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When I was first contacted about reviewing the Panasonic AG-AF100, I wasn't sure if I was willing to do it. I'd heard some positive and some negative things about the camera and had a pretty busy summer work season. Then I got to thinking: Many videographers- myself included- want the DSLR look with a traditional video camera-type body. So I reconsidered and took on the task.
My idea for the review was to approach it from the standpoint of a videographer who has been using traditional video cameras (i.e., not DSLRs) and is ready to move up to the higher-end look of a large-frame sensor. I wanted to test the camera by just taking it out of the box and shooting with it, like many videographers do with their cameras. Some techies like me will dig into a camera and learn all the nuances of it before using it, but there are plenty of shooters that just grab a camera and go shoot. I wanted to review it from their perspective. I'm not going to go into detail on all the possible scene selections and other intimate details of the camera. If you're a Panasonic user who's worked with the HMC150 or the HVX200, those aspects should be familiar to you, as they're very similar if not the same as other Panasonic cameras.
AF100 BASICS
The AF100 is a handheld AVCCAM model with a 4/3'' MOS image sensor. This means it has only a single large image sensor instead of three smaller ones, like many traditional video cameras, and it is designed to provide a wide field of view, depth of field, and low-light sensitivity comparable to DSLRs such as the Canon 5D Mark ? or Panasonic's own Lumix GH2. The AF100 also allows shooters to work with different lenses, as with DSLRs, although working with Canon EF lenses requires an adapter such as the Birger, which wasn't available at press time. The review unit I got shipped with a 14-140mm /4.0-5.8 kit lens (Panasonic sells the camera with this lens or in a body-only configuration). This lens is capable on the zoom range but is really, really slow for the low-light settings event videographers will encounter. Since this is the lens most videographers who...