I bought this camcorder to replace a Sony DSR-PD170. I needed to switch to from miniDV/DVCAM to HD, and in the process I wanted to go to flash media. There are very few choices right now. Panasonic's AG-HMC70U is a gigantic monster compared to my DSR-PD170, and the new Panasonics and JVCs aren't getting the greatest reviews - so I looked at the consumer camcorders.

I wanted 3CCDs and XLR inputs, but no XLR on a consumer camcorder, so I'm using a Studio One stereo mini to XLR box. The CCD vs. MOS isn't important to me, as long as I get 3 sensors. This is the only 3-sensor consumer camcorder using flash media I could find.

The quality is good, and I would say it's at the top of the consumer camcorder heap at this point. AVCHD is great for good quality with a very small file size, but make sure your editing software can handle the MTS format.

Panasonic supplies a utility that gives you some preformatting options when you download your video from the camera, but I'm not using it.

Here's how the camera records: Each time you record, it creates an mts file (AVCHD), if you pause and then continue, it writes the first file, and starts a new one. So you end up with a lot of sequentially numbered MTS files. I just download them to my PC without any pre-processing, and import them into Premiere Pro CS4 (it reads the mts files with no problem). You just put them in order on the timeline.

I am so happy to be done with tapes. The last vestiges of an ancient era in video processing. No more capturing video from the camcorder. Just lay the files into the timeline and edit them there.

Just for the heck of it, I tried to upload the mts files directly to YouTube. YouTube accepts the files and transcodes them, but they are very choppy, dropping frames left and right once on YouTube. So I bought a batch converter that converts them to 720p MPEG 2 files, and that makes YouTube happy.

So is the Panasonic HDC-TM300 a pro camcorder? Not hardly. Is it a prosumer camcorder? Not really. But it's a good choice if you want good quality HD video at a low price (compared to pro camcorders).

On the other hand, I just used this camera to record a 6-hour workshop in a hotel with not-so-great lighting. The video was very washed out - not even close to the low-light quality of my Sony DSR-PD170. The TM-300 has a manual iris/gain feature that lets you open up to 18db. Surprisingly, the brightness improves significantly without getting too grainy. Still not close to the PD170 in auto mode, but significantly better than the TM-300's auto mode.

I would have liked to have replaced my Sony with a Panasonic AG-HMC150, but at $3800, I just wasn't ready for the price. Although the TM-300 isn't quite good enough to cause me to get rid of my PD170, it's good enough to make it my camcorder of choice in well-lit shooting environments.

The Panasonic HDC-TM300 is a really great consumer camcorder that's well-worth the price.

I've had the Panasonic HDC-TM300 for a little over a month now and have had several occasions to test it out in a multitude of situations and exposure levels. Overall, I think the video quality is excellent. Indoor footage with incandescent lighting is a little noisy, but so is the same footage on every other camera in its class. I also considered the Canon HF S10 and eventually decided on the Panasonic for several reasons, which I will discuss later. The camera is very close to being perfect, but there are a few nitpicky issues that annoy me about it, which prevent me from giving it a 5. Overall, I am very happy with the purchase and don't regret buying the camera.

I paid $950.00 for it from Dell, which is a reasonable price. It retails for $1,299.00, which is a little ridiculous in my opinion, but if you can find it for under $1,000, it is reasonable.

The video might be the best overall against all competition in its price range. I did a good amount of research looking at sample videos at websites such as YouTube and Vimeo and found the video of the Panasonic to be as good, if not better than anything out there in the "Consumer" or "Prosumer" range.
[...]

Main reasons I purchased the Panasonic HDC-TM300 over the Canon HF S10:
1) Price. I was able to get the Panasonic for about $150 bucks cheaper than the Canon through Dell.
2) The Panasonic has an optical pull-out viewfinder. The Canon has none.
3) The Panasonic has a full-size manual focus ring. The Canon only has a manual settings knob and no manual focus setting.
4) I personally liked the look and design of the Panasonic a little better.

Other than that, the cameras are VERY similar in all respects. I really liked the manual controls that the Panasonic offered, along with the excellent video quality and overall design. On any other given day, I might have decided to buy the Canon HF S10, but I'm happy with the Panasonic.

Pros:
- Overall look and feel of the camera is of a very high quality instrument. It has a very solid and expensive feel to it.
- Manual focus ring is very nice and quite useful.
- Pull out viewfinder is a nice addition in this price range.
- Very good video for its class, especially outdoors with plenty of natural light.
- Touch screen works very well. I read several professional reviews online that stated the touch screen was horrible on the edge of unusable, but I have had no such issues.
- Menu system is very easy to use and get used to.
- Excellent manual feature set for a camera in its class.
- Excellent battery life with stock battery.
- Comes packaged with a nice set of accessories, including a remote control.
- Smaller and lighter than I expected and has a nice feel in my hand.

