Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2472 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Panasonic
• Model: HDC-TM300EBK
• Released on: 2009-02-28
• Display size: 2.7

Features

• Full HD 1080P AVCHD format
• 5.1 recording sound system
• 2.7"" LCD screen
• Image stabiliser
• 12x / 700x optical/digtal zoom

Manufacturer's Description
Sometimes a scene is backlit or too dark, or it's difficult to get a good focus on the subject. Adjusting the settings every time is not only a hassle, it can be very tricky. That's where iA comes in. This powerful function senses the shooting conditions and automatically makes the settings and activates functions that will deliver optimal results. With both motion and still images, iA lets you forget about bothersome settings and makes it easy to capture beautiful, well-focused images.

Advanced Optical Image Stabiliser (Optical Image Stabilizer)
Panasonic’s advanced O.I.S. suppresses the effects of hand-shake as you shoot. You get all the beauty and none of the blurring, even at high zoom levels.

The O.I.S. lens moves up/down or left/right and bends the incoming light to correct hand-shake. It checks and compensates around 4,000 times per second. That means that the coreection area is 3 times what it was with the previous O.I.S.

Intelligent Contrast Control
By detecting the intensity of the ambient light and adjusting the exposure accordingly, Intelligent Contrast Control prevents blown highlights and blocked shadows. This helps render natural looking, highly nuanced images with proper contrast. Even when you’re shooting directly towards the light source - a very challenging situation in photography - Intelligent Contrast Control lets you capture clear images with enhanced depth.

The contrast looks natural. The woman shading on the beach has been brightened without making the background appear washed out.

Intelligent Scene Selection
The Scene Selector function analyses the shooting situation and automatically switches the camcorder to the Scene mode that will give you optimal results. It detects the situation and switches the scene mode automatically

Low Light
Use in dim lighting. This mode automatically switches to a slower shutter speed so that images across the entire frame are bright and easy to see.

Spotlight
Use this mode for scenes with particularly strong contrast, such as when you’re shooting a spotlit area on a darkened stage.

Scenery
This mode is ideal for shooting wide landscapes and sweeping vistas, such as at the ocean or in the mountains. It balances the exposure over the entire frame to prevent brighter parts of the image, such as the sky, from being washed out or having blown highlights.

Face
This mode captures faces beautifully. It automatically detects when there’s a face in the frame and adjusts the exposure to capture it correctly. The focus also emphasises the face.

AF Tracking
The new AF Tracking, which keeps the subject in focus even if it moves around to ensure continuously beautiful image quality. The standard auto mode focuses on the subject at the center of the screen, but AF Tracking allows the user to lock the focus on a subject even if it is at an edge of the screen. This is done by simply touching the selected subject on the touch-screen. AF Tracking ensures that the subject stays in focus even if it moves or turns away from the camcorder, thus recording images with the most suitable AF/AE (auto focus/auto exposure) settings.

“Lock-on and Shoot” your desired target via Touch Screen LCD.

Face Detection
Face Detection automatically senses the ambient lighting and adjusts the exposure accordingly, so faces are bright and easy to see. The focus also prioritises the faces, and skin tones are smoothed. Faces in the centre of the frame serve as the reference for adjustments, but the function can detect up to 15 faces in all.

An orange frame appears around the face as the basis for adjustment. Faces are captured beautifully - even in dim or backlit scenes.

Box Contains

Customer Reviews

Sublime Panasonic HDC-TM300
Panasonic HDC-TM300 High Definition Flash Memory Camcorder with 32GB Internal Memory & 3MOS Sensor - Black

Requirments: Easy to use, solid state, high spec and HD. I was fed up with mini DV tapes from my last JVC model.

My choice: Top spec, I want/expect this to last 5+ years (My current JVC was bought after seeing it on Jurassic Park!!) Top/latest spec gives some future proofing.

Out of box: Slap the battery in the charger, 2 hours later your off (if you can't wait use the mains adapter). Turn the dial - open the viewer - press the button - instant superb quality HD video.

Details: Quality is superb in all light conditions. Even at a wedding party indoors good results in poor lighting. Face recognition and touch an object to focus/set aperture absolutely excellent.

