Panasonic VDR-D300 DVD Camcorder
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- Recording System: NTSC/PAL
- Recording Media: DVD
- Optical Zoom: 10x
- Weight: 1.29 lb.
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Reliable professional DVD-R camera
Pros
Xlnt interface design and ergonomics, great reliability, super image quality
Cons
quality not asgoodas mini DV, disk operations a little slow, more reliable w/Panasonic disks
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
If you need pro results, go with the best.
After having a bad experience with a lesser brand of DVD-R camera, I decided to go with a long established brand and ended up purchasing the Panasonic VDR-D300 for our Toastmasters club. We've been very happy with it, but it wasn't exactly cheap ($599 plus tax from Fry's, then $120 for a five year extended warranty is optional) Still at this price I do think the camera is worth the money.
My primary criteria for getting a camera was that it record direct to DVD and that it have a microphone input plug. When you have someone at the lectern, you want to put a mic up there on the lectern on a gooseneck and run a cable to the camera. The audio quality is so much better than the mic on the camera, especially from a distance.
The Panasonic is a 3-chip camera, too, which means the image quality is very good, recorded with separate red- green- and blue sensors. A single chip camera, the most common variety, records all the colors on a single light sensitive diode. Of course, in general, DVD is not as good a record medium as mini-DV tape, but when you can hand out a finished DVD right there at the meeting, that's great. You can buy mini-DVDs in a stack but don't forget to bring the plastic cases.
SWAPPING DISKS
Another caveat -- an inherent issue with DVD -- is that loading and formatting take some time. Any camera will have this issue but the Panasonic is reliable and better than most. The most important thing is you can eject one DVD without finalizing and come back to it later. Some cameras will not allow you to do this, but I have found the VDR-D300 very reliable in this regard.
For example, let's say you've got a lineup of speakers. If speaker A and speaker B both want to be recorded, you will want to swap out the speaker A dvd and insert the speaker B dvd between speeches. That's fine but it takes about 60-90 seconds to eject disk A and load disk B. So you might have a rather awkward pause between speeches.
FINALIZING
At the end of the meeting, I "finalize" all the disks. Finalizing is the last step on ANY dvd recorder, not just a DVD camcorder. You have to close out the data on the disk and it will be formatted in such as way it can play on any other DVD player.
If you have 3 speakers, you'll have 3 disks. If the topicmaster wants to capture her whole topic session, you might have another disk of that. Each disk takes about 3-7 minutes to finalize, but from there you can play it in any DVD player. If you don't finalize it, it will only play in the camera, no where else.
The mini-disks may be smaller in size, but all DVD players have the smaller size indent in the tray that accepts the mini DVD disks. At maximum quality the record time per disk is about 35 minutes. There are lower quality settings that progressively deteriorate in quality, but you could capture over an hour on a single disk if you had to. I have not yet recorded in one of the lower quality modes.
A WORD OF CAUTION ABOUT DISK FAILURE
The greatest risk of failure with this is any other DVD camera is that the disk won't be able to finalize. It doesn't happen very often with this camera but I have had it happen. Imagine how frustrating it could be to shoot a whole disk and then the camera says the disk is no good and it can't finalize.
In the case of the D300, I attribute failures to the disks themselves, rather than the camera. Whenever you put a non-Panasonic disk in the camera to shoot, it gives you a warning "Recommended to use Panasonic Disk". Now I have shot with Sony and TDK disks with generally excellent results, but in some cases -- maybe about 5 percent -- the disk wouldn't finalize. In other cases, it wouldn't even playback inside the camera. If the disk plays back within the camera, at least you can make a cable connection and record to another device.
So if you want greater reliability, you might want to use Panasonic disks, although you'll probably have to special order them.
THE DETAILS
I like the Panasonic. The menus and controls are logical and fairly easy for a film and video guy like me to handle. If you have minimal experience with the gear it may be a bit more of a challenge.
The D300 is extremely compact and lightweight. The beautiful silver body houses a nicely configured cluster of controls.
I really like the fact the D300 has a built in "shutter eyelid" type lens cap to protect the Leica lens. There is no lens cap to lose!
The small, square lithium ion battery pack locks into the back of the camera, and charges quickly in the wall charger, which also doubles as an AC power supply for the camera. You could probably get a full charge in an hour or less. Thus far, I have found the battery life to be quite good and I haven't come close to exhausting it. You could probably shoot at least 5 or 6 disks before you'd run out of power.
The power switch is a simple locking slider, and located adjacent to it on the back of the camera is a rotary, four-position mode switch which easily changes between movie camera, movie playback, still camera, and still playback modes. Then you have your shutter (camera shooting) and a single "menu" button which brings up all the menu screens on your viewfinder LCD.
The complex, multi-layered menus are all software-based on the camera's viewscreen. You navigate with a tiny "joystick" handle. I haven't compared the LCD viewfinder to that of other cameras but it seems quite bright and clear. There are quite a number of menus in there, but the fact you can navigate with your fingertip (hopefully you don't have Fred Flintstone fingers) is quite cool.
The traditional optical-type viewfinder is of incidental design, with no eyecup and is uncomfortable on the eye for more than 2 seconds. Who shoots with a traditional viewfinder anymore anyway?
I agree with the other reviewer, by the way, watch out for New York stores. I had a bad experience a while back with mixing board from Manny's in Brooklyn which turned out to be a beat up demo with tape all over it. Kind of a joke but it broke my heart. The gear was so big I couldn't return it across the country.