Cons:
- Operation selector knob on the side of the unit is in a very bad position. The selector knob is designed to be used with your right thumb while holding the unit, but due to its position on the device, it is impossible for me to use it with that thumb, forcing me to use it with my left hand. VERY poor design.
- Other controls not laid out in the most ergonomic of positions. Panasonic should buy a Sony camcorder and check it out for some pointers.
- Average audio quality at best. I have had some very lackluster audio quality and mixed results when using the device. The video might look nice, but the audio will always remind you that the footage was taken from a camcorder.
- USB port cover is annoying to use, but that's par for the course for such devices.
- No Firewire.
- Accessory shoe port on the side of the device is a novel design and well thought out by Panasonic, but poorly engineered. Right when I unboxed the device, I attempted to slide in the accessory shoe adapter and check it out. Bad idea. The adapter became jammed into the camera, taking me about 45 minutes and a badly cut finger to remove. I came very close to just returning the unit. Either the port was too tight or the adapter was molded too big, but it went in and didn't want to come out. The release button worked, but it was just jammed in there. Since then, I have been able to get it in and out without loss of blood, but it is still very tight. Bad design.
- I've had issues with HDMI compatibility between the camera and my Philips HDTV. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I also experience audio problems with outputting to the TV via HDMI. I attempted to contact Panasonic tech support with no reply a week later....and that leads me to my last point.
- Panasonic tech support stinks. Their website is virtually useless and their e-mail support seems to be staffed by ghosts or something, because they don't respond. Also, the camera is so new, that you really can't find any info online about issues. I haven't tried to call Panasonic yet, but I'm not holding up any hope.

Pros:
This camera has amazing color saturation. The 3 chip sensor design can be attributed to that. I have 2 Canon GL-2 cameras and their color with the 3 chip design had awesome color. That 3 chip design is what pointed me to this camera as no other HD cameras by other vendors.
The 10 mega pixel picture mode is nice too but is a little slow in processing the shot after the button is pushed.
The camera is small and the only thing I added that makes it a little bigger is a wide angle view lens. I highly recommend this add-on because it does lack a wide enough angle for indoor shooting. The flash works great but not with the wide angle lens as it is so large that it covers the flash.

Cons:
Panasonic does not provide any AVCHD support for Mac (but does for Windows) in that there is not an app on the software CD that will transfer the video files to your computer. iMovie and Final Cut Pro/Express work for pulling in video but you cannot simply copy the media from the card to the hard drive. The files are not self contained and the movie apps need additional meta data that is in other folders on the card to do anything with the files. A 40MB file turns into a 200+ MB file after Final Cut has log and transfered the file. This is a 5x change in file size. Yikes! Better buy more hard drive space.
Charger has a green light for charging and no light for when charging is done. Seems that if the power went off for the receptacle or the cord unplugged, you would not have a reliable sign as to whether the battery was charged or the cord came unplugged. Green light should note charging is done and an amber light should note it is charging.

I bought this HD video camera and so far I am really enjoying it
I wanted a 3 CCD Camera for the longest time and I finally bought one, I think 3 chips give better color depth than single chip ccds

This particular camera is HD specifically AVCHD and gives me full 1080 X 1920 in the AG mode; this is not the default I had to choose it in the settings; higher the resolution higher the storage on the built in card.

So far I am using the built in media and I think 32GB should keep me going for this year and I am waiting for the prices to fall on these HC cards.

The video quality is fantastic when I connected it to my Sharp HD LCD TV
It does not come with mini hdmi cable although it comes with the component video cables but I don't have the sound with that, so play back you need to buy this cable, I will do it later when I have the money for it

I shot in low light and the video is fine, In the daytime low light is better than night time low light; the best is out door daytime, especially the spring colors came out pretty good

Editing is a bear, this is the problem with AVCHD format, I need to upgrade my old computers, right now I will just stash those videos on big NAS drive, the HDWriter that comes with the camera is decent and it also can be used for Youtube (I have not tired this yet)

The touch screen is pretty good for choosing the clips I want and delting the clips I don't want

There are lots of features in the main menu and the quick menu is good for choosing the recording mode such as high res etc.

