AG-CX350 4K

My first review didn’t post for whatever reason, so, here we go:

I was in the very first wave of orders and received this camcorder about 2 weeks ago. Upon reading the manual, I took the CX-350 out to record some eagles that live near my house. The eagles nest was about 100 yards from where I set up. Manually, is my preferred method of shooting. When recording the eagle/s, I zoomed in, focused, hit the record button and didnt do much more. FYI, I shot at 1080p, (I have to get an upgraded SHDX V30 ll card to shoot 4k) at F5 Cine. The two frame grabs included in this review clearly illustrate the quality of Panasonics focus.

Also, I’ve covered a couple of events with shot gun mic and lav. Featured used were outstanding.

Although, this cams muscle has been barely tapped into, from the little I’ve recorded, I would highly recommend the AG-CX350. Additionally, I too like that I can live stream events and look forward to doing so in up coming jobs.

To me, Panasonic hit the winning home run in this class of cam. I’m very happy with this purchase and as always.

I was searching for a 10-bit HDR camcorder with all the bells and whistles that is in my price range and I found it: its this one. It has so many features that I will probably never use but I am steadily learning.

The only con to this camera is that the dual charger and the camera use the same AC adapter cable, so you can only use one at a time, but I plan on buying another cable some time in the future.

I have been in the business for 20 years. It’s been a while since I bought a smaller sensor camcorder (although at 1 this is much nicer than a 1/3 or 1/2 sensor). I initially tried a JVC HM620 and was disappointed in the picture. Then the Canon XF400, which had a nice picture, but I didn’t like the ergonomics. This camera has great ergonomics and a great picture. The 10-bit color is awesome. Highly recommended!

Has utilized the AG-CX350 4K CAMCORDER for over 3 mths. The camera works better than advertised. Ultra-clear lowlight shooting. Great audio capture. Wide-angle shooting. Smooth slow motion. Superb 10-bit capture for post-production coloring and green screening.

We use this primarily for corporate live streaming, and it’s fantastic. The 1080p feed from SDI output is the best I’ve seen (having used Canon and Sony in the same capacity). This camera has been able to cover nearly any scenario I’ve thrown at it in the last four months with ease. Very happy with it.

I predominantly shoot performing arts – low light, fast moving subject. I’m experienced with Canon C200 and was frustrated with it for the constant focus hunting even with 70-200 f/2.8L IS Mk2. I wasn’t sure which camcorder to go and bought the Sony Z150, Z190 and the Panasonic CX350 to do head to head tests. The CX350 handily won in image quality, focus, and wait for it…even noise in low light. Granted all three had noise, the Z190 was the absolute worst. I mean unacceptable and amateurish. Z150 was very acceptable, but the CX350 looked the best. Ended up returning the two Sony’s and got a 2nd CX350…likely a 3rd sometime soon. Used it with the Slingshot for a 2-cam streaming and it worked flawlessly. This is going to be our workhorse for sometime.

Used as a live camera for image magnification rather than recording, I’ll only speak to that capability.

First of all, we did an A/B test with the JVC-GYHC500U and this camera was far superior. No horrible rolling shutter, real colors, better low-light response. It just looked like a real image right out of the box. We are connecting to our video system via SDI and there is very little latency by the time it gets to our projectors. The dynamic range is impressive with details preserved in the shadows. Even when used in High Sensitivity mode for improved low-light response, there is no noticeable noise at +12dB gain, which is how we operate. There is a very slight rolling shutter effect when panning quickly, but we don’t pan quickly so it’s not an issue. All the shooting features you need to be successful are in built-in and fully adjustable. It’s a professionally designed camera. The camera itself is quite light weight, so you don’t need a massive tripod rig, though a good fluid head will be worth the investment. With the iZoom feature on, you get plenty of reach and there is no noticeable signal degradation when zooming past the purely optical range. We are shooting at around 45′ from the stage and we’re able to get decent close-ups. We’re using an external zoom controller and are finding the response smooth and usable. Auto-focus is pretty decent, but it does hunt a little if the subject moves out of your focus area.

If there are any drawbacks, one is screen size. I recommend an external monitor. The 1 sensor at a higher zoom levels means the aperture narrows to 4.5, which makes your depth of field gets quite deep. There isn’t much separation from the background we’re able to achieve in our setup, but that doesn’t mean it’s not possible in a different scenario.

Overall, we liked the results enough to outfit our multi-camera setup with this product. Would recommend it.

Easy to use for anyone who’s looking for great quality videos for any occasion.

I’m NOT a professional videographer, but I am a serious geek and tech nerd. I bought this to replace a six-year-old Sony 1 sensor 4k camcorder–something that was a very early version of that resolution and sensor size. I use this for live-streaming or recording community events, school events, etc. I also use it for various real estate projects (which is my actual day job). Key selling points are the exceptionally wide short end of the zoom range, the substantially more light sensitive and low noise image sensor, and the dramatically superior options for codecs, frame rates, and simultaneous internal 4k recording WITH 4k output (something the old Sony lacked the processing power to do). Image quality and noise are dramatically superior under marginal light than the much older Sony.

I shoot with Nikon mirrorless cameras, plus the Sony camcorder. I’m still adapting to the Panasonic user interface, which is both new and more complex due to the huge number of options.

Based on other reviews, I expected auto-focus to be a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency feature, but it’s very useful in practice. Certainly not on par with current-gen Sony, but rarely problematic.

One design flaw is that the flip-out LCD doesn’t quite position horizontally, making it very confusing to mentally adjust to the impression that the whole shot is out of level. The only other minor complaint is that, compared to my Sony experience, where I could have auto-exposure seamlessly adjust gain to maintain exposure across the variable aperture zoom range, the Panasonic appears to leave no choice but to stop down at the wider end of the zoom to have a constant f/4.5 across the range. Otherwise, if the goal is a wide-open aperture, I have to flip the gain switch (which is not a gradual adjustment) to a different setting at wide-angle f/2.8 versus telephoto f/4.5. The good news is that the sensor is sooooo good with less light that my results are still totally fine with a constant stopped down aperture and a little more gain. Images out of the camera are gorgeous.

Definitely a great purchase. We bought these as an upgrade from older Panasonic camcorders. These are a huge improvement and very reasonably priced.

I am Panasonic camera user since 2004 with the DVX 100a and I am totally satisfied with the function of the AG-CX350 4K even though I don’t use the 4K much the pictures still look great.