New E-Series P2 Cards from Panasonic

The news that Panasonic were releasing a new low cost, high speed P2 card was some of the biggest news at NAB.

The new E Series cards will be made by Fujifilm, Maxell and of course Panasonic.

So what’s different about them?

Panasonic E-Series P2 Cards

If you want to achieve this 10x faster than real time transfer then you’d be advised to use the new P2 Rapid Writer. This has a 5 card express bus device with an LCD screen and 2 independent hard drives.

The cards are a staggering 1/3 of the current price. In the UK an R series 64GB card retails at over £1600, the new E-Series is £640.

So what’s the catch?

Well none really but the cards will not last forever. Panasonic are predicting a 5-10 year cycle. The Cell technology works a little bit like a Li-on battery in that over time the ‘cells’ will deplete. They say that you can use the same card for one hour every day for 5 years before it will not allow you to record anymore. So if you consider the low cost this is a pretty good return on investment. The smart technology on the card monitors usage and for safety will prevent you from recording when the cell reaches end of life. (But i’m assured that you will still be able get your footage off the cards even when the memory is telling you the card has reached it’s limit)

Panasonic HMR-10

The camera head is the AG-HCK10 is a 3 x 1/4″ MOS minicam that has been nicknamed the POVCAM It’s not the smallest camera head but to be honest I’d sacrifice for image quality and 3CCD’s delivers just that. Full 1920×1080 resolution and combined with the HMR-10 at the highest recording bit rate will record 3 hours on a 32gb card (PH mode recording at 21-24mb/s)

Panasonic AG-HCK10 POVCAM

One of the things I like most about this camera is the detachable cables so you can choose long or short depending on the use.

Nice product.

- Den