I have just tired one photo and it came out fine, I have not really pushed the envelop on the still photos

the media tree structure allows me to copy the photos and video easily this is inherent on AVCHD

Overall I give it 4.5 stars out of 5
The Camera is pretty light and my 10 year old daughter feels it is pretty light and she too loves it

I like the lens as it is bigger than the lens on cheeper cameres and it closes automatically, no more losing the lens cap

the view finder is takes some practice to use as I am used to my old view finder;
Defenately had to read the manual to get the most out of it
I have not tried the time lapse yet
It has many interfaces for headphone and mic etc, this is good as I wanted all these
Eventually I want to try green screen effects so the 3CCD should be an advantage, I hope to find a good editor for this

This is my first AVCHD camera, coming from Sony SD DV tapes, so it's hard not to be enthused about eliminating tapes and getting video that looks decent on a 100" projector.

Besides the basic requirements (AVCHD & no hard drive), I was looking for a camera that performed well in automatic mode but provided thorough manual controls. My most important application is recording action on a football field under night lights. Being able to set white balance from a white card, and making compromises between shutter speed and "iris" (aperture and gain combined), were vital to making video that minimizes blurring the fast moving subjects. These manual controls are pretty easy to use, even the very first time without practicing. I found that the LCD provided good visual feedback, accurately showing overexposed white objects when zoomed out that were good when zoomed in. A live display of a luminance graph was also a help to confirm what I saw when making the shutter & iris adjustments. The manual focus ring (that can also perform other adjustments) was also a help to confirm focus, though even under the football lights the auto focus worked well. Another feature that was a big help for this application was the outstanding image stablization. I was quite surprised that I was able to follow the fast moves of subjects when fully zoomed in and produce watchable video.

The passive accessories "shoe" requires a physical adapter that mounts on the side of the camera. That adapter will be easy to misplace, but it's probably worth the hassle to allow a smooth top to the camera where your fingers wrap around. I used the adapter to mount an external microphone. There is a manual gain adjustment with graphical level display available even for the external microphone -- I found this helpful to adjust levels for dynamic music recording to avoid the compression that comes with AGC. Lastly, I was able to use a third-party wide angle lens (0.66x) on the standard 43mm threads to get about 2/3 of the football field in view.

In daylight (fully auto) the camera produces vivid saturated colors; I'm more than satisfied with the picture quality. Projected on a 100" screen, all possible flaws are highly magnified, yet I could not discern any macroblocking during fast pans, just some image softness (using the default 2nd-to-highest recording quality setting). For typical slow movements, the projected image was very good -- not quite HDTV video sharpness, but very good -- sharpness somewhere between filmed HD and broadcast video camera HD. I'll bet that on a more conventional display (like a 50" LCD), the quality would be outstanding, but I haven't tried that yet.

Some people have commented negatively about indoor low light quality, but I haven't found it an issue. [added] At *extreme* low light levels, yes it gets grainy ... but there has to be some tradeoff for low light, and I'd rather get grainy with pushed exposure rather than dark video. Shooting in a typical home with poorly-lit areas was not be a problem. I was also pleased with shots under theatre lighting, and even got watchable video during scene changes where only a dark blue light illuminating the stage. [/added]

I had no problem downloading the AVCHD files from the camera via USB and editing them in Adobe Premiere Elements 7.0 -- but I have a fast machine (Core i7 overclocked to 3.6GHz). It's wonderful not having to wait for an hour to download an hour video like with DV tape. [added] I have also used Sony Vegas Movie Studio Premiere for editing this camcorder's video. Despite being Sony-centric, and forum claims that Sony's AVCHD format is different from Panasonic's, I had no problems doing extensive editing in Vegas Studio. The reason I'm transitioning to Vegas is that it fully supports 5.1 audio, whereas support in Premiere is half-baked. [/added]

Some reviews have knocked the LCD touch screen as being hard to control, but I had no problems at all with it ... maybe because my previous camera "trained" me to use the corner of my fingertips instead of pushing straight on. My biggest complaint with this camera, that has been mentioned by others, is the stupid charger arrangement. You MUST take out the battery to use wired power ... but you can't charge the battery and use wired power at the same time! Obviously it would be common work flow when preparing to download to take out the battery, put it in the charger, and use wired power for camera video management. Here's the really stupid part: the battery will not charge on the charger if the power cable is physically connected to the charger EVEN IF the cable ISN'T CONNECTED to the camera. I'm sure many people will not get their battery charged because they forget to disconnect the cable FROM THE CHARGER.

