Panasonic has announced a pair of new camcorders, which certainly goes against the trend of things these days, but I think is a good thing. Ergonomics and all that.
Called the HC-VX3 and HC-V900, they share a lot in common such as a 3″ high definition LCD touch screen monitor, wind shielded zoom microphone and a stereo jack for external mic as well as headphone monitoring.
They both use the same high precision autofocus system too, and a five axis hybrid optical stabilisation (OIS) system and a Ball OIS to reduce wear on the drive section Panasonic says.
Finally, both camcorders have a 24x optical zoom system, with the V90 having the longer full frame of 693mm (equivalent) against the HC-VX3 of exactly 600mm.
From there though, things get quite different. The HC-V900 only records in 1080p up to 50fps in either MP4 or AVCHD, whereas the HC-VX3 can record at 25fps in 4K and 50fps in 1080p and can shoot in lower light with aF1.8 maximum aperture. The HC-VX3 also has a line-in option and you can even edit 4K videos in camera.
Now at this point, I do not know if they are to be released in Australia; they certainly are not showing on the Panasonic Australia website, but I am chasing that up and will let you know as soon as I have confirmation (or not).
In the interim, the US pricing is set at $899 for the Hc-VX3 and USD$699 for the HC-V900