I recently had the chance to take the new Panasonic HPX3700 Varicam to Europe for a 2 week shoot.  While we didn’t necessarily need the firepower offered by the 3700, I wanted to see what it could do.  Being a hardcore Panasonic P2 user, I was a little surprised at my feelings towards the camera by the end of our trip.

If you’re reading this, you probably already know about the new P2 cameras offered by Panasonic.  Our camera was the HPX3700, the big daddy of the new P2 Varicam lineup.  It offers a true 1920×1080 2/3″ sensor, the new AVC-Intra codec in addition to the classic DVCProHD codec, and all P2 recording.  Our gear list is below:

• Panasonic HPX3700 P2 Varicam body
• Fujinon 10×5mm with 2x Extender
• (2) 32GB E-Series P2 cards
• Sachtler Video 20 tripod and head
• Sennheiser wireless unit
• LitePanels LED on-camera light
• (3) Anton Bauer Hytron 140 batteries
• Final Cut Studio 3 on a MacBook Pro 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo with 4 GB RAM
• (2) G-Tech 1 TB G-Drives
• We recorded everything in 1080p 23.98 with AVC-Intra 50

With 10 days of heavy use, I was able to put the camera through its paces and I’ve gathered my list of likes/dislikes about the HPX3700:

• Any experienced shooter will be able to pick the camera up and make great pictures with it without much setup.  It’s laid out very well for an ENG setup.  All dials and buttons are in their place.
• The camera is freaking heavy.  I’ve had a lot of cameras on my shoulder, including tube cameras from the 70’s, but this thing is one of the heaviest.  It’s easily twice as heavy as the HPX500 with a wide angle lens, Hytron battery, wireless receiver, and shotgun microphone.  It’s not as run-and-gun friendly as I would have hoped, but still possible.  Carrying it up a winding staircase in a 30-story bell tower makes you think twice about renting the camera for your next project.
• The camera draws a ton of power, and is very picky about voltage.  We had Hytron 140 batteries.  While they did okay, it seemed like the camera sucked a lot of power for not having any moving parts.  We got about 40 minutes of recording time with one battery.  Once the Hytrons reached 40% on the camera display, it read “Low Battery” and wouldn’t allow recording.  Kinda frustrating when you expect 40% to mean 40%.  The specs say it draws 3x more juice than the HPX500 which confuses me a little.
• The color temperature wheel is very handy.  It has the standard ND wheel, but also has an additional color temperature wheel.  The ND wheel has the standard clear filter and 3 steps of ND.  The color temperature wheel has a 3200K, 4300K, 5600K, and an additional 1/16th of ND.  I almost never white balanced and it handled all the different environments very well.  We were in a couple of buildings with daylight and tungsten lighting mixed and the color held very true.
• Colors in the shadows are much better than any other camera I’ve used.  Even in 12 dB gain, there’s still a lot of detail and color in the dark areas of the shot.  Along with 4:2:2 color, it’s surprising the shots you can get with limited light.
• The built-in LCD is fairly nice.  Bright enough to use in daylight, but one I still would not trust with focus.  I only used it to preview clips, check my color balance, and compose when the camera wasn’t shoulder-mounted.
• Focus was a little hard in the viewfinder, even with peaking on.  If the camera had any kind of focus assist, I never found it.  That’s one thing I did miss about the HVX-200.  I found a couple of shots were slightly soft because of my inability to see critical focus.
• The dynamic range is pretty impressive.  It’s not quite up there with the Viper or RED, but it can make some pretty pictures.  Clouds and skies remained in exposure even in some of our shots in the shade.  Also, with more latitude in color correction, I could draw the dark areas up without the shot falling apart.
• While it is technically called a Varicam, the lack of framerates over 30p is a little annoying, especially for the price.  I did like the ability to do 60p on the HPX500 and slow it down on a 24p timeline in post.  To me, that’s the ultimate downside of this camera.
• The AVC-Intra codec is very nice, much better quality than DVCProHD.  We recorded in AVC-Intra 50, which is the same bitrate as DVCProHD, and I was very impressed.  For 90% of my projects, AVC-Intra 50 is perfect.  I would only use AVC-Intra 100 if I was compositing or doing heavy color correction.
• Final Cut Pro 7 handled the footage without any problems.  I transcoded into ProRes 422 and it ran silky smooth on my MacBook Pro.  Very impressive.  While transcoding can be annoying, it didn’t take any longer than transferring native files and I would much rather work with ProRes in the field since it’s been proven.

Overall, the HPX3700 is a great camera.  However, I would not recommend it for an international trip that involves a lot of traveling and run-and-gun scenarios.  This camera is better suited for episodic and set work.  For the weight and hassle we experienced with the 3700, I would have rather had the RED camera.  Next time I travel, I won’t be taking the 3700, but I will definitely use it again.