I've been using the z10000 for about two weeks now. Since I'm the first reviewer of this camera I'm just going to lay out my thoughts about this camera without really polishing or organizing my review.I was expecting professional level quality and features from this camera, and I feel that it comes up a bit short in both. I'm purposely being very critical of this camera because of the very high price tag. As the price of a device goes up so do my expectations and there are currently two other good 3d video cameras (JVC 3D Full HD Camera, Sony HDR-TD10 High Definition 3D Handycam Camcorder with 10x Optical Zoom (Dark Gray)) that cost less than half as much as the Panasonic z10000. Overall I'd say it is hard to justify the high cost of this camera compared to the alternatives.
Why is 3d video so attractive to me in the first place? Years ago I remember many people seeing ultra high definition displays for the first time and remarking that it was "like looking through a window". The displays were very nice compared to standard televisions at the time, but I never felt that the view was as realistic as looking out of a window. Even with a large 1080p display its just a very clear moving picture. A few years ago I started to see 3d displays appear. Finally, it was like looking at a scene through a window. I have mixed feelings about watching a movie in 3d, but for home videos you can't beat the realism. It really is like looking through a window to the past.
I got into the 3d game a year ago with the Fujifilm FinePix Real 3D W3 Digital Camera with 3.5-Inch LCD. Its been a lot of fun to use, but let's be honest the quality of the still imaging is poor and the video is awful. This year I bought the JVC 3D Full HD Camera, but only held onto it for a few weeks before returning it since I had no easy way of playing back the high quality 3d video aside from using the camera.
One of the big pluses to the z10000 is that the video can be edited using Vegas 11, which I already owned. I have NOT tried the bundled software with the z10000, but I believe it will also allow you to burn Blu-Ray discs with your video.
The video quality is great with good lighting, but it struggles in low light conditions more than I believe a pro-level camera should. I did side by side recordings with my 6 year old Sony HDR-FX1 3-CCD HDV High Definition Camcorder w/12x Optical Zoom and the difference in quality is obvious.
I am impressed with the sound on this camera. It provides 5.1 recording, and I've tried it out in a variety of settings. It is very nice when I play back my video to hear voices coming from the appropriate locations. If I talk when holding the camera my voice will dominate all channels, but that was expected.
I am very impressed with the image stabilization this camera provides. When you move the camera around a scene there is the usual delay before it starts to sweep the scene, but I do not get any jerkiness or momentary blur as I have with other cameras.
The view screen does not flip out like on many pro cameras. This one actually pulls out of the camera and turns up. Forget about quick access to the camera you'll waste precious seconds popping out the view screen and turning it up each time you want to start filming.
Battery life is short. I have not run the camera until the battery dies, but the power indicator shows low after about 60 minutes of recording. The cost of additional batteries is very high, and the AC power port is located behind the battery. This is a very strange design choice as it means I have to pull out the battery any time I want to switch to external power. It also means I can't charge the battery when its in the camera. I'll have to carry the battery charger with me when I travel, and it does not utilize the same power cord that the camera does.
Out of all of the buttons available on the camera you would think one of the most important would be the one that allows you to switch between 2d and 3d recording. Oddly enough this button does not exist, and you cannot program it into any of the user defined buttons. To switch between 2d/3d you have to first hit the "menu" button on the side of the camera and then navigate through the touch screen. Very bad design decision.
The view screen is mediocre. Not as bad as the JVC TD1 which I thought was terrible, but not as good as the Fujifilm W3. It is a bit fuzzy in appearance, maybe because it is a touchscreen. I have a very hard time finding the sweet spot for viewing 3d. There is a "mix view" mode that essentially displays both video streams at the same time in 2d and I recommend using this instead of the 3d view. The mix view is actually an advantage that this camera provides because it allows you to see exactly where the convergence point is in your video. Wherever you don't see double imaging that is your convergence point and that is probably where you want the focus of your shooting to be.
There is a photo shoot button, but the location assumes you are holding the camera using the right side strap. If you are holding the camera from the top handle while recording, you cannot easily hit the photo button (unless you are left handed I suppose). This is not a big deal since I can make still images from the video easily enough, but it would have been convenient to have the shoot button available from the handle.
The lens cover is the removable type that snaps in /snaps out, not the type that is built in and flips open. Another poor design decision in my opinion, I do not like having a loose lens cover to carry around.
