Checking out the optical image stabilization on the AG-AC30.

Panasonic AG-AC30 Full HD Camcorder with Touch Panel LCD Viewscreen and Built-In LED Light

MFR # AG-AC30PJ

https://youtu.be/4fjYIzOYoYI

I don't know....
Nice colours,sharp but a little bit noisy..
Thanks for sharing

Here is the manual for the camera. It is 24MB in size.

Make your browser full size and click once and only once. There will be no pop up and you will see the file begin to download at the bottom of your browser window.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/bssgaub6g8tf3j8/Panasonic_AGAC30_Manual_Videotex_Systems_PhilipGoetz.pdf

Great
Can't wait to see it in stores and real life

I've got a couple more videos coming. I shot a house at night that is in the process of being torn out. It's pier and beam and I shot under it using the built in light. Will post soon. I shot it 1080 30fps at 50mb/sec .mov.

Can't wait,Phil

https://youtu.be/K2rL0E1LFbc

The Panasonic AG-AC30 begins shipping Sept 2016.
What if you had a house you were tearing out and you only had time in the middle of the night to get video of the progress? What if you didn't have an on camera light?

The AGAC30 has a built in light and comes with a diffuser and color temperature orange gel. They just snap over the light. In this video I used the diffuser only.

Auto iris and AGC
1080 30p 50mb/sec .MOV
5600 K
Shutter: 1/30
Some manual focus / some auto focus
Premiere export for youtube was 2 pass VBR 16mb/sec target

Music by Waylon Thornton and is is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

WAYLON THORNTON (http://waylonthornton.tumblr.com/)

Free Music Archive: Waylon Thornton - Paranormal High School (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Waylon_Thornton/Paranormal_High_School/)

I removed it from my shopping cart because of the battery.
They included a tiny battery with the camcorder and I hate that.
Another 200$ on top of that.
My ag AC 90 had a huge 4.5 hours battery..
Cheap......
Panasonic.......you're like everyone else now

Cheap......Panasonic.......you're like everyone else now

Which other brand sells a comparable camera for 1,449dollar? One thing I agree on is that they are cheap, but in price. Panasonics latest strategy seems to sell their camera's at a very low prices and in order to do that they seem to save on accessories, like with my gx80 which only was 495 euro and it came without a charger. You can always get after market batteries and chargers to save on cost and then you still will have a very cheap camera which other brands just don't offer at a similar price.

You're right Noa....
I was disappointed because on my AC 90 which was the same price ,the included battery was huge.

Included battery is a VW-VBD29 2900 mAh battery. It might be the smallest compatible battery.

Had the chance to meet up with Austin DP Gary Huff and talk about the AG-AC30. He was able to shoot and edit some things with it. He was looking to set the shutter to degrees and for Cinelike D. You cannot. I realized that there is a UX line of cameras shipping soon that are part of the professional camera line. The AG-AC30 is NOT part of this line. It also may explain why there are a couple different Panasonic handles. @PanasonicProAV would NOT be the handle to use when talking about the AG-AC30.

Panasonic AGAC30 Austin Demo by Gary Huff:
https://youtu.be/OxCSV6P1JUs

More of Gary's work here:
Rusty Auto (http://rustyautoproductions.com/)

Have to say it didn't look good, I saw issues with a hunting autofocus, a out of focus shot at 00:36 where the background was in focus instead of the person and I saw some horrible grain at 01:14. I also noticed the exposure was on auto with the flashing neon light and the same for focus as that was hunting as well during that shot. Not sure if it was the intention of showing the camera at it's worst by using it autofunctions? The camera seems to be able to do all those functions manually.

it was my intent to shoot this camera in challenging situations. I tried to put myself in the mind of someone who would be shooting with this camera in general and present it in the kind of situation that would challenge the camera the most. Therefore, no tripod (for O.I.S.), no lighting (save for the built-in light), and auto where it made sense (focus and gain). Peaking for manual focus works for larger sensor cameras because of the shallower depth-of-field, but here it was hard to read as a lot of background read as in focus. It also took a lot of scrutinziing the LCD to determine the interview subject was not in focus. This is realized quickly, but the early interview segment ended up near the end during editing. I really wish I could have used the onboard light for the interview, but, as per the setup I was going with, audio with a camera-mounted shotgun mic, so I had to be close enough for good audio, but it made the on-board light far too intense.

