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JVC GY-HM100U Review

Aug 6, 2009 12:00 PM, By D.W. Leitner

JVC reimagines the small handheld HD camcorder.

Although standard-definition recording is not available, the HM100 provides 480i downconversion over its analog component connection and 480i or 480p over HDMI. (Yes, High-Definition Multimedia Interface also supports SD.)

Under CAMERA PROCESS in the menu, DETAIL LEVEL can be set from -10 to +10 or turned off completely. Balance between vertical and horizontal levels of detail can be adjusted using DETAIL V/H BALANCE. Knee can be adjusted in increments from 85 percent to 100 percent or set to auto. GAMMA settings are none, “standard” (what does this mean, Rec. 709?), or “cinema.” (You’ll have to experiment.) For the latter two, there’s a GAMMA LEVEL setting from -5 to +5. (Again, experiment.) COLOR MATRIX choices are off, “standard,” Cinema Vivid Color, and Cinema Subdued Color. (Again…) Whichever settings you prefer, you can save them as a single profile to the SD card—up to four profiles in total—which you can load and reuse at will.

Other pro touches include manual control of f/stop, manual control of shutter (1/3.75 to 1/10,000—great!); a microtoggle for L/M/H gain settings from automatic to 18dB; a micro¬toggle for preset/A/B white-balance settings; and zebras which can be set in five-point increments from 0 percent to more than 100 percent luminance. (Now that’s amazing.) There is no switch dedicated to zebras, however, so one of three user-assignable buttons must be selected. (Higher gain settings yield remarkably smooth results, perhaps slightly softening the image but not coarsening it much.)

All of this is mighty impressive. So what’s the catch? There isn’t one, except for the limitations inherent in a sub-$4,000 camcorder.

The HM100 uses a 1/4in. progressive 3CCD sensor block that, per JVC, features “diagonal offset.” That’s another way of saying that both horizontal and vertical pixel offset are needed to interpolate a 1920x1080 result. Although a smaller CCD makes for a smaller camcorder, there’s a price to pay, including smaller, less light-efficient pixels, image degradation from diffraction caused by smaller-diameter irises, and greater demands on lens resolution in the case of HD.

The 10X Fujinon zoom (3.7mm-37mm) in the HM100 does a superb job under the circumstances, but it’s less than 3in. long. Smartly, the iris is limited to f/8 to deter softness from diffraction. When fully open to f/1.8, the iris has a four-sided diamond shape. The reason this matters is that it affects the appearance of out-of-focus detail. (See “bokeh” in Wikipedia.) You will see these shapes at times in internal flares and reflections, for instance at night when shooting into headlights of oncoming cars. At this time you will also see the vertical smear that CCDs are well-known for, plus a pronounced crossed-sword effect resembling a star filter—possibly the result of an optical anti-aliasing filter. Taken together, this creates a distinctive 6-point star pattern. Problem is, you can’t turn it off.

There is a single lens ring that alternates between zoom and focus, selected by a switch on the side. (I always use manual focus.) An adjacent two-position switch selects on or off for the lone ND filter. You have to dig deep into the specs to discover that “on” means something called “+1/10 ND.” Ten percent transmission? If so, we’re talking about slightly more than three stops, or 0.9 density, the standard designation photography and cinematography have used more than 100 years. (Confused labeling of ND is a personal pet peeve, and all video manufacturers are guilty. No clue why they do this.)

I quite like the lens hood, which attaches readily using a bayonet mount and incorporates a sliding shutter to protect the lens when not in use. (When you start the HM100 and it sees black for any reason, it admonishes, “Check lens cover.”) When the hood is off, the lens directly accepts a 46mm screw-in filter; when the hood is attached, the hood further accepts a larger 72mm filter. These things count!

CCDs run warm compared to CMOS and slurp more juice—a challenge to battery time. On the HM100, a fully charged BN-VF823U Data Battery reads only 110 minutes. I know this because even when the HM100 is not powered, I can press the “Index” button at the edge of the LCD panel and the HM100 will query the battery, then display the results in the form of an eye-catching fuel-gauge graphic. (There’s no tape path to power up and down, so power draw is predictable.) Fortunately, the HM100 favors the same BN-VF823U battery common to JVC’s MiniDV and Everio cam¬corders. They’re cheap, plentiful, and easy to find.

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