OVERALL I am enjoying my new toy and I love watching my home videos in 3d. It the next best thing to actually being there. The video quality is very good, though it does fall short of what I was expecting from a pro-level camera and I don't see a significant difference in video quality compared to the JVC TD1. Not enough to justify the cost difference in any case. The construction and layout of the camera could be much better, and features such as 2d/3d switching and gain adjustment are missing. Sound is impressive as is the image stabilization, and it is a comfortable camera to hold which I would not say for the Sony TD10 or the JVC TD1.
The camera has total of 6 CMOS sensors, or double 3MOS, which helps making beautiful bright and colorful pictures in adequate lighting conditions, but the grim truth is that those sensors are very small: 1/4.1 inch each. While this is not necessarily synonymous to poor quality, and my previous remark is my acknowledgement for this, but there are still some bad implications exist. I am not going to refer to any scientific analysis, you can do the research yourself, but in my own observation, such small size of the sensors contributes to quite poor low light performance. No matter how much you try tweaking color profiles, the picture comes out very noisy, beyond any acceptable level. Additionally, even with hefty 1.5 f-stop lens, such small sensors make hard getting ever-so-sought bokeh effect indeed. You may try hard, but it will elude you, be assured. Obviously, there is a flip side to the coin: your depth of focus gets wide, which in many cases is desired and helpful in some specific applications, but let's not forget that your creativity is still quite limited, when you need it.
White balance control cannot be any worse too. There is one push button which you use to change the mode as well as for assigning custom balance. Therefore, if you wish to go from only two of the existing temperature presets or from automatic to custom white balance setting, you have to keep pushing it to cycle through all of the existing options until you find one desired. This is very inconvenient while shooting indoors when color condition changes from take to take. Sure, you can use neutral gray reference card each time and keep your setting on custom all the time, but this is not that simplistic too. Due to small sensor size, the dynamic range is not very wide; therefore environment color and attached on-camera light color become significantly different. If you turn the light off and set custom white balance to match environment color, than turning on-camera light on would throw the color badly off balance and ruin the shot. If on the other hand, you use neutral gray card to adjust for on-camera light, than the environment color becomes significantly misbalanced. As a way of mitigating the problem, I found by trial and error that turning camera to auto balance for a few seconds, and then locking auto-tuned setting would do the trick acceptably. But since there is only one button for controlling every aspect of white balance, you have to keep cycling the options over and over again just to engage auto balance and then lock it. Very annoying and time consuming, which in many cases make you miss the shot too. I doubt one do-it-all button would be professional's choice. My other camera Canon XH-A1 for instance, has by far, far better white balance control with several dedicated hard buttons and a dial on camera body. This is where Panasonic should get their ideas if their own ones are missing. Not such professional level at all.
Next, the lens: yes, it is F1.5 which Panasonic is so proudly bragging about, but f1.5 on such small lens diameter is not a big deal really. Since the opening is so small, there is small amount of light which can get through. This, coupled with small sensor size, explains so poor low light handling. But things get even worse: since there are two of those sitting next to each other, Panasonic chose to cover them with oval shaped glass of who knows what quality, which is housed in oval hood. If you think this was a good idea, think again: there simply are no oval shaped lens filters in this universe. If there was no glass cover, and each lens had its own filter threads, you could at least buy two filters and put them on each lens individually; but no, this won't happen. This camera is completely filter-prohibitive. That is very bad because there are a lot of situations, when circular polarizer for instance, helps recovering otherwise ruined shot perspective by removing glare, water reflection, or unbalanced white sand or concrete shine, etc. With my mentioned Canon, none of this is an issue: I got a whole selection of B&W lens filters, one for each specific job. With Z10K you can forget about creativity: no filters. No, don't yell at me: I know you can have a custom hood attached, which would have built-in gelatin filter holder, or something similar, but it makes your setting immobile, heavy, bulky, and oh-so-expensive too. Try shooting dynamic scenes on a beach or run after wild animals in the forest with those things attached, and we will see who laughs last. Again, not that many professionals would approve such poor choice of design, the one which deprives them any level of light-modification creativity. And let's not forget that Panasonic Z10K does not have built-in ND filter too. That, combined with impossibility for on-lens filters, make you forget getting blurry water falls, moving objects, etc. No creativity allowed again. No professional level.
