Newsshooter’s Slavic Boyechko was on hand at the DGA Theatre in Hollywood for the launch of the Panasonic Varicam LT. He spoke to Panasonic and got a hands on run through of the new camera’s functions.
Slavic tried the new Varicam out and his initial thoughts were that it was very comfortable on the shoulder, great size and weight, and overall feels like a very well thought out camera. He went on to say, “my gut feeling is this is a great little brother to the Varicam 35, just like the Alexa Mini is for drones, tight shots, etc. But is it a viable option for solo owner/operators? It’s better than the FS7 in many respects, and much more expensive than the Ursa Mini, but does it compete with the C300II? Lacking any kind of autofocus, and with P2 cards at such a high premium, I think only high end docs (who might shoot with the Amira) would consider it.”
When Slavik asked Panasonic about the choice of the Canon EF lens mount he had this to say, “any discussion of the EF mount and Canon’s cooperation (ed: or lack of) seemed to be thwarted, so I doubt there was any collaboration there. Panasonic doesn’t offer any guarantees that a specific Canon lens will work, whether that’s IS, lens correction, etc, but they do get that EF is where many shooters are and I commend them for taking that leap.”
You can read all about the Varicam LT in our earlier article on the camera here.
Above is one of the launch videos that was shot on the Varicam LT.
Below are some photos from the Hollywood event.
