I must not understand what you are asking.



Any review of this camcorder:

TM700 Handling & Use Summary

or information on Panasonic's own pages, clearly show the secondary viewfinder, as well as the flip out screen.

So, I assume you must be asking about something else.

Thanks for pointing me to these sites John. Neither of the reviews I read nor the photos on the B&H web site show the rear of the camera or the viewfinder extended, and there is no mention of a viewfinder in the B&H specifications either.

Jack

It has both flipout LCD and viewfinder, but the viewfinder isn't the greatest. Good enough to see what your doing. The rest of the camera more than makes up for it. Mine get the best quality video I've ever seen. The 60P is so buttery smooth, you'll never want to watch 30p or interlaced again. It has a gyro based image stabilizes that works and long as you don't drink too much coffee. No XLR mic or phantom power but it has Dolby 5.1 mic built in that actually works. You can set the mic to wide stereo or narrow to the frint. It has a small fan that somepeople complain they can hear, but I',ve never seen a camcorder that didn't pickup some noise from it in a very quiet room. The 1080 60p is editable with Sony Vegas 9 and 10, CS5 premier and after effects with custom presets. Buy it, you'll love it I promise. Danny Hays

No LCD screen is really usable in direct sunlight / outdoors and any sub $10K viewfinder is going to be tragic.
Simple solutions are provided by Hoodman. If you get one with a loupe which is a good idea just be careful with it in the sun. We've now got a 5D with a couple of yellow burn marks in the LCD screen thanks to a Z-Finder and a careless client.

Bob.

I have this cam, I really like the 1080p 60fps but wish it had a 1080p 30fps setting.

The manual controls are a little tricky and needs a lot of practice to become proficient in using them.

The low light capabilities are great and as others have mentioned the image stabilization and video quality is very good.

Still photos tend to be a little over exposed in iA (auto exposure) mode.

Yes the fan noise can be heard but hasn't affected the types of videos I've been using it for.

This cam get quite warm when used for extended periods.

I bought this camera about a month ago and since I've grown to love it.

I never use the view finder, but in my opinion it's pretty useless. I suppose if it was really sunny out I might use it, but it's very small and low res. It feels like a toy, and I actually wish it wasn't even there to be honest.

Unlike Byron, I don't find the manual settings to be tricky. That being said I always use the auto focus. It's actually amazingly good. It locks onto peoples' faces and from what I can tell it never goes out of focus. White balance, shutter speed etc... are just a click of a button away.

I don't rely on image stabalization, no IS system is going to compare to taking the time to set up your shots on a tripod or a steady cam.

A few random thoughts: the automatic white balance setting is wacky and can't be trusted. The fan noise is a non-issue--don't believe anything you read about the fan noise it's so small that I'm amazed people actually made a stink about this instead of just using the dam camera. The files it creates, .mts files, can be dropped directly into Vegas but aren't good enough if you need tight editing, I use Neoscene to transcode them--a extra step that I quickly got used to because of the benefits it gave me. If you're not cutting to music and don't need full accuracy you might not need to do this.

I have no complaints about this camera aside from it's size. It's so small that when I pull it out people look at me and say "you're not shooting with that are you?" Most people think hi-def, and high quality means big, but in the case of the TM-700 this is not the case. There are of course much better and bigger cameras than this one, but you can go along way with this thing in my opinion, even if you're a professional.

I just got back from a family outing to Palm Springs and did find the viewfinder useful for framing some shots in bright sunlight. It's OK for its purpose (framing) - no good for focus. I also got to try the stabilization, for which there are 3 settings. I found the most aggressive setting to be the only one that was sufficient - and it was pretty good . . . about on par with my Sony cams.

Usually I use it in the studio (I just received a second TM700 yesterday for 2-cam shots, since trying to match the look with my other cams was too time-consuming). For focus, I hook up the component cable and focus on my 24" monitor. Works like a charm.

These are by far the best HD cams of the 6 I've purchased.

@liquid

Some people are definitely of the "big is better" school and if you don;t pull out some huge shoulder-weighted box they think they're not getting their money's worth. I've solved this by adding a bit lens hood, beathtek, shotgun and outboard extenders. It makes clients feel better :-)

Reply by: liquid, Date: 12/23/2010 6:13:16 AM
I have no complaints about this camera aside from it's size. It's so small..
The small size and is one of the reasons I purchased it. I was carrying it around every day for 10 days in Japan and didn't burden me at all. On the other hand a friend was carrying around a Canon SLR w/ two lenses and he was complaining about the weight after two days! But he did get some very nice stills! ((:.

It does have great images. My only criticism is that indeed, in auto white balance mode the color can suddenly and drastically shift for no apparent reason.

I had the same experience yesterday with the AutoWB. Out in the snow and the whole screen was white. Took me a few minutes to figure out how to re-balance the WB settings again and actually get an image you could see. Weird.

On the topic of low light performance - the TM700 is good but not as good as the FX1. I have both cameras but have not done side by side direct test yet but just using the TM700 indoors in well lit room, it does have a hit of graininess that would not be there with the FX1.

The image stabilization of the TM700 is quite amazing. Have have done several panning shots that look almost like they are on a tripod.

Mike