Panasonic HDC-Z10000 Twin-Lens 2D/3D Camcorder

About the Panasonic HDC-Z10000

The Panasonic HDC-Z10000 Twin-Lens 2D/3D Camcorder has dual lenses and twin Full HD 3MOS imagers and as such it joins a burgeoning class of affordable, single-body 3D-capable handheld camcorders. But it introduces to this category those three-chip imagers and also true convergence adjustment, which alters the angular orientation of the two 10x zoom lenses. This control facilitates fine control over the location of the "image plane" - the plane from which objects seem to either jump or recede as you're watching them on the big screen, or on the Z10000 camcorder's glasses-free 3.2" LCD monitor.

Convergence can be set to adjust automatically, or you can turn a manual dial to make the lenses' sights diverge or move toward parallel. The lenses shoot fairly wide at a 35mm equivalent of 32mm when in 3D mode, which gives more options for placing foreground/background elements in a 3D scene or for shooting indoors. For close-ups, the minimum object distance is also quite impressive for a 3D camera at about 18" in 3D.

The camcorder also puts manual control over focus, zoom and iris at the operator's fingertips in the form of three rings at the base of the dual lenses. Alternatively, you can operate the camera under iA ("intelligent auto") mode and let the Z10000 choose the optimal shooting mode, turning on face detection, contrast control and optical image stabilization as needed.

The HDC-Z10000 records to two SD/SDHC/SDXC memory card slots either sequentially or simultaneously. In 2D mode, the camera captures several flavors of high-definition AVCHD format video, including AVCHD Progressive at 1080p60. Three-dimensional video is recorded as AVCHD 3D, which uses MVC (multiview video coding) compression. (This format has already started to find compatibility with popular nonlinear editing software programs.) With dual XLRs inputs and a five-element built-in microphone, the Z10000 facilitates high-quality capture of two-channel audio or 5.1 surround sound.