When size doesn’t matter… but form factor does – The Panasonic HC-X2

Maybe I’m cheap. Maybe I’m a Luddite. Maybe I’m stubborn, behind-the-times, ignorant, old, or all the above. Or maybe I don’t get caught up in hype. Whatever the reason, I just bought a camcorder.

Above: The Panasonic HC-X2, 1-inch ‘type’, 4K professional camcorder.

Despite my previous post about how much I love my Nikon D750s, with increasing video work, I needed to move away from a hybrid video and stills set up and get a dedicated video system. I will still use my D750s for digital photography and for underwater video.

There were a few reasons why I upgraded. First some figures: 1080, 4:2:0, 8-bit, 24mbps. None of that is critical—depending on the intended audience—but in the days of 4K, 4:2:2, 10-bit and 200mbps, it’s hard to ignore.

But the main reason is ergonomics: I can’t stand the DSLR (or mirrorless for that matter) form factor for video. Getting a stills body and rigging it with cages, arms, rails, EVFs, monitors, matte boxes, and the like, drives me nuts. And we do it only to improve the form factor and mimic something else – camcorders. DSLRs were made to shoot stills; camcorders were made to shoot video. Each to their own.

Camcorders also suffer an image problem. The word conjures up consumer market Hi-8 and DV cams of the past; Super-8 morphed into the digital realm, and hours of wobbly stream-of-consciousness holiday footage and weird uncles at weddings.

But a professional camcorder is exactly that. Sony’s FX9, FX6, FS7, and F5 are camcorders and sit within the camcorder menu on Sony’s professional website which is also where you’ll find their shoulder-mounted news cameras like the PXW-Z750. Panasonic’s much-loved EVA-1 is a camcorder, so is its AJ-CX4000 news camera. You get the picture.

The camera

So, what did I get? A Panasonic HC-X2. My training and initial work back in the late 80s and early 90s was on 16mm film and Betacam SP. Shoulder-mounted news cameras that you grabbed out of a bag and started shooting with in seconds. I missed that.

Above: A slo-mo test with the Panasonic HC-X2. All footage shot at UHD 4K, 50 fps, 1/100 sec, HEVC LongGOP 200mbps, Cine profile and Cine V gamma curve.

I followed a photojournalism path after leaving the world of television and shot more stills than video, but DSLRs and a changing market brought me back to video. I needed both so stayed with DSLRs. I favoured prime lenses for stills so would turn up with a lens for every occasion when shooting video. I’m a stickler for clean audio so would run everything through a Beachtek preamp. I had a bigger monitor. I had cables running everywhere. I had an L-shaped bracket, microphone shock mounts, ND filters and batteries and…

…I began craving simplicity. I bought a Panasonic HC-X2.

The HC-X2 spec sheet reads like a who’s who of video loveliness: 4K, 4:2:2, 10-bit, 50p (or 60p depending on market), All-I, V-log, HDR, HLG, HEVC, Long GOP, dual SDXC. The lens is f/2.8–f/4 depending on which end of the zoom you’re on, which is an insane 24.5–490mm 35mm equivalent! It has the usual array of professional features: two XLR inputs, built-in ND filters, gain control and wave form. And a viewfinder! The camera is a beast. And it’s a perfect go-anywhere workhorse camera for ENG (electronic news gathering), documentary, corporate, weddings, parties – anything.

Above: Professional manual controls (including three rings for focus, zoom and iris) and everything where you need them.

The sensor

It also has a 1-inch sensor. One-inch sensors are a misnomer: the ‘1-inch’ having nothing to do with the actual sensor size but rather a left-over term from the days of cathode ray tubes and the required diameter of the tube that would hold a light-sensitive plate. There is a small movement to change the term to ‘Type 1’ to get away from this confusion but most manufacturers simply call theirs a 1-inch ‘type’ sensor which raises more questions than answers in my opinion.

