Panasonic has unveiled a lightweight handheld camcorder in the AG-HMC40. The new AVCCAM camcorder is packed with an impressive range of professional features including full HD 3MOS imagers, high-resolution 10.6-megapixal still photo capture, 12X optical zoom and high-quality, solid-state AVCHD recording on widely-available SD cards.

The HMC40 is an AVCHD format based camcorder that uses MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 high profile encoding, which provides a near doubling of bandwidth efficiency and improved video performance over the older MPEG-2 compression formats (e.g. HDV, DVD etc.). AVCHD high definition recordings look clean and crisp, even during fast motion, reducing the image degradation or dropout associated with older HDV recordings.

The HMC40 features a full resolution 2-megapixel, 1/4.1-inch 3MOS imager that produces stunning 1920×1080 HD images with high sensitivity. The camera captures still images with 10.6-megapixel resolution directly onto the SD card as a JPEG image. The handheld offers a 12X optical zoom (includes 2X, 5X, 10X) and professional image functions like Dynamic Range Stretch (DRS) that helps compensate for wide variations in lighting, and a Cine-Like Gamma mode which gives recordings a more film-like aesthetic.

The HMC40 will be available in August at a suggested list price of $3,195.

(Source) PR Canada

Related posts:

1. Panasonic AG-HMC151E AVCCAM
2. 3DV ZCam: Low Cost 3D Video Camera for PC
3. Panasonic AG-HSC1U Pro HD Camcorder!
4. Panasonic HDC-SD1 AVCHD camcorder
5. Panasonic DX1 High Definition Camcorder