Panasonic HC-W580

The Panasonic HC-W580 camcorder belongs to the class of strong middle peasants in the segment of amateur camcorders. But among the crowd of peers, one important feature distinguishes him.

Picture in picture

The “chip” of the model is the support of the “picture in picture” function. In an additional window on the main image, a picture from a Twin-camera is broadcast, located on the side face of the video camera display. It allows you to capture the face of the operator in the frame, who will comment on what is happening on the video, or a part of the space invisible to the main lens. The location of the window is selected by dragging it around the screen with your finger. The picture-in-picture function can be implemented in another way — two smartphones are connected to the camcorder via a Wi-Fi network at once, the image from which is broadcast directly in two additional windows over the main video.

Assistance to the operator

The camera is equipped with good optics, providing 50x optical zoom. In the wide-angle position (28mm in 35mm equivalent), you can shoot at a maximum aperture of f/1.8, closer to the long end, its value drops to f/4.2. A 5-axis image stabilization system and an auto-horizon leveling function are provided to assist the operator. The use of the latter will avoid blockage, but note that the edges of the frame in this case can be spoiled by jelly-like distortions.

video filming

The camcorder records videos in resolutions up to 1920x1080 pixels at a speed of up to 50 fps. At the maximum recording parameters, it is capable of recording video for 2.5 hours in a row — this is how much the model's battery reserves are enough. Due to the small physical dimensions of the matrix, night shooting is not very good for the camcorder, but in good lighting it shows an excellent result. For those operators who are not accustomed to relying entirely on automation, a number of manual video recording settings are available.