Panasonic Announces Four New Camcorders in Japan - HDC-HS300 HDC-HS200 HDC-TM300 and HDC-SD200

Panasonic's home offices announced four new HD camcorders for the Japanese market. The HDC-HS300 and HDC-HS200 are hard drive models (120GB and 80GB, respectively). The HDC-TM300 offers a smaller 32GB of internal flash memory, expandable with SD/SDHC cards. The HDC-SD200 is a card-only model. All camcorders are scheduled to ship on February 5, 2009.

All the new camcorders record in 1920 x 1080 video in the AVCHD format at a maximum bitrate of 17Mbps. They are equipped with three 1/4.1-inch CMOS sensors, each with a gross pixel count of 3,050,000 (effective pixel count of 2,070,00). The F/1.8-2.8 lens has a zoom power of 12x, with a 43mm filter diameter and focal range of 44.9 - 539.0mm (35mm equivalent).

The 120GB on the HDC-300 can store over 15 hours in the highest quality video. The smaller 80GB hard drive on the HDC-HS200 has capacity for approximately 10.5 hours. The 32GB flash memory HDC-TM300 stores 14 hours in the highest quality. Because the HDC-SD200 is card-only, capacity is based on the card size. A 16GB card offers approximately 2 hours of recording space in the highest quality.

The information above is based on solely on the Japanese announcements. It is expected that the US announcements and further details will emerge at some point soon during the Consumer Electronic Show (CES), currently underway in Las Vegas, NV.