In today’s full-frame obsessed world, a 1-inch sensor seems small – very small. While bigger than the popular 2/3-inch sensors found in some consumer cameras, phones and in three-sensor news cameras, the 1-inch ‘type’ sensor is still smaller than the micro four-thirds (MFT, 4/3, APS-C) sensor and much smaller than the oddly now-considered-small Super 35 sensor. Everyone just wants full frame, but let’s talk sense for a minute.

DSLRs gave us full-frame video. It’s glorious, it’s beautiful, and, because of the relationship between lens focal lengths and sensor size, has given us an inherent shallow depth-of-field look. The knife edge, rapid focus drop, miniscule depth-of-field is a trend; but full-frame resolution and low-light performance is not. There is nothing wrong with full-frame, but neither is there anything wrong with a 1-inch sensor or anything else in between. It all depends on what you need and why.

Breaking it down a bit, let’s take a quick look back to film. Most feature films from the past however many decades were shot on 35mm. While this is the same film format used for stills photography, the film running through a cine camera goes through the gate vertically while a stills camera advanced the frames horizontally. This means that the individual frame size on 35mm film is different for movies or stills: 22mm x 16mm for 35mm movies and a much larger 36mm x 24mm for 35mm stills.

The 22mm x 16mm format is known as the ‘Academy ratio of 1.33:1 (or 4:3) and was fine for features, high-end documentaries, television shows, big budget music clips, big budget commercials and so on. Smaller productions like documentaries, news, music clips, educational films, short features, low-budget features, television commercials etc. used the venerable 16mm format which, with its 10.26mm x 7.49mm film area, had the same 4:3 Academy ratio. Wider aspect ratios—including Super 16 (12.52mm x 7.41mm) and 35mm Widescreen had an aspect ratio of 1.65:1. Even wider aspect ratios became available for 35mm.

Above: Super 16 and 16mm film. Not too far away from the 1-inch ‘type’ sensor.

Finding actual dimensions for a 1-inch/Type 1 sensor is difficult (and is not noted on the Panasonic nomenclature for the HC-X2) but 13.2mm x 8.8mm appears to be a common size. As such, it most closely replicates Super 16. It also has a diagonal of 16mm (15.9mm) but rather than being confusing, the 1-inch sensor’s relationship with 16mm/Super 16 is perhaps how the 1-inch ‘type’ sensor should be viewed regarding capability and for what productions it should be used for. So for me, a current 1-inch ‘type’ camcorder—and especially one that shoots 4K, 4:2:2, 10-bit etc.—is essentially a Digital Super 16 workhorse.

Understanding this is also understanding just how flexible a 1-inch camcorder can be. But when every YouTube influencer wants to talk about making your videos more ‘cinematic’ and with so much filmmaking ‘knowledge’ coming from those who entered filmmaking after the digital revolution and who cut their teeth on DSLRs and mirrorless, it’s little wonder that smaller sensor camcorders are often overlooked.

But for those of us who remember just how versatile 16mm was—and how good it looked—and for those of us who know the joy of grabbing a camera from its case and hitting record, a 1-inch ‘type’ sensor is far from a turn-off. In the world of news, documentary, and corporate, I need that versatility: I need to grab my camera and start shooting, I need to have everything at my fingertips. And I need things to be in focus, I don’t want knife-edge shallow depth-of-field; I need to know I’ve got the shot.

Final thoughts

The Panasonic HC-X2 is blowing me away with its image quality and ease of use. It’s a camera that suits a wide variety of content and for capturing that content quickly and easily and, particularly with Panasonic’s known colour science, beautifully. The Panasonic HC-X2 is a camera for getting the shot.

You’ll see camcorders of this type in press conferences, at rallies, on location during breaking news events, in war zones, with NGOs during humanitarian crises, in boardrooms, at weddings, and in the carry-on luggage of a lonely documentarian boarding another plane to nowhere to follow the story.

There’s a wonderful adage that says the best camera is the one you’ve got. Right now, I’ve got a Panasonic HC-X2.