I used Auto Gain Control because the lens ramps down in aperture as you zoom in, and I wanted to avoid that. There are two ways, set it to the smallest aperture allowed at telephoto and leave it there (which would be f/3.6), or use AGC. I also wanted to see the noise profile, so AGC it was. I found 0dB to not be very sensitive. I don't know the official number, but I felt like it was slightly less 320 ISO, probably around 200-250.

Also, like Phil mentioned, there is no Cinelike profiles on here, just ones like "Landscape", "Portrait", "Sports", etc. Unfortunately, activating any of these profiles makes the camera go into auto mode. Likewise, running manual Gain and Shutter would cause it to immediately revert to auto mode whenever you used the controls to adjust it (for instance, going to 1/120 for the 59.97 base to 1/240 for 120 fps mode, pushing the Shutter button would first reset the shutter to Auto Shutter, then you have to dial it back up to 240, very annoying). Oddly enough, 120 fps mode with a 59.97 timebase doesn'tt seem to work at all. I should get half-speed playback for a 60p project, but when the 120 mode was activated, I get neither 120 frames in the video, nor a conformed half-speed clip.

The zoom lens is crazy, and not something I am used to since when I left fixed-lens cameras, 13x was the law of the land, and now I'm routinely on 18-35 and 70-200 zooms. Not at all like you can do with this. However, O.I.S. doesn't do any significant shake countering at full telephoto. It was really hard to keep a steady image at full telephoto with O.I.S. on and handheld.

The camera itself was nicely lightwight and I had no trouble hauling it around. Zoom rocker was a little touchy, and it took me a few attempts each time to have a consistant speed zoom.

Thanks for the input here guys.

I post videos of my dogs and kid in the back yard, seafood restaurants and a house at night being torn out. When there is a new camera released I believe it is best to do as much as possible to get hands on and get the word out among all levels of shooters. This forum, to me, is about being very generous about what we have access to - BOTH equipment and knowledge / skill level. Of course there are always time constraints and if you are getting paid or not and what brand(s) you represent.

When there is a new camera released I believe it is best to do as much as possible to get hands on and get the word out among all levels of shooters

It's easy to get a wrong idea about a camera if a video is posted that doesn't have any background info on how it was shot and how the camera was operated and it can give a wrong impression, this is why I commented about it. It's good to know about the limitations of a camera though and in this case I'd say this is a camera you have to be careful with when using it in auto mode.

Noa has been a Panny fan for a long time so his comments always have merit. I looked at this VERY cautiously as I was really disappointed when I switched to the AC-130 cameras a few years back and AF was one issue that put me off ..my AC-130 would lock onto a subject filling 75% of the frame yet it would still drift in and out of focus randomly ... the AC-160 also had an issue loosing focus as you move the camera and the factory never really sorted it out. I cannot understand why the AC series have poor AF ...My FZ1000 cameras are awesome and snap in focus again and again and after over a year of weddings I have yet to see an out of focus shot. It will be interesting to get comments from other people that decide on the AC-30

Noa has been a Panny fan for a long time so his comments always have merit.

It would not have made any difference if it was another brand as I just commented based on what I saw :)

Nothing to impressive about the quality of the image...
It brings back bad memories about my AG 90...
Weird colours in low light.....
Impossible to focus accurately
Thanks for sharing...
This was helpful

I often wonder if the AC series are maybe made under licence by another factory because they all seem to be a completely different build quality, design and optics. I have owned almost all Panasonic in my 25 years of shooting starting at the M10 VHS cameras and even a WVP Saticon Tube camera. My current FZ cams have good build quality, excellent auto focus, and remarkable Leica optics ... the AC series (I went from the HMC80 to AC-130) just seem to be very plasticky, the AF was terrible as was the audio XLR modules and they seem to be the only series using the tiny BSI sensors whereas the Lumix cameras tend to use chips made by Sony. Sheesh, my FZ1000's shoot decent 4K video and have 1" chips yet cost almost half the price of the AC-30 which has just a much smaller BSI sensor and generic glass not the Leica optics usually used by Panasonic.

