 Everio GZ Strengths: High quality Mpeg2, compact, light, feature laden camera
Weaknesses: Apalling focus, low battery life, snail like start up, badly designed
Summary: I bought this camera solely on its high specifications and the novelty of using files instead of tapes. I was on a three month trek round Asia and the thought of a dual purpose camcorder and still camera was very attractive. I also always take my PowerBook with me for work and the combination was ideal.
In offering mpeg2, 3CCD, 5 megapixels stills and other advanced features this camcorder would attract the high end amateur and even pro user, but in practice this is just a low end, over priced consumer product in terms of final quality. Why? Well I'll get tot he gripes later. First the positive side.
The camera is about the size of a fist, a good compact size, relatively easy to handle thogh not pocket sized. The JVC designers have used nearly every part of the camera's external surface to place controls, button , plugs and slots, The camera pivots vertically only at 90 degrees but it would have better for the tiny LCD screen to move rather than the body.The hard plastic though was just weird, a portent of the design deficiencies of JVC engineers. I have no qualms with the quality of the movie files - high res, natural colour, ok exposure. I soon got used to downloading my files each night to my Mac in my hotel room and making a rough edit with Final Cut Pro. This was a doddle with an amazing free app called MPEG Streamclip. It is interesting how small mpeg2 files are compared to DV but it still took an age to transfer them to my Mac due to the slower USB2 interface. Why didn't JVC plump for fast Firewire, (a standard with most camcorders a fraction of the price is beyond me. I liked the inclusion of an audio recording only mode through the small microphone on the top.
So here's where the product lets itself down. My experience of using it in the field was one of desperation, aggravation and often disgust. I don't know where to begin.The more one uses it, the more one is convinced that the still camera was obviously tagged on as an afterthought and totally lets the camera down. Firstly the 5 mega pixel tag is a virtually criminal claim. My 2mb Fuji took far sharper pictures than this. Also because the sluggish autofocus rarely pinpointed anything, I found just a handful of the hundreds of still pictures I took to actually be in focus. The manual focus never indicated the optimum focus and one had to rely of the tiny inadequate and low resolution LCD to focus. There is no viewfinder in this camera and in most daylight operations the LCD was difficult to see. The time it took for the autofocus to find the subject and make an attempt was around seven seconds.. a disaster for that once in a lifetime action shot. Time and time again I would miss such shots sometimes due to the autofocus but mainly to the startup time of the camera itself. It took eight seconds each time the camera was turned on. Why I had to watch a JVC logo swirl around the screen when i could have been taking pictures was beyond me.
All the controls were well designed and close to hand except the on/off button which was a three way slider - off - record -playback. In practice these were too small and meant constantly sliding to the incorrect mode. It was infuriating, especially when the fingers were slightly damp or greasy. Perhaps the off button should have been in the middle, so that you only had to slide left or right. Otherwise all the other controls were great. A small joystick and onscreen menus were excellent but the main recording/shutter button needed a firm press giving the camera a small jolt and hence more blurred pictures. The still camera performed very badly in low light and the pathetically small pop up flash threw light not much further than about two metres. The auto exposure failed to compensate adequately for near subjects with the flash and most shots were bleached out. There was no hot shoe, so a third party flash was out of the question.
Battery life was disastrous. While everyone else on my holiday were still snapping away with their cheap digital cameras, mine had long exhausted it's power. The microdrive capacity was good and I never filled the disk. Although I bought two 1mb SD disks for the stills they also never filled up. The tiny stereo mics on the top were also adequate but sometimes my fingers strayed to this area and slightly covered them by mistake resulting in weird alien noises on playback. If a consumer is attracted by the high quality of the movie files,, then surely he would similarly require some decent sound. There is no provision for any external micro phone. This is really unbelievable.
There were many good features in the menu - manual exposure, disk management and others but would I recommend this camera? Not to whom the product is aimed. This is very much for the middle end consumer, not for any serious photography and its shortcomings put it into a £500 price bracket, not £800. With little competition I shall continue to use it as holiday camcorder.
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