Video samples from my new JVC HM100 ...
 

I need to learn how to upload as 720P, after I get off work later?

Some challenging shooting situations for full Auto mode HM100 to deal with (great white balance and color!), especially my mostly-white dog and some close ups of river sunlight sparkles, nothing but built-in mic so far (just got AT875R), and a good test of the not-so-hot OIS image stabilization.

I'll post some tiny raw files somewhere, somehow ... gotta work on that!

YouTube - JVC GY-HM100 semi-pro camcorder Test Footage - OtterMedia

Ois
 

Shaun, I am almost ready to buy the HM100u. I tried one today.
I shoot mostly in 720 60p, lots of spots stuff (football, basketball, skiing etc.)

I noticed that the image was very shakey at times. I was wondering if I had the OIS off by mistake. I had to be REAL careful to keep the camera still.

Are you have trouble with camera "shake" Seems the image kind of "jumps" a bit when a pan slowly.

Any comments, experiences etc would be helpful.

Thanks.

The OIS causes bounce-back at the end of slow pans with a tripod, if you forget to go into the menu system and turn it off, so I bet it does the same somewhat crude-looking thing when you pan slow by hand and then stop.

The OIS might be the weakest part of the camera, unless the tiny manual exposure controls way on back are critical for you, then it'd be them and having to press Auto-Manual on the left side before the rear controls even do anything.

IF you can live with those things and the sometimes touchy/sensitive zoom & focus control, just about everything in/on the camera is great and it's HD quality and size probably can't be beat, regardless.

thx for the footage.
it seems the camera struggles with the whites and light. all the whites seem burnt out. have you tried to correct that in manual mode?

ps. beautiful dog you've got. what breed is it?

Dynamic range and Dog
 

I think that most 1/4" and/or prosumer imaging chips in general probably don't have dynamic range/ latitude to be able to cope with a bright white dog on sunny day without having to underexpose the entire rest of the scene by more than a little, even if one was to tweak gamma/knee/? to get a flat, dull (and boring) image.
I hope I am wrong, but I suspect that's just the way it is when you have very wide ranges of brightness in a video scene ...

Anybody know if it's dramatically different as you get to bigger, more advanced imaging chips?
(My "Above Alaska" Blu-ray disc seems to say yes to that, with it's glaciers, though time of day matters a lot)

Would a Sony EX1/EX3 with 1/2" CMOS chips be a bit better or a lot better?

CMOS better or worse than CCD if all else equal?
(I suspect better, since pro still SLRs use CMOS these days, I think, or maybe that's an economic factor thing)

Using exclusively auto exposure for that video, I had the camera set to Cinema color matrix and later Cinema Vivid, 90 percent Knee and then Auto Knee, and Jaxs was still blown out regardless if he was just a small part of a larger scene. Maybe things were more contrasty with Vivid or maybe the more saturated color made it seem so?
When he was the main subject, the camera, of course, did much better. He's a good test for having to deal with hot highlights and I'm sure he'll help as I try Manual exposure, different Knee settings and possibly gamma curve tweaks in different conditions (I want to consult a experienced pro shooter about such things).

Jaxs is half border collie, 1/4 pit bull, and probably 1/4 black lab -- I got him from a shelter when he was one or so, after he'd been abandoned on a beach in the middle of winter (designer cattle dog who didn't go as planned??) a bit north of here, Eureka, Calif., USA. He is too cute for his own good, fairly spoiled, but that probably made him the very sweet and affectionate, confident and adaptable dog that he is. He can be intense and very energetic when it comes to play, beaches, trying to chase horses :( or birds, but sooo mellow inside.

Ois
 

Shaun, this is a great way to describe what I am seeing. When I do a slow pan,or movement, there is a bounce back of the image!

Have you tried shooting with OIS off? I only had less than 1hr to demo the camera.

I may try to go back as JVC is doing a seminar at the dealer I went to.

I only turned off the OIS when I had the HM100 on my tripod, which stopped the OIS pan end bounce back completely (and my cheap/fairly-lightweight temporary Manfrotto 701HDV head did a good job with no bounce back, too, but took a careful, steady hand compared to a nice fluid head).

I might try turning OIS off when I use the shoulder brace with belly/belt strut.

And I might even sell my HM100 and wait to get something more capable in run-n-gun, casual/fast, and highly mobile shooting without support of any kind, but with higher-end SD/CF card recording. I'll probably keep it until there's a new choice, due to it being so great image-quality-wise.

Perhaps ideally a cross between the JVC HM100 and the Sony HVR-Z7U HDV Camcorder?

Or just a Canon A1s or Sony Z5 replacement with good memory card recording, as in better than HDV or 24MBps ACVHD and their compressed audio.