Jeremy Fine is chief photographer at New Mexico’s NBC affiliate, KOB television, where he has spent the entirety of his broadcasting career filming for what is considered the state’s oldest television station and the second-oldest TV station between the Mississippi River and the West Coast. Owned by Hubbard Broadcasting, KOB television employs 12 full time photographers who cover the entire state, in addition to parts of Colorado and Arizona. KOB photographers use Panasonic’s AG-HPX370 P2 HD camcorders to film news coverage, sports and promotions while their station bureaus in Farmington and Roswell use AG-HPX170 P2 HD handhelds to film news.

The HPX370 cameras feature interchangeable lenses with 10-bit, 4:2:2, independent- frame full 1920×1080 resolution AVC-Intra recording. They incorporate newly- developed 1/3-inch, full-HD 2.2 megapixel ULT (Ultra Luminance Technology) 3-MOS imagers and a 20-bit digital signal processor to acquire native 1920×1080 resolution images with a notable improvement in sensitivity.

The HPX370s have been praised by KOB photographers for their light-weight and comfortable shoulder-mount configurations, which have made long hours of reporting and filming bearable. Their rugged features have performed flawlessly and proved impervious to New Mexico’s infamous dust that photographers there experience on a regular basis. Their added features have also proven useful, such as the “Cine V” setting, which brings up color saturation and creates a vivid picture that pops—perfect for a cloudy day. The cameras also offer HD/SD-SDI video outputs for external recording and quick switch settings without time-consuming menu adjustments called the scene file feature.

KOB previously captured their news on digital tape, but have since upgraded to solid-state P2 storage and switched their news editing operation to Final Cut Pro, a move that has enabled them to ingest material at twice real time. The television station anticipates broadcasting its newscasts in high definition soon and thanks to the Panasonic HPX370’s HD capabilities, KOB should have no problem with the transition to produce network-quality, high-definition news presentations.

The full version of this article is available on TV Technology’s website.