Next, recording codec and media. Z10K has many formats to choose from, this is clearly a strength that I highly appreciate. I use mostly 30p and 24p for most of my work, but having others helps too. There are two SD card slots for either duplication or swap recording, which is great on surface, but not so good in post-production. The reason is MVC codec, which Panasonic chose for this product. While their idea may have been plausible for making single file editing workflow possible, it is not so exciting in real life here on Earth, not today. It would have been by far better to record each stream separately on each card. There are so many more NLE which support L+R file workflow, than MVC. Yes I am aware of Sony Vegas, which is kind of funny: use competitor's tools to edit footage, shot by Panasonic! The software, shipped with Z10K camera, simply does not worth any consideration: it is not software; it is a gross misunderstanding, to say the least. Yes it does understand MVC in their own proprietary way, yes you can cut and glue fragments together, you can even attach background music in a very stupid single track uncontrolled way, but using it is an insult to a human intelligence. If you wish to get very annoyed and frustrated because this is something you like doing, than yes I would recommend using this so called software, but if you wish job done right, you better look elsewhere. I even went on trying using this hideous thing to edit my 3D video and burn a Blue-Ray, and it simply kept corrupting my best rated Panasonic blanks, shipped directly from Japan to my house. Several attempts after reading, double, and triple following the manual instructions were consistent as ocean tides: corrupted Blue Ray blanks. Ironic, isn't it: same brand which doesn't work with their own software! Not so professional level again.
The best option out there that I was able to find in my research was Avid Media Composer, but it does not understand MVC. You have to supply two separate files to Avid, which Panasonic HDC-Z10000 does not produce. This means you can either use some software to break MVC into two separate streams and then import (or AMA) to Avid, or you can use Sony Vegas for all editing needs. Vegas can edit MVC natively, it can even record edited material straight to Blue Ray, or create Blue Ray image without menus, but I just find Vegas to be grossly inferior to Avid in all aspects including editing workflow: matter of experience, objective and subjective preference and research. Either way, Vegas like Avid, can use two separate streams for 3D workflow, which means more tool choice for editing. And yet Panasonic elected to package their video in single MVC file, which has by far less support out there just yet. Instead, they make you use their troll-tool so called software. Not so professional level again.
Soft buttons on touch screen are nice: they are assignable from a list of available options. Unfortunately though, assigned buttons do not follow 2D vs. 3D context, which is very poor design. If you assign soft buttons to perform 3D-specific tasks, and then switch to shooting 2D, than most of those buttons would be inapplicable, and therefore show "Invalid" on LCD screen when pushed. Re-assigning them to other options, applicable to 2D, overrides previous settings, making them unusable when back in 3D mode again. A much better design would have been making assignable buttons, specific to each shooting mode: in 3D context, the buttons perform one set of options, in 2D the same buttons have their own meaning.
Parallax control dial is too small and inconvenient to rotate with one finger only, but after some practice I figured that you don't have to move it much if you adjust it once to the smallest value for the range. After such adjustment movements with the dial are tiny, which means it doesn't have to be big. Minor issue, but still worth mentioning.
Color profile function has only 6 memory settings. Compare that to XH-A1 which has 18 on built-in memory plus 18 more on SD card: total of 36.
But aside from all these mentioned issues, Z10K is still a nice tool, worth keeping. I hear someone say: "There is no such thing as perfect tool", which is true, but none argues Z10K should be one. It could have been much better tool though, if all of these problems were addressed.
If anyone interested, you can find my test footage from HDC-Z10000 in 24fps on vimeo: vimeo dot com forward slash 56306919
Buy Panasonic HDC-Z10000 Twin-Lens 2D/3D Camcorder Now
The Z10000 is a mixed bag that, for me, is an essential tool anyway. When I started down this 3D path two years ago, there were no integrated 3D cameras on the market. In May 2011, I bought Sony's HDR-TD10, a Handicam that had a single manual dial to control every manual function available (and there weren't that many shutter speed and framerate were fixed in 3D mode). Now there's a reasonably priced integrated 3D cameras with a host of manual controls and customizable features. And it takes excellent pictures in bright light. But low-light performance is poor and some of the most important features are frustratingly implemented. But while those would be nice enhancements, they are not essential. The primary selling point of this camera is the promise of a better affordable 3D camera, and it delivers. It is the best 3D camera you can buy for under $15,000. No competitors were announced at CES 2012, so it is the tool of choice for budding stererographers for the near future.See my full review on the Just in Time Films website.
Read Best Reviews of Panasonic HDC-Z10000 Twin-Lens 2D/3D Camcorder Here
The only missing in this excellent 3d camcorder is 3 CMOS per lens.3d is very realist.
Professional controls.
In my opinion, the price is good for the quality
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