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If this is your first journey into the professional camera realm, you will do yourself a great favor if you take the time to learn the functions this camera has and study how to set up the camera properly for the intended scene. Simply setting it on the automatic mode and pointing it at the subject will not yield the best image this camera has to offer. I have heard so many complaints about the auto-focus. Yes, it's slow. Most professionals would never use auto-focus, so it's a moot point in the pro shooter's world.
The Panasonic AG-AC130 camera is an upgrade from my current Panasonic AG-HMC40 which for half the price, is itself a decent camcorder. The first thing I noticed was the size. The AC130 is double the size and weight of the HMC40. I was content with the HMC40 in bright light. But the 40 isn't a great camcorder in low light. It gets grainy and chalky in a dimly lit room.
Outdoors, the AC130 offers a noticeably better image than the HMC40. It has a wider dynamic range, slightly better sharpness and less image artifacting than the smaller Panny. But it isn't a night and day difference. On a sunny day, you could match the image from the two camcorders fairly closely and only a pro could see the difference. Inside, however, it's a different story.
At zero db gain, the HMC40 produced a dark, unusable image in typical room light (a single 60 watt ceiling mounted light fixture). AT zero db, the AC130 produced a very usable but not bright image that was free of video grain. Blacks were pure black and the red sofa looked truly red with no visible grain in the image. Pumping both cameras up to 9 db yielded more usable images. The smaller Panny struggled with the light, but the image was usable. The bigger Panny produced an image that looked like it was lit in a studio, albeit with a small amount of grain becoming noticeable. Holding the iris wide open on both cameras, at 18 db the smaller Panny gave a bright enough image, but it was getting too grainy for production quality use. At 18 db, the AC130 was grainy too, but not nearly as much. Parts of the image were overexposed when the iris was held wide open. Closed down to F4, the exposure was perfect and the grain was just enough to give it a 35mm film look. You can program a hi-med-low gain switch to any gain settings in 3db increments. A detail coring adjustment reduces grain while leaving the image sharp.
The lens on the HMC40 is a Leica lens and it really is the strong point of the camera, offering a crisp image corner to corner with very little geometric distortion at wide angle. The AC130 uses a Panasonic lens. It looks as sharp as the Leica, but there is some barrel effect at full wide angle. To be fair, the widest setting is much wider than the smaller Panny. When I zoomed in to match the widest setting of the HMC40, the barrel effect was gone.
The lens has three rings dedicated to focus, zoom and iris. The zoom is mechanical, while focus and iris are drive-by-wire, but still precise enough to use with comfort. You can set the information in the viewfinder for the lens to read distance in feet, focal length in millimeters and iris in F-stops. Gain is displyed in dB. There's also a shutter speed wheel that manually sets the shutter speed and shows it in the viewfinder as fractions of a second. Not only can you manually control every aspect, you can see in one neat cluster the status of every function as well as minutes remaining on the SD card and minutes of battery life. Of course, you can set it all to automatic if you just want to see what the camera will do on it's own. It isn't bad.
There are six settable scene files you can customize with any combination of dozens of manual settings such as contrast, matrix, color level, sharpness, gamma, etc. There is a neutral density filter that you will need to use outdoors to prevent overexposure and to adjust depth of field. I set one for video mode and one for film mode, leaving the other four as they came.
The viewfinder and the flip out LCD panel are both top notch and sharp enough to obtain critical focus without the need for an external monitor. That is, if you have the eyes of a twenty year old. Otherwise you'll need your glasses or contacts.
The image stabilizer provides a minimal amount of steadiness; not a high amount like on a consumer camcorder. It's better than nothing, and left on at all times it's unobtrusive. White balance is easy to set, and you can save two of your favorite settings in addition to the preset 3200K tungsten setting.
The built in mikes pick up a slight bit of camera handling noise. They do have a decent sound, but here again, it's reference audio, Used with a good external desk mike or a high end shotgun mike, the audio is strikingly clean. You can set the levels independently, as well as 10 and 20 db input padding to prevent overload. Independent limiter settings for each channel keep the high volume sounds from clipping. The XLR inputs are built in, and the manual controls are easy to access.
Another high point is the ability to record to two SD cards at the same time for backup purposes, or one after the other for more recording time. The controls are well laid out and labeled in white for easy viewing in low light environments.
Frame rates are adjustable between 24, 30 and 60 frames at 720 and1080p. There is also a 640x480 DVCAM mode, but I can't see the use unless you are trying shoot to match some older 4:3 footage.
The AC130 has three MOS chips that are native 16:9. For richer color and sharper edges, three chips are always better than one. Because of this, the image quality and color are significantly better than the best single chip DSLR cameras and the AC130 is cheaper than some of those. With it's1/3 inch chips, you won't get as much depth of field as the DSLRs, and the DSLR's have a tiny edge in low light. But there are so many more pluses in the AC130 to offset that, such as better color, sharper imaging, no visible compression artifacts, no 12 minute video shot limitations, fully synced XLR audio and a crisp, fast F1.6 22x zoom lens. It's hard to see why someone would want to spend more money on a DSLR than this Panasonic unless they wanted the ability to shoot great stills. Of course, I could see the justification of buying a 1000 dollar DSLR over this strictly based on budget concerns.
To summarize, the AC130 is a great looking camcorder that lets any client know you mean business. It will run and gun with the best of them and still let you produce that indie film you've always wanted to make.
Rick Bennette, FineArtFilmWorks.com
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