Living With The Panasonic HDC-TM700

                                                   

I have owned the Panasonic HDC-TM700 for sometime now, I upgraded from a Canon HV30 camcorder to get away from tape and also because I was hearing great things about the Panasonic TM700 quality footage. Why am I writing about a camcorder on a DSLR filmmaking blog, well having a small camcorder is a great addition to having a HD-DSLR camera like the Canon 7D. You can get great grab shots with a camcorder that you would probably miss by having to set up your DSLR, which makes a great reason for you to assign the custom menu items on your Canon 7D or T2i etc for speedy use.

Here are some tips I have found out about using the Panasonic TM700 and I am using this camcorder for stock footage, the quality is great and the ease of use adds significantly to what I can shoot.

1. Do not relay on auto white balance, it will put a cyan / green cast on your footage especially if there is a large amount of sky in the shot. Go ahead and press the custom white balance it takes only a second, even better have a grey card or white paper, if you have nothing then just go ahead and use the scene.

2. Use 60p for most of your shots other than time lapse, it is extremly high quality footage and if you want to do some slow motion set your shutter speed to double the frame rate, which is 1/120 and then slow the speed in your editing software by 50%. Normal shooting speed for this camera is 1/60th NTSC or 1/50th in PAL.

3. The digital zoom is usable to a certain degree, now you can't go to the full digital zoom of 700x but 18x and 30x is usable for stock footage, just remember to use a good tripod.

4. Buy an extra battery they are cheap, especially when you are running out of juice. If you do a time lapse with the 10 second interval you will be shooting for an hour to get 10 to 12 seconds of footage, that will drain your power and reduce your days filming. Panasonic sells an accessory pack including a case and battery.

5. The Panasonic TM700 for a camcorder does have a wide angle lens to start with, but and there is always a but, it's not quite wide enough for interiors, invest is a good auxiliary wide angle lens, it will extend your reach significantly, something like the Raynox 0.66x

6. I use small camera clamps, you know the cheap plastic ones that will break eventually, but it allows you to film anywhere and get rock solid shots, provided the thing you clamp too is stable. This camera is small so position it where you can't get your DSLR and tripod into.

7. Use the built in time lapse function it's fantastic. I use the one second interval to have clouds gently and smoothly drifting by, the ten second interval has the clouds boiling and speeding adding a lot more drama to the shot. Remeber that a 10 second interval will have you waiting for an hour to get 12 seconds of footage!

8. Buy a step ring so you can use more popular filter sizes, like 52mm and it also allows you to put the wide angle lens adapter on your camcorder. If you have the Cokin filter system then you can put that on your camcorder and use all those old filters, which are cheap to buy on the local classified adverts like Kijiji and Craigslist.

9. If you are going to buy one of these camcorder, I think they are now called the Panasonic TM900, don't go for the ones with a large built in hard drive, I prefer the model with a small built in hard drive and then use memory cards. The SD memory cards are so cheap and allow you not to have all your eggs in one basket.

10. If you are on a PC computer use the enclosed software from Panasonic that you get with the camera, HD Writer, it will convert the footage to AVCHD enough to allow a pretty modern and powerful computer to play the footage smoothly.

10A. For lowlight shooting never go beyond 12dB of gain or the digital noise will be too much for stock footage, the difficulty with lowlight on this camera is the minimum shutter speed of 1/60th  NTSC or 1/50th PAL and still have 60fps 60p.