I wonder if the AF suffers from the same issues that the AC130 and AC160 have ... move the camera (in auto) from one object fairly close to another a greater distance away and the AF totally loses it ..just a blur until it finally finds focus I used to film speeches at a podium and if the speaker bent down to pick up a dropped paper and stood up again the image was totally lost. Can't see the point of having auto focus unless it works!! I sold my two AC-130's within 3 months and reverted to the cheaper HMC80's again which did a better job!

Ready for some original media files from the camera?

These are 5-8 second clips and is the original media card zipped up into one folder. I formatted the card before I started shooting. This download is a little over one gig.

Shot 1080 59.94P at 50/mb seconds "FHD".
5600k white balance
All 1/120 on the shutter
OIS turned on for a couple shots, but off for most.

To download these original media clips, make your internet browser full screen and click this link once and only once. You will see it begin to download at the bottom of your screen. If you click more than once it will start downloading multiple times. There is no sort of popup window or anything when you click this Mediafire link.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/pqegpb9puma4pge/PanasonicAGAC30PhilipGoetzVideotexSystemsSept2016.zip

You are free to:

Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material
for any purpose, even commercially.
The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
Under the following terms:

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No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Phil & Gary,

Have you tried monitoring audio through headphones while shooting with this camera?

I have just picked up the HC-PV100 (which as far as I can tell is the same camera... maybe for PAL markets?), and I am hearing a significant delay/latency - around 1/4 sec - to the headphone audio. This will take some getting used to when monitoring a live spoken presentation.

Other than that I think it's pretty good for the price! My only other niggle, really, is the lack of ND. In bright outdoor situations you end up with ridiculous shutter speeds, so I'll defintely be carrying a 49mm ND with me.

Cheers,
Steven

Steve -

Thanks for your question.

There is audio delay in some of the Panasonic cameras. It comes to a head if you are using the camera for live image magnification, that is, sending a live feed to a projector. From what I can tell the minimum camera you want to use for that is this:

Panasonic AJ-PX230 microP2 Handheld AVC-ULTRA HD Camcorder (http://business.panasonic.com/AJ-PX230.html)

Also - I recently picked up a Rode Link and it is digital wireless and there is delay to get used to. Like the Sennheiser digital wireless there is delay as well. Audio can be slipped in post, BUT while shooting you might start second guessing yourself.

Thanks Phil,

I have now had a chance to use the camera a couple of times "in anger". For the first job I just got used to the audio delay. I was actually using a RodeLink wireless kit, but I don't find it makes that much difference even with a mic plugged directly into the camera.

The second job was a sync sound situation anyway (with a sound recordist). So it wasn't a concern for me at all.

My only two niggles for now are:

1. With the small sensor, although the low-light performance is adequate for me, at times is would be nice to be able to separate the background a bit more. But it's not enough of an issue that I would pull out a μ43 mirrorless or APS-C DLSR, and deal with all the handling annoyances that go along with that.

2. The lack of built-in ND. This is a real pain in the ### on a mixed indoor-outdoor job.

It's still a great camera for the price. Although there are others that can produce superior IQ in a similar price bracket, as an all-round package it ticks a lot of boxes for me.

I sent mine back. The video quality was too soft for me. My AG-AC90 had much better quality no matter what I did. Panasonic thought it could be a bad codec in the camera. I sent it back and got something else.

Interesting. I have yet to do any comparisons. I haven't even tried shooting in the higher bitrate MOV modes, yet - I have only shot AVCHD, as that was adequate for the jobs in question.