It came to my mailbox today: my new toy, a Panasonic HC-VXF1 camcorder.
Many of you might wonder why — in the age of DJI and GoPro mini cameras — would anyone buy a camcorder. True, these seem to be quite obsolete, old-fashioned technology in the age of 4 and 8k (and beyond) and mind-boggling framerates. But these little gadgets still have their own niche. Read further.
For some time I was thinking about reviving my YouTube channel[s]. I already have a backlog of video projects that I never forced myself to complete to a point of being suitable to be published. Many — most of — were filmed while doing various stuff in my shack but were donw using old HD technology that does not get together very well with screen capture footage created in higher resolutions or vice-versa. For some time I used a Canon Vixia camcorder, a superb device in own time but obsolete now. Compared with footage created with my iPhone or GoPro, seems that the quality of my old Vixia recordings were abysmal (to say the least). I decided that I have to go fully for 4k but I also experienced the pain of using GoPros or iPhone to film such kind of projects. I either had to buy additional fixtures (for iPhone) or to buy additional GoPro cameras since one is never enough to circumvent that annoying overheating issue. Not to speak about the crappy GoPro battery life. Moreover, zooming for details is impossible with GoPro and complicated (at least) with iPhone.
So I went for this Panasonic, one of the few remaining options in this market. I always liked image quality from Panasonic so it was kind of a subjective choice. First tests are impressive, and although 4k is only limited to 30p, I think this will not be a problem for my projects.
Now it is only up to me: I have the tools, so I have to mobilize myself to go back to work and try to complete my video “documentaries” about my small projects. See you on YouTube soon. 🙂
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