Panasonic reveals world's first Micro Four Thirds camcorder

Panasonic goes Micro Four Thirds crazy
Panasonic goes Micro Four Thirds crazy

Panasonic has announced that its revolutionary Micro Four Thirds sensor has broken free of its camera confines and is to be included in its upcoming AG-A4100 camcorder.

The professional cam is the first to house the Micro Four Thirds format, something that Panasonic claims will: "deliver the shallow depth of field and wider field of view of a large imager, with the flexibility and cost advantages of use with a growing line of professional quality, industry standard micro 4/3-inch lenses, filters, and adapters."

This is big news for Panasonic – which it has built in collaboration with Olympus – as it widens the reach of Micro Four Thirds into the lucrative sector of movie making.

The camcorder does have an interchangeable lens system, so both film lenses and stills camera lenses should work with it and its native 1080/24p footage will be recorded on to either SDHC or SDXC cards. To make sure you aren't constantly changing cards, there are two slots included on the chassis.

Broadcast standard

As Panasonic is pitching the camcorder at pros, there is the choice between 60Hz and 50Hz shooting (depending on which broadcast standard you are filming for) and there's also a choice of frame rates.

Other features include a built-in ND filter, time code recording, USB 2.0 and mic ports and two-channel digital audio recording.

The Panasonic AG-AF100 has no confirmed UK release date, but will be out at the tail-end of 2010. Pricing is also TBA, but it looks likely to be in the region of $6,000.

Marc Chacksfield

Marc Chacksfield is the Editor In Chief, Shortlist.com at DC Thomson. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.