Again, I recently purchased this VDR-D300 camera and have only used it a few times, but the ergonomics and overall design feels very good, which I expect from Panasonic (Mat soo -shta) corporation. If you haven't used a lesser brand like I have you won't appreciate it. The image quality is about the best I think one could expect from a DVD-R camera.
My primary criteria for getting a camera was that it record direct to DVD and that it have a microphone input plug. When you have someone at the lectern, you want to put a mic up there on the lectern on a gooseneck and run a cable to the camera. The audio quality is so much better than the mic on the camera, especially from a distance.
The Panasonic is a 3-chip camera, too, which means the image quality is very good, recorded with separate red- green- and blue sensors. A single chip camera, the most common variety, records all the colors on a single light sensitive diode. Of course, in general, DVD is not as good a record medium as mini-DV tape, but when you can hand out a finished DVD right there at the meeting, that's great. You can buy mini-DVDs in a stack but don't forget to bring the plastic cases.
SWAPPING DISKS
Another caveat -- an inherent issue with DVD -- is that loading and formatting take some time. Any camera will have this issue but the Panasonic is reliable and better than most. The most important thing is you can eject one DVD without finalizing and come back to it later. Some cameras will not allow you to do this, but I have found the VDR-D300 very reliable in this regard.
For example, let's say you've got a lineup of speakers. If speaker A and speaker B both want to be recorded, you will want to swap out the speaker A dvd and insert the speaker B dvd between speeches. That's fine but it takes about 60-90 seconds to eject disk A and load disk B. So you might have a rather awkward pause between speeches.
FINALIZING
At the end of the meeting, I "finalize" all the disks. Finalizing is the last step on ANY dvd recorder, not just a DVD camcorder. You have to close out the data on the disk and it will be formatted in such as way it can play on any other DVD player.
If you have 3 speakers, you'll have 3 disks. If the topicmaster wants to capture her whole topic session, you might have another disk of that. Each disk takes about 3-7 minutes to finalize, but from there you can play it in any DVD player. If you don't finalize it, it will only play in the camera, no where else.
The mini-disks may be smaller in size, but all DVD players have the smaller size indent in the tray that accepts the mini DVD disks. At maximum quality the record time per disk is about 35 minutes. There are lower quality settings that progressively deteriorate in quality, but you could capture over an hour on a single disk if you had to. I have not yet recorded in one of the lower quality modes.
A WORD OF CAUTION ABOUT DISK FAILURE
The greatest risk of failure with this is any other DVD camera is that the disk won't be able to finalize. It doesn't happen very often with this camera but I have had it happen. Imagine how frustrating it could be to shoot a whole disk and then the camera says the disk is no good and it can't finalize.
In the case of the D300, I attribute failures to the disks themselves, rather than the camera. Whenever you put a non-Panasonic disk in the camera to shoot, it gives you a warning "Recommended to use Panasonic Disk". Now I have shot with Sony and TDK disks with generally excellent results, but in some cases -- maybe about 5 percent -- the disk wouldn't finalize. In other cases, it wouldn't even playback inside the camera. If the disk plays back within the camera, at least you can make a cable connection and record to another device.
So if you want greater reliability, you might want to use Panasonic disks, although you'll probably have to special order them.
THE DETAILS
I like the Panasonic. The menus and controls are logical and fairly easy for a film and video guy like me to handle. If you have minimal experience with the gear it may be a bit more of a challenge.
The D300 is extremely compact and lightweight. The beautiful silver body houses a nicely configured cluster of controls.
I really like the fact the D300 has a built in "shutter eyelid" type lens cap to protect the Leica lens. There is no lens cap to lose!
The small, square lithium ion battery pack locks into the back of the camera, and charges quickly in the wall charger, which also doubles as an AC power supply for the camera. You could probably get a full charge in an hour or less. Thus far, I have found the battery life to be quite good and I haven't come close to exhausting it. You could probably shoot at least 5 or 6 disks before you'd run out of power.
The power switch is a simple locking slider, and located adjacent to it on the back of the camera is a rotary, four-position mode switch which easily changes between movie camera, movie playback, still camera, and still playback modes. Then you have your shutter (camera shooting) and a single "menu" button which brings up all the menu screens on your viewfinder LCD.
The complex, multi-layered menus are all software-based on the camera's viewscreen. You navigate with a tiny "joystick" handle. I haven't compared the LCD viewfinder to that of other cameras but it seems quite bright and clear. There are quite a number of menus in there, but the fact you can navigate with your fingertip (hopefully you don't have Fred Flintstone fingers) is quite cool.
The traditional optical-type viewfinder is of incidental design, with no eyecup and is uncomfortable on the eye for more than 2 seconds. Who shoots with a traditional viewfinder anymore anyway?
I agree with the other reviewer, by the way, watch out for New York stores. I had a bad experience a while back with mixing board from Manny's in Brooklyn which turned out to be a beat up demo with tape all over it. Kind of a joke but it broke my heart. The gear was so big I couldn't return it across the country.
Again, I recently purchased this VDR-D300 camera and have only used it a few times, but the ergonomics and overall design feels very good, which I expect from Panasonic (Mat soo -shta) corporation. If you haven't used a lesser brand like I have you won't appreciate it. The image quality is about the best I think one could expect from a DVD-R camera.
