At the beginning of the year, Panasonic released the portable relay camera HC-X 1500, which put 4K60P on a compact body to meet the requirements of the quality of the relay. This camera has a variety of application scenarios, and its compact size can make it a device for judicial evidence collection, meeting records and so on. At the same time, its powerful performance also enables it to cope with professional live broadcasts and reports.

In fact, there are few interfaces and few functions. It is a certain camera of Panasonic specialty, so the price/performance ratio has nothing to say.

The overall size of the machine is small, which is the same as the traditional handheld DV machine. The weight of bare metal is only 0.9kg, and the body size is 129x 159x257mm (the same length as the assembly board of Manfutu camera). When the top handle and lens cover are not installed, the whole fuselage looks simple, but it has a good grip and maneuverability after getting started.

The right side of the fuselage accounts for a large proportion of the whole fuselage, because this part is stuffed with a silent fan that actively dissipates heat. According to the publicity renderings, it should still be the same silent fan as Panasonic S 1H, which can still maintain good heat dissipation effect under long-term high-quality shooting; The right hand grip is ergonomic, and you can see that your palm is completely attached to the fuselage after you get started.

Familiar cooling fan

At the rear is the battery compartment and three interfaces. The battery is arranged horizontally, saving the tail space, making the EVF parallel to the top of the fuselage and not protruding separately. The three rear interfaces are standard-sized HDMI output interface, 3.5mm headphone monitor interface and DC IN interface, which basically meet the use requirements of this machine, and the vent above the interface is also conducive to heat dissipation.

SDI interface sealed with screws is used to distinguish CX98.

EVF is essential for broadcast cameras, and the display screen can't display the exposure of the picture normally under strong light, so it must be used for monitoring. In some important news scenes, it cannot be repeated, and exposure errors will lead to serious broadcast accidents. The EVF resolution of Panasonic X 1500 is 1560000. It is equipped with a comfortable eye mask, which can open the EVF function by pulling and tilting at a certain angle, expanding the use scene.

Function buttons are distributed on the left side of the fuselage. After opening the display screen, you can see that there are many buttons. On the far left are two SD card slots, which can realize hot plug and uninterrupted recording. There are function keys such as on-off key and playback key on the right, and there is a small speaker hole in the middle to monitor whether the played back video and audio will make mistakes. Without monitor headphones, the monitoring function of the fuselage is essential.

There is also a row of buttons under the left side of the fuselage, which are mainly used for menu setting and exposure parameter setting. Of course, fully automatic mode is also essential. In a complex environment, shooting is more important than shooting accurately. In the automatic mode, you can safely hand over the exposure parameters to the machine, and the cameraman only needs to be responsible for the picture composition.

X 1500 is equipped with a 3.5-inch LCD screen with 2.76 million pixels, which can see the picture clearly under strong light, and the flip angle is 270. In the case of large turnover, users can shoot Vlog to record their lives, and they can also shoot pictures from different angles to realize the diversity of pictures. This LCD screen and EVF can output images at the same time without switching (traditional camera EVF needs to close the LCD screen to automatically switch to EVF for framing).

The top is the expansion area, which can be equipped with the handle corresponding to X 1500 to realize the function of XLR microphone input and adjustment, and it is also equipped with LED adjustable brightness lamp, which is a weapon for individual combat.

After taking off the hood, the lens part is very clear. It is still Panasonic's traditional Leica lens, with a wide-angle end of 25mm, a telephoto end of 600mm and a 24x optical zoom, but the top of the lens is marked with a 32x zoom. Is there a conflict? It should be noted that the word i.zoom at the bottom of 32x actually realizes the highest zoom of 32x through the integration of optical zoom and digital zoom.

I.zoom zoom

The lens is equipped with two manual rings, the former is a focus ring with a large width, and the latter can be customized into a zoom ring or an aperture ring with a small width according to the use scene, and the difference between the two can be easily distinguished by touching; There is also a built-in ND filter next to the manual ring, which is off, 1/4,116, 1/64. When the light is strong, the machine will automatically prompt the available ND files, which is more intelligent.

Performance test camera parameters

00 1 gain noise test

The sensitivity of a camera is also called gain. The minimum gain of this camera is 0dB, the maximum gain is 30dB, and the minimum gain unit is 1dB. After turning on the super gain mode, it can reach more than 30dB.

Through the test, we can see that when the gain reaches 15dB, the details of the picture begin to blur and noise appears. When the gain is 25dB, the picture details smear seriously; After turning on the super gain, the details of the picture are seriously lost, and green noise appears in the solid color part. However, this mode is often only used in emergencies, and it is particularly important to take pictures in many fleeting special scenes.