[added] One other issue: there is a thumb wheel on the side of the camera to switch amoungst { Play, Off, Video, Stills }. The wheel is too easy to turn past Video to Still, and I've missed an important scene because in my hurry to whip out the camera, I was trying to take video but the camera was in Still picture mode. I really don't understand why there has to be separate modes, since there are separate buttons for start/stop recording and taking a still picture. And they really should have a very obvious warning in the viewfinder if you're in Still mode and push the start record button. Not a deal breaker, but annoying. [/added]

Overall, I'm still happy with this purchase after using it for four months. It's one of the most expensive consumer cameras, so unless you're looking for those outstanding manual controls, you may find a better value elsewhere. OTOH, if you like or need to fuss with camera settings, I don't think you can go wrong with this camera.

Before purchasing this product I studied reviews of the competition for months. This camera wasn't on the market when I started my research. I wanted a camcorder that offered professional features and results at a prosumer cost. This camera certainly fit the bill. The picture quality is fantastic. Portability and ease of use are great. My only problem with the cam is that it's manual controls are somewhat more ackward to access than was my experience with my recently retired larger prosumer cams. For example, using the lens ring to manually adjust the iris forces you to use two hands when shooting. My prior cams had these adjustments on the back of the cameras where you could control the zoom, audio levels and iris with one hand while the other balanced the cam. However, I'm developing a new style to match this new Panasonic. Not dealing with tape anymore is like a dream come true. I'm also glad that I stayed away from the hard drive models that are larger and can be more problematic.

Once I decided I wanted both the flash memory and a view finder there was no other choice at this level of quality. By pre reading the manual before I received the camera it was no effort to get started making movies and creating DVD's. The HDwriter, the software that Panasonic gives you has a lot to be desired and Tech support is little help when I wanted to save movies to a second hard drive but I figured out around about way to do it. My problems have only been associated with the software which will be remedied I hope with a third party editing package say from Corel.

Extra battery is a must and be sure to get a case. I chose a small case to stay portable. The camera is light and easy to operate. I've tested many of the features and I am amazed of how the camera thinks for you. The iA feature is fantastic. The 12X zooms in with ease and the resolution on my 1080 TV shows me what it can do. Oh you must get the mini HDMI patch cord and they aren't cheap.
The most pleasant surprise is the great mike system that truly records directional sound in 5.1 and boy does it pick up the sound. If not careful you can hear yourself breathing but with the zoom sound feature I'm sure that can be avoided.
So far so good for a beginner with only 2 weeks of shooting. Recommend using a tripod and extend your clips. Avoid rooky errors that way.

Have you ever seen a pro without a viewfinder? What's with that? Most all of the new HDcamcorder do not have a view finder except this Panasonic. It's a nice feature especially if you need reading glasses and can't see the LCD screen very well. The view finder actually has an adjustable focus for your eye sight. Great camera worth every penney.

Great camcorder choice, if you are willing to pay the steep price. Definitely prosumer territory. Impeccable picture quality (look for some of the extensive analyses and reviews published online), great sound. Unbelievable performance in low-light conditions. Great set of features. Only drawback thus far: some may find touch screen a bit fiddly to use (no problem for me, since I am used to my touch screen phone).

First, let me say the sound quality rating was selected because the question for me is moot. I'm deaf so have no idea what the sound quality is like. I got the camera to film short sign language instruction sessions.


I bought the camera after a year long review of various types of cameras including some professional cameras. I actually had decided on the Canon XH-A1S and ordered it form Bingo Camera. Thank goodness my credit card is a real snot about large orders and protecting customers from fraud. I discovered Bingo was a scam sending falsely labeled junk IF they sent anything at all. So I started over again and found myself looking at the TM300 and its competitors. I narrowed it down to the Canon HF S100 and Panasonic TM300. I opted for the Panasonic and so far must say I'm stunned at its performance and very happy with it. Thinking (just thinking) of getting a second one. the big thing for me is that using this camera instead of my tape based systems of yore, I find my efforts to chroma key with Ultra 2 is now as simple as it should have been long ago. And I will never, ever, ever go back to tapes. The SDHC experience is wonderful, really speed sup my work.


I recommend this camera though not an expert, I did talk to experts online for a year and right up to my purchase decision. The most impartial ones, even those who used Canon, recommended the Panasonic TM300 based on how and what I planned to film. I'm glad I listened to them.

Bought this camera for our trip to Jamaica. I really like this camera. It is very portable and easy to use. The quality of the videos is amazing. I am not a avid user of video cameras but this was easy to learn. I download all videos and pictures to my PC with ease. One of the great things is the camera does not have a hard drive. It is only flash memory. Therefore, it does not have to "boot" up like a hard drive video camera. I can turn it on and starting capturing video immediately. I am VERY happy with this purchase.