or 24 hours at the lowest. Alternatively (or additionally), by using a 16GB SDHC Class 4 memory card, it’s possible to record approximately 2 hours of full-specification AVCHD at the HA setting. This increases to 2 hrs 40 mins (HG), 4 hrs (HX and 6 hrs (HE) respectively.

Use of a 32GB SDHC card (the maximum possible under the current AVCHD specification), it would be possible to record 4 hours at the highest quality setting and 12 hours at the lowest. A 4GB card will give 30 mins at the highest setting and 1 hour 30 mins at the lowest. No card is included with the camcorder.

Note that movie clips and digital stills images recorded to one medium can be individually or collectively copied to the other medium. That means that you can archive clips off the 64GB flash memory to a SDHC card or visa versa.

The camcorder’s excellent graphical menu system provides several clip management options that include deleting and moving clips, splitting clips into segments, deleting those segments that have been split or entire clips that are unwanted and also provides the option to create user playlists of clips stared on either a card or HDD.

Given the solid-state nature of the recording media, these features are really useful – especially when needing to free up space on a SDHC card when away from base or when preparing to play out sequences direct from the camcorder.

The TM350 uses Panasonic's excellent touch-screen LCD technology

Movie clips and images are represented by thumbnail images which can be deleted, moved or copied between media individually or in batches as playlists.

Interestingly, if more than person uses the camcorder, it’s possible for each user to set up his/her own playlist/s from all of the stored clip files and then copy them out to a card from the internal flash memory. Playlists can also be burnt out to DVD direct from the camcorder via USB when using one of the company’s USB Host DVD burners like the VW-BN1. This facilitates the creation of DVD discs containing high definition clips which are then playable to a HDTV via the camcorder or in a Blu-ray player.

Performance

The HDC-TM350 is undoubtedly a great camcorder. Like is companion 300 series models, it handles beautifully and all the controls seem to be in the right place. Its touch-screen, in addition to its frame-side controls, means it’s easy to use when seated on a tripod – something that many of its target users will seek to do.

Although menu-driven control systems always take a bit of getting used to, it doesn’t take long to get in the swing of setting up the camera for the job in hand and making required changes during recording isn’t troublesome in any way.

Its maximum recording bit rate of 17Mbps produces superb images when viewed on a large HDTV display via a standard HDMI connection (cable not supplied). The colours are rich, vibrant and superbly well rendered – even when shooting in iA (Intelligent Auto) mode and the contrast ratio (the way an image containing both darker and brighter picture elements are coped with within the same frame) is also very good. Plenty of manual, menu-driven, controls are available with which to make picture adjustments, too.

Dedicated microphone input and headphone output

Like many such models, both from Panasonic and other major brands, the upward-facing 5.1 channel mic array suffers from wind noise even when there’s a light breeze flowing across the top of the camcorder body (a good reason to purchase an optional external microphone). Panasonic has also incorporated a zoom mic feature in which the focus of the microphone mimicks the action of the zoom lens. We’ve never been convinced by this, and it’s not that noticeable when shooting outdoors in breezy conditions, it should be noted. When the conditions are good, however, the stereo audio is very good indeed – good clarity and separation all round.

The use of three, rather than one, CMOS imaging device means that the TM350 also copes well with gloomier, underlit, scenes – such as indoors when lit by low-wattage internal lighting – with pictures remaining well-resolved and pleasing to the eye. As we’ve said before in reviews of 1MOS and even 3MOS camcorders, don’t expect images to be perfect; they wouldn’t be on professional models so why expect it of consumer models? Its Intelligent Auto (iA) functionality – combined with really useful stuff like the Auto-Tracking White Balance system – ensures that the camcorder is doing as much as it can to maintain things as they should be whilst you get on with the serious business of shooting. Accessing these controls via the touch-screen menu system takes a bit of getting used to but it’s worth the effort due to the quality of results obtainable.

Conclusion

Make no mistake that Panasonic is making a giant leap forward with a camcorder that relies solely on such a substantial amount of solid-state flash memory; 64GB is currently the state of the art and provides the clearest signal yet that solid-state recording is not only the future for home video but the benchmark standard right now. The addition of the SDHC memory card slot takes this one important further by giving the user endless flexibility over the acquisition, management and archiving of material for days on end, and when using an optional VW-BN1 or up-coming VW-BN2 direct-connect USB Host DVD burner, it’s possible to output to DVD direct from the camcorder as well.

In an earlier review, we said that the HDC-HS300 was going to be a hard act to follow. That was then – and this is now. The fabulous Panasonic HDC-TM350 is a digital movie-making enthusiast’s dream.

With that, Panasonic earns itself another coveted SimplyDV 5 Thumbs award.

Review by Colin Barrett. Revised December 2009. Main image copyright Panasonic UK Limited. Other images copyright the author. All Rights Reserved.