002 jelly effect test

1/60 shutter speed

11000 shutter speed

By observing the bending degree of the fan blades, it can be seen that the jelly effect of this camera belongs to the medium level, and the deformation range is small, which is more than enough as a news machine for some sports.

003 upgrade test

Panasonic named the upgrade of this machine super slow motion, and the way to turn it on is also very simple. As long as the resolution is adjusted to 1080P, you can choose on and off in the super slow motion option.

Comparison between constant speed and slow motion

After the super slow motion is turned on, this camera can still record 10bit 4:2:2: 2: 2 HD video, and the bit rate can reach 100Mbps, with no serious loss of image quality.

004 zoom test

The lens of this camera can achieve large zoom, and the image quality loss is small under optical zoom. Under the intelligent zoom of i.ZOOM, the picture quality of the longest focal length of the lens will be degraded, because besides optical zoom, the zoom multiple must be increased, which can only be achieved through digital zoom.

005 color test

By shooting Delta's 24-color standard color card and introducing the Da Vinci correction color plate, we get the color reproduction degree of this machine.

By correcting the chromatic aberration, we can see that the chromatic aberration of Panasonic X 1500 is very small, basically what you see is what you get, and there is no serious color tendency, which is particularly important for news documentaries, and it can be broadcast normally without color matching in the later period.

006 anti-shake test

Panasonic's OIS anti-shake system is very powerful. For some subtle jitter, you can turn on anti-shake to eliminate it. At the same time, the picture is smoother when moving, and there will be no serious frustration.

During the popularity of live broadcast, webcasting once became a hot spot. One mobile phone per person can support the whole live broadcast room. As a professional film and television producer, how to show their professionalism in the live broadcast? Workflow and equipment are very important.

Different from mobile phones, using cameras as live broadcast equipment can improve the picture quality to a certain extent, and can also enlarge the display of items by pushing and pulling, enriching the diversity of pictures; The traditional process of streaming media live broadcast is: establishing a live broadcast room to obtain the streaming media address-the camera is connected to the encoder-the encoder is connected to the streaming media equipment-the streaming media equipment is connected to the network, and the streaming media address is input to start streaming. Nowadays, many live broadcast boxes combine the encoder and the stream pusher into one, and only need to connect the camera.

Live broadcast using live broadcast box.

X 1500 directly omits the process further, and it is very convenient to complete the push process directly on the camera. However, the push address needs to be written into the memory card by computer software, and then the camera pushes the stream by reading the push address on the memory card.

You can connect to the network through WiFi, but at the high bit rate of the camera, it is inevitable that only WiFi transmission will be stuck, and the stuck in the live broadcast will cause discomfort. At this time, Panasonic provides another solution, which can transfer LAN cable interface through Micro USB to realize stable network connection and ensure the fluency of webcast.

Image source: Panasonic professional WeChat official account

The product is located in official website, and we can see that there is a product exactly like X 1500, but it is a professional product called AG-CX98, and its appearance and parameters are basically the same. Only by comparing these, will it be considered as the same product. In use, we found that AG-CX98 has 3G-SDI interface, but X 1500 does not.

Panasonic AC-CX98

With its compact body, this product is very popular in individual combat. Among the products of the same type, Sony Z90 has the same size, and its usability and handling are not weak. However, Panasonic X 1500 came from behind and moved out of the high specification of 4K60P, while Sony Z90 was limited by its own cameras of the same series, namely Z 150 and Z 190, and could only take pictures of 4K30P at most. 4K50P is the broadcast standard of CCTV Ultra HD channel, and it is also the entry threshold for 4K broadcast cameras.

Does this mean that the pictures taken by X 1500 can go to CCTV's 4K channel? In fact, in addition to the pixel and frame rate requirements of 4K50P, we also need to meet the sampling requirements of 10bit and 4:2:2. But this machine can only shoot 10 bit 4: 2: 0 in 4K60P format, while 4K30P format can only shoot 10 bit 4: 2: 2, so this kind of machine still belongs to the era of TV broadcasting.

Summary Panasonic's positioning of this camera is very accurate. Its users will not be users of movies or advertisements, but TV workers will use it to shoot news, documentaries, feature films and other works. In design, more consideration is given to portability and versatility.

On the premise of good picture quality, you can also get many practical functions such as slow motion, large zoom, XLR input, LED headlights, in-machine push stream live broadcast and so on.

Advantages:

1, light weight

2. It can be broadcast directly.

3. Rich application scenarios

Disadvantages:

1. When pulling a video stream, only videos with low bit rate can be recorded.