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.