JVC Everio GZMC500 5MP 3CCD 4GB Microdrive Camcorder w/10x Optical Zoom

Nice convergence 5mp digital camera and video cam in one

Had this digicam for about 24 hours and here are my first impressions:

I own a Panasonic SV AV100 which saves mpeg2 video and mpg4 to a SD card. It did it well and I was pleased with it but the low resolution digital camera function was surpassed by some wireless phones. I wanted a device that took high resolution photos and digital mpeg2 video saved to a memory card that could be immediately loaded to PC and burnt to DVD. The JVC GZ-MC100 and MC200 took 2mp pictures and saved mpeg2 video to a 4 gb microdrive or SD card but had poor low light performance - worse than my little Panasonic. So it was with some anxiety that I shelled out $1595 for the GZ-MC500.



I bought it hoping that the new 3CCD video chip would not only give better color video and good 5mp jpeg pictures but that JVC would have taken the time to improve low light performance... and they did.



In bright light the automatic videocam performance of the camera is really good. Indoors without any light on and bright sunlight coming in the window the video remained sharp with pretty good color saturation and no graininess to my eye when played back on TV directly from camera. The MC500 seems to really be working much much better in low light conditions than the MC100/200s before it. At night with room lights on I took more videos and although there was some dimming of the picture the video was still bright and not grainy. Color still looked good though there was some loss of color saturation in those conditions. In a completely dark room forget about it since there is no infrared function. But I did not care about that. Much better in low light than my Panasonic SV-AV100 overall. Microphone picked up voices/sounds in stereo very well.



The interface is intuitive and easy to navigate for me.



The camera bottom heats up while recording to microdrive and I never recorded more than 5 minutes of video but the heat build up was quite noticeable. Unlike my Panasonic there is no remote control which is quite disappointing in a $1600 digicam that is begging for immediate video playback to TV directly from camera.



In summary I am both relieved at the camera's good low light performance and very happy with the camera's mpeg2 video quality and very happy with the 5mp jpeg picture performance. I would give this camera 4.5 stars out of five taking off 1/2 point for lack of remote control.



Go to this site and use translate option on google toolbar to read text or just download the duck video and jpegs to see this camera's quality. Rename video .mod extension to .mpg to view in WMP. Remember this is 720 x 480 mpg2



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JVC Everio GZMC200 2MP 4GB Microdrive Camcorder w/10x Optical Zoom

A good SECOND camcorder

While there is much I really like about this camera its short comings prevent me from recommending it to people who want just one video camera. The problems I am experiencing deal mostly with the camera's POOR performance in medium to low light conditions. While many camcorders excel at producing images in standard room lighting this camera does a dismal job. In normal room lighting the auto focus will occasionally fail and even at the best of the times the images lack adequate saturation. The manual white balance settings improve the situation only marginally. If you are going to be shooting inside your house use another camcorder.



Now the upside - the camcorder delivers good quality images when shooting outside. Motion artifacts are occasionally detectable when objects in the scene move quickly but not annoying at all. The zoom is quite satisfying and the auto focus only lags slightly behind when quickly zooming in the 10x optical zoom range. The compact size is spectacular! The standard tripod mount socket is a welcome addition.



And of course the whole video editing experience is greatly enhanced by the direct transfer of the camera's hard drive to your editing station's hard drive. (I recommend you get a card reader or PCMCIA adapter so the camera isn't involved in the video transfer. You can be charging the camera while you are working with the saved video - something you'll do often as the battery only lasts an hour).



The saved video files have a .mod extension. The manual says you should only use the supplied software to edit/play the video files. The supplied software is from Cyberlink and it is adequate. I have found that by renaming the files to .mpg after I have copied them to my editing station I can edit/play the video files with software not supplied with the camera. Don't know if this will work in all cases but so far so good.



The still camera images are actually quite nice for a 2 mega pixel camera. They are always saved as JPEG files. I have found no option to save as a lossless TIFF. A real shame since the supplied 4GB microdrive really has enough room to store these big files.



The audio quality is excellent no complaints what so ever.



One last disappointment - the camera limits maximum file size to 4GB even if you have a compact flash card that can hold more. As a result it shall forever be impossible for this camera to record more than 60 continuous minutes using the highest quality video setting. Sure an 8GB card can hold 2 of these 60 minute recordings but something will be missed when the first file hits the 4GB wall and the recording is stopped and the camera waits for you to manually start a new recording session.

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