Good news for photographing enthusiasts looking for low-cost camcorders! The leading electronics products manufacturer of Japan – Panasonic has unveiled AG-HMC40 – a new low-cost camcorder from its AVCCAM professional video lineup.

The AG-HMC40, weighing 2.2 pounds, is lighter and more compact than most of the camcorders. It features a full resolution 2 megapixel, 1/4.1-inch inch HD 3MOS imager, which helps to capture fabulous 1920 x 1080 HD images with high sensitivity. It also features high resolution 10.6 megapixel still photo capture, and 12x optical zoom including 2x, 5x and 10x. The camcorder features a 2.7 inch LCD monitor with easy touch-panel operation. The screen allows users to access different recording functions like interval recording, pre-record, metadata capture and shot marker.

The AG-HMC40, based on the AVHCD format, uses MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 high profile encoding resulting in double the bandwidth performance. It offers improved video performance over the older versions of MPEG-2 compression formats like HDV and DVD.

The AG-HMC40 comes with professional image functions such as Dynamic Range Stretch and Cine-Like Gamma mode. It also includes four professional AVCCAM recording modes including high-quality PH, the HA, HG and extended recording HE modes. These modes support 1080/59.94i (in all modes), 1080/29.97p, 1080/23.98p native, 720/59.94p, 720/20.97p, and 720/23.98p native (in PH mode only).

The AG-HMC40 comes with high-quality solid state AVCHD recording which is widely found on SD cards. The camcorder is equipped with a 32GB SDHC memory card, which can record 3 hours of full resolution 1920 x 1080 video and audio in PH mode. It can record four hours at HA mode and 5.3 hours at HG mode, and 12 hours of 1440 x 1080 HD content at HE mode. The camcorder can store still images on the SD card as a JPEG image.

The AG-HMC40 includes USB 2.0, analog component, composite output, detachable XLR audio input, audio Rec level adjustment dials and HDMI outputs. The audio capability can be expanded with optional accessories such as 2 channel input, mic/line switchable and +48V options.

The AG-HMC40 captured content can be viewed on Blu-ray players, HD players, laptop computers, widescreen plasma displays with SD card slots and game machines. The other features of the camcorder include focus assists such as focus bar display and enlarged display, waveform monitor display, user assignable focus ring, time date stamp, zebra display, synchro-scan shutter function and auto focus with face detection. The AG-HMC40 will be available for $3,195 (approx. Rs.160,195) in August 2009.