Panasonic HDC-TM300

Ease of Use (6.10)

The Panasonic HDC-TM300 is an excellent camcorder for beginning users, offering a wealth of automatic features, called Intelligent Auto (iA) technologies. These features, like AF/AE tracking and the Intelligent Scene Selector, are easy and fun to use. Unfortunately, you can only use most of the iA options in the camcorder’s default mode. If you’d like to switch to manual mode and experiment with manual white balance, focus, iris, etc., you lose access to these beginner-friendly options. That’s especially a shame when it comes to AF/AE tracking, a great tool that follows the subject you choose on the touch screen, even as it changes location within the frame. We were very disappointed to see this feature unavailable in manual mode.

This also means that intermediate users are less likely to switch over and experiment with manual controls. The manual button itself is hidden up at the front of the camcorder and people might not want to sacrifice AF/AE tracking once they come to rely on it. We hope that the cool manual control lens ring is enough to lure consumers into trying out some manual image adjustments.

On the other hand, there are a few features that would help a beginner transition into more advanced usage. Chief among these is the Info button, which brings up a tool tip every time you select a feature in the menus. The tool tips can explain things like Digital Cinema, backlight compensation, and hi-speed burst photography. The Info button is available in both the main menu and the Q.Menu—but not the Function menu. That means that options only available on Function menu (like white balance, shutter, and iris) get no tool tip explanation. Fortunately, the included Operating Instructions are fairly comprehensive and contain any explanations that the tool tips do not cover.

Another minor feature to aid newcomers is the Shooting Guide. When Shooting Guide is activated, the camcorder will give you ‘tips on how to make a good recording.’ All we really noticed was the occasional warning message like ‘camera panning is too fast.’

The menus on the Panasonic HDC-TM300 are simple to work with, despite the quantity of options available. Settings are located in three places—the function menu, the record menu, and the setup menu.

The function menu is accessed by pressing the F icon in the lower left corner of the LCD screen. It brings up important manual controls, like white balance, shutter speed, and aperture adjustment. In auto mode, the function menu only offers various scene menus and one-touch iA functions. Beginning users may have trouble deciphering the function menu, since every option is represented by an ambiguous icon and there are no tool tips or descriptions to help you out.

Pressing the menu button on the LCD panel brings up the camcorder’s main menu options: the Record Menu, Picture Menu, Media Select Menu, and Setup Menu.

The Record Menu is where you go to manipulate your video image and control the camcorder’s recording settings. The menu gets a bit long (there are 7 pages of settings), but options are easy to read and the system is simple to navigate. In still mode, the Record Menu has far fewer options; only the controls that work with still photos are available. Even in still mode, the Record Menu is represented by a movie camera icon—a confusing contradiction.

The Picture Menu holds controls that are specific only to still photo capture. Media Select menu simply allows you to switch between internal flash memory and SD/SDHC memory card recording.

The fourth main menu option is the Setup menu, which houses all the administrative option of the TM300. That includes things like clock settings, LCD adjustments, and connectivity options. You can also enter into the Setup menu to switch the display language to English, French, or Spanish.

Unfortunately, the menus can become quite confusing beyond this simple primary menu scheme. It’s not always clear whether you need to check the Function menu or the Record Setup menu when you’re searching for a manual image control. (Backlight compensation, for instance, is in the function menu, while Exposure is only in the Record Setup menu.) To make matters more confusing, the LCD panel hosts a button for a quick menu (Q.Menu).

The Q.Menu hosts a strange array of options that Panasonic has selected for easy access. While this is a great idea and it gives easy access to important settings, the icons can be very confusing to understand. You need to have a good deal of experience with the camcorder before the Q.Menu is truly quick. The Info button does give a quick tool tip to explicate the icons, but that slows the process down to the point where you would have been better off using the normal menu.

Though we mentioned this option above, it’s worth reiterating that the TM300 includes an Info feature, which provides the users with handy tool tips while navigating the menus. The option can be toggled on and off and is quite helpful for less experienced users that are trying to find their way around the menus. Unfortunately, this option is not available in the Function menu, where novices might really benefit from some extra insight.

The Record Setup and Picture menus in video mode	The Quick Menu in video mode

Auto Mode (10.27)

We discussed the merits of Panasonic’s new Intelligent Auto (iA) system in the HS300 review, but it’s worth extolling iA’s virtues again here. You might expect the TM300 to be an intimidating piece of technology, with its viewfinder, accessory shoe, lens ring, and extensive manual control offerings. However, Panasonic has done an excellent job of incorporating several shooting modes and tools to make the videography experience more accessible for beginners.

When shooting in this mode, you needn’t have a care in the world. Just sit back, hit record, and let the TM300 take care of adjusting focus, exposure, shutter speed, white balance… pretty much everything. This is the camcorder equivalent of sitting on a beach with a cool breeze and fruity frozen beverage in hand. The TM300 handles auto adjustments so well that it feels like your every desire is met. Focus is quick and accurate in all but the dimmest lighting conditions and exposure shifts look smooth and natural, even when panning between two high contrast areas. Even the automatic white balance—which is often pitiful on consumer camcorders—handles indoor and outdoor lighting surprisingly well. (Of course, the auto white balance isn’t as effective as a simple manual white balance.)

If you want a little more control over your footage, there are a couple of options that let you meddle without turning to manual mode. A tele macro option makes it easier to focus on objects very close to the lens, and a couple of the iA features are just one-touch adjustments. Backlight Compensation and Face Framing can be activated whenever the user feels it’s appropriate.

If, however, you want even less control over your footage, there’s an even simpler auto mode called iA mode. This mode tells the camcorder to activate all the various Intelligent Auto technologies and select which are called for in a given scene. That includes Backlight Compensation and Face Framing, but it also includes Intelligent Scene Selector and Intelligent Contrast Control.

And we still haven’t mentioned the darling of all the iA technologies: AF/AE Tracking. This feature lets you touch your main subject on the LCD and have the camcorder ‘follow’ that selected subject. True, the camcorder won’t be taken over by a robotic AI and physically move to follow your cousin’s basketball game, but it will keep your cousin properly exposed and in focus as long as you can keep your cousin in the frame. There are some limitations to the technology, including picking up subjects that temporarily leave the frame or finding subjects in a crowded scene. For recording at a school play, ballet recital, or gymnastics meet—anything where your subject remains relatively isolated—the feature is surprisingly effective.

Low Light Modes – The TM300 has one dedicated low light mode called MagicPix. Panasonic doesn’t reveal the specific of their mystery formula, but Magic Pix is likely some combination of a 24p frame rate, increased gain, and slower shutter. If you don’t want to change the frame rate, you can also engage the camcorder’s auto slow shutter, which drops the shutter speed to 1/30 (1/24 in 24p mode). If you allow the camcorder’s iA mode to automatically select scene modes for you, it may choose a Low Light mode that also drops the shutter speed to 1/30.

Scene Modes – The TM300 includes the usual array of scene modes: Portrait, Snow, Sunset, Sports, Spotlight, Beach, and Fireworks. If you are in iA mode, the Intelligent Scene Selector may select an additional Low Light mode (see above).