I recently purchased a refub HM100 and am trying to figure out the auto focus on these cameras is just plain awful or if my particular camera is bad. When set to full auto or even manual with white balancing setting exposure etc and with AF enabled the camera is on the hunt constantly and will not really focus correctly on anything. Available light does not seem to make any difference as this occurs in daylight and indoors with good lighting. When it does get some kind of focus it's very soft. It's worse than any consumer model I have tried including HV20 /30 and even cheaper low end cameras beat the HM100 auto focus function.

This was bought as a B-Roll camera to complement a HD200, I never run auto or AF on any camera myself (ever) but sometimes I will need other non camera folks to be able to use this camera in certain fast paced situations. Any insight would be appreciated!

Sounds like that bit was not refurbished very well :-)
My AF does sometimes annoy, but mostly for focussing on something I didn't want it to (like the grass rather than the animal behind the grass) my fault not the AF. The only hunting I have experienced was when being bathed in dust by a passing rally car, again I can't blame the AF for this, as I couldn't see a damn thing either.

Charles

Thanks for the feedback Charles, it sounds like the refurb was probably not a great idea although it came from a Authorized JVC dealer with 1 year warranty. Will have to be sent back for repair.

Another issue I noticed today, I have made sure Tele Macro is off, but the indicator image which I believe should show on the LCD under [M] for manual focus does not show either when in tele marcro mode or not. It makes no difference if I am in manual or auto or if I assign Tele macro to a user button or change in the menu, I still cant get the indicator to display on the LCD.