Size and weight: fits in my suit pocket!!

Price: top line amateur product - price is what I would expect. However spare batteries are expensive as are large capacity SD cards.

Battery/memory life: Tons left after a full wedding day, fast re-charge so I don't think I'll bother with a spare battery (see price). Same goes for the memory although a card might add convenience.

Bad points: next to none - I have large hands, button positions are slightly awkward.

All in all Sublime!!

Panasonic TM300
I wanted a solid state HD camcorder with a viewfinder, as I find LCD monitors difficult to view in bright light. The Panasonic TM300 is one of few that has one. Disappointingly, it doesn't tilt and has a hard plastic eyecup but at least it's there.

The TM300 produces excellent HD video and decent still images that look great on my Sony Bravia TV but the AVCHD footage is difficult to edit, even on a quad core PC. I transcode to MPG2 for easier editing. Of course, this applies to all manufacturer's camcorders using AVCHD.

Panasonic have replaced the joystick by a touchscreen which works quite well but it's soon covered in fingerprints. There's also a row of membrane-type buttons along the bottom of the screen that duplicate the main controls. These are useful if the camera is on a tripod but they need to be pressed firmly to work.

The lens ring is OK for fine-tuning zoom or focus but needs too many turns for large adjustments.

The fully-auto mode (called `iA') gives generally excellent results. Normal auto gives access to `Pro' features such as zebras (over exposure indication), live histogram and luminescence readings. In manual mode, shutter, aperture and white balance can be set via the touchscreen or lens ring (if using the EVF). It takes a bit of practice to get right so I found exposure best left to the camera though manual white balance is easy to set.

The microphone is situated on top of the camera and sound quality is surprisingly good, even wind noise wasn't too bad.

Battery life is excellent, I easily got a days use from one charge. The built in memory holds 4 hours of video at highest quality, which I found ample.

Some of the features, like AF tracking, are just gimmicks but time-lapse is great fun!

Zoom range is 12x; roughly equivalent to 45 - 540mm (35mm equivalent). This is not exactly wide-angle and if you're wanting to film indoors you may want to consider a wide-angle adaptor.

I'm happy with my TM300. It's a great family camcorder that anyone from novice to more experienced can use.

Panasonic HDC-TM300
Impressive HD images with realistic colour saturation (some reviews describe the TM300 colours as cold, I think many camcorders are 'warmed up' to be a bit unrealistic so you watch what your minds eye thought it saw, not what you actually saw).

Manual controls a little overrated and not particularly user friendly. The manual focus ring is painfully under geared and takes quite a few turns to pull the focus any distance. Also the manual focusing enlargement is not very clear and would benefit from the 'red fringing' aid found on the Canon.

Macro focus not impressive at tele end of zoom.

Face detect works well enough, but as soon as the subject turns away or goes off-screen momentarily then the tracking is dropped. Hence, a bit of a gimmick. I ended up using normal auto-focus and keeping the subject central in the screen.

Time lapse mode is fun to use and works well.

Instructions are dreadful with seemingly more caveats and clauses about what can't be done than explanations of what can. A lot of the functions are incompatible with one another and cannot be used at the same time. Although the auto settings do work well with good results. Best to play with the settings to find out how to operate it.

Can't write to the internal memory, so when the footage is downloaded to a computer you can't upload it back onto the camera to view on your 1080 HD TV using the camcorder as a player. Once the footage is deleted off the camcorder you will only be able to view it on your HD TV by either connecting your computer to the TV or burning onto Blu Ray. Other manufacturers may also have the same limitation.

Sound is superb and wind noise well controlled. Sound zooms with camera and is very realistic.

A quality 'family' camcorder which captures excellent images for everyday scenes with excellent sound. Artistic potential a bit limited by lack of total control.

Rightly, it is cheaper than the Canon. Difficult choice to make.

P.S. My TM300 was intermittently faulty from new, with vertical lines degrading the picture along with an overall colour cast. When this wasn't happening I got some great footage. Amazon replaced the faulty camcorder promptly, without hassle, and with a good returns window for the faulty original item (which was needed as I had bought the original the day before I left for a long Holiday). All credit to Amazon.