Handled an HM700
 

My local pro audion shop is now carrying JVC video products. So I went to check out their gear selection and I got to handle\fondle an HM700. Unfortunately, someone left the power on and it was dead.

I'm going back soon to test it out. Might even see if they'll lend it to me for an hour to do some shooting and testing.

The ergos were sweet. I had been strongly considering an EX1R but the HM700 suits my needs better, 1\3 chip being the obvious bump in the JVC road.

Have the newest firmware updates made a difference? And I read somewhere that the unit now records mp4 to sdhc without needing to buy the SxS adapter. True?

Hmm, also wondering if a CD Nanoflash and 700 combo would be a good set-up.

Not sure if the updates make any difference as I have not hat the previous versions.
I can confirm that it does record in Mp4 and that works well in Sony Vegas 9

Nice, thanks for the info.

I assume you have an HM700 and you use Vegas. Enjoying the combo? From what I've heard, read, and been told, the picture isn't the greatest but the form and workflow are excellent. I do ENG work and I can't get my head around a non-shoulder mount camera, though I am very tempted by the Ex series' bigger chips.

One of the issues with the HM700 resulting in negative opinions about its image quality stemmed from there being a lot of noise in the shadows and the dark areas of the picture. The latest firmware has much better DNR and really seems to have cleared those issues up.

I have got a chance to compare my HM700 side by side with $30,000 ENG cameras with 2/3 inch chips. Although my tests were not scientific at all, I would have to say that the picture from the HM700 came much closer to that of a $30,000 2/3" chip camera than any other 1/3" chip camera I've ever used.

Also, I have compared the HM700 and one of Sony's EX cameras side by side. The difference was really quite minor, and I can't say for sure that one was better than the other. Once again, my test was non scientific and you might have been able to get better results by tweaking the cameras, but I found that a lot of the reasons I wanted to go with larger chips, the difference wasn't that great between the two cameras. For example, with a wider field of view- I found both cameras performed about the same. The same goes for depth of field, true, the EX was a bit more shallow than the JVC, but only a very tiny bit. Nothing that a viewer would ever notice, and definitely not enough to buy the EX over the JVC. Low light was the same way, the EX did perform slightly better, but the difference was so slight, and only noticeable when comparing the footage side by side. As far as dynamic range, and having a smooth falloff, I thought the JVC did better. I would have expected the EX to do better because of its larger chips, but the JVC actually seemed to capture a better range, and have a smoother falloff and less harch clipping than the EX.

Bottom line is the quality of the HM700 really is top notch. You are not sacrificing quality for form factor if you choose this camera. I think the quality quite easily exceeds any other camera in its price range, making it very easy to compare to cameras that cost many times as much. True, it doesn't have as good of quality as cameras that are three or four times more expensive, but it comes very close. As far as going with the EX because of the larger chips, once you do a side by side comparison you'll notice the differences are so minor as to only be noticeable when comparing the footage directly. Even then the JVC still outperforms the EX in some areas. So I don't think you are giving anything up by going with the JVC.

The picture cold be better in low light, having used the JVC5000 and the difference is noticeable. The work flow is much better with the SD cards, easy to download abut 3 hours in 45 minutes.
I am running Vegas (9c) on a quad core and that helps in the editing of the mp4's, timewise about the same as editing in SD, the rendering is a bit slower down to MPEG2

Thanks for the mini-review, Adam. That's the kind of base line comparison I've been hoping to find.

I've got to the point where I just want to buy a camera and get shooting. This will be my first "personal" video gathering piece of gear. I had thought about going with a big, pro style ENG cam, but they're heavy, expensive, and probably overkill for my applications right now... as was pointed out to me in the Sony sub-forum.

Thanks for the info, too, Zulqar. I'm in need of an NLE and I'm leaning towards Vegas. Good to know the 700 and Vegas combo is a good one.

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