JVC Everio GZ-HD6 Camcorder Reviewby David KenderPublished on Mar 20, 2008 9:28 PM
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Picture & Manual Control
Automatic Control (5.0)
The JVC GZ-HD6 has shown small improvements since the GZ-HD3 in regards to automatic responses, but not a lot. Considering how much people rely on automatic controls, this should be a significant factor in the purchase decision.
The auto exposure is the fastest of the auto responses, taking an average of about 2 to 3 seconds. By comparison, the Sony HDR-SR12 was near-instantaneous, taking only 1 to 2 seconds. JVC stated that it had improved the poor dynamic range we’d seen in the GZ-HD3, but we didn’t see a sizeable difference. When shooting into dark corners with a lot of ambient light in the shot, the camcorder still can't produce much detail in the shadows.
The autofocus is not as fast as Canon’s Instant AF system in use on all its HD camcorders, but it gets the job done. Interestingly, if the camcorder is in full Auto mode, it automatically adjusts the zoom to get a proper focus if it needs to. It’s true that over-zooming is probably the most common reason people lose their focus, and because they don’t understand the relationship between the two, they don’t know to pull back on the zoom. This is a smart auto-correct on JVCs part.
The auto white balance is easily the worst, sometimes taking more than 10 seconds to adjust. The shooting experience is unusual. The first time the GZ-HD6 had to make a big adjustment leap, such as indoor fluorescent to outdoor cloudy, the adjustment lag time was interminable. But each time after that was faster, as if the camcorder had stored up the recent color temperatures in a temporary memory.
Included is the standard JVC night feature NightAlive. Activated by pushing left on the joystick, this is a tricky tool you'll want to be aware of. Sure, it makes the colors appear better in low light, but only by allowing the auto shutter to drop as low as a 1/2-second. This creates terrible blurring. You'll need to shoot from a tripod, and you'll have to tell your subject to stop breathing. Sony offers two features for night shooting that work much better, one that caps the auto shutter at 1/30, and another at around 1/4 - 1/8.
The GZ-HD6 has the usual array of one-touch controls, but you’ll have to leave the confines of Auto mode to access them. Pushing the joystick in any direction activates one or more controls, which can get confusing for the novice. Some are described later down this page. We’ll only focus on a few.
Program AE modes in action
Pushing the joystick to the right activates the Program AE modes: Portrait, Sports, Snow, Spotlight, and Twilight. Pushing the joystick up activates Backlight Compensation. Pushing it up again turns off Backlight Compensation and activates Spot Metering (detailed in the Exposure & Aperture section below).
Overall Manual Control (6.25)
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The mode dial switches between |
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Most of the interface is performed with the joystick, which is well located on the outer-edge of the LCD panel. Pushing the joystick in any direction activates one control or another. Until you get used to shooting with the HD6, accidentally hitting one of these without knowing or noticing the effect can be frustrating. The second grouping of tools is located in the Function menu, activated via the Function button under the joystick. Most of the manual controls are located here. However, when you’re actively recording, the list gets reduced.
Other controls you don’t necessarily need close at hand are located in the Main menu, or “Administrative menu,” activated via the Menu button in the LCD cavity. Included here are x.v.Color, recording quality, gain on/off, and others.
The small zoom toggle on the JVC GZ-HD6
Zoom (7.0)
The JVC GZ-HD6 has a small but effective zoom toggle, located on the top, which is better positioned for the middle finger than the index finger. There’s just enough surface area for a decent grip, and resistance is good. The slowest possible crawl is incredibly slow, great for shooters that really like a dramatic zoom. You can get a consistent speed from 1x to 10x that takes nearly 20 seconds. If you need fast zooms, you may be disappointed. The fastest traversing of the zoom range takes about 5 seconds. The Canon HF10 can’t perform as good a crawl, but is only 2 seconds at its fastest. The Panasonic HDC-SD9 is about the same.
When zooming, the camcorder provides both a scale and a numerical value of the zoom power in the upper portion of the screen.
Zoom Power Ratio (10.0)
The optical zoom on the GZ-HD6 extends to 10x, which is about the same as most consumer HD camcorders. The new Canon HF10 goes to 12x. The digital zoom on the HD6 is activated in the Main menu. It can be capped at 40x or 200x.
Focus (5.0)
The review of the GZ-HD6’s big brother, the GZ-HD7, praised JVC for offering the best manual focus of any consumer camcorder, due in large part to the big focus ring around the lens barrel. The ring has been shed on the more compact GZ-HD6, but the camcorder retains the other great element, the JVC Focus Assist function.
Most HD camcorders have some kind of focus assist tool, but JVC’s is among the best. When activated, via the Focus Assist button in the LCD cavity, the image on the LCD switches to black & white, then “peaking” is applied to the areas in focus. Peaking, in this case, is a colored noise that appears on high contrast areas. Because the image is black & white, the color stands out boldly, and the color can be set to red, green, or blue. The Canon HV30, the HDV follow-up to the HV20, added peaking this year, but it’s harder to see on a color image. All Canon HD camcorders have an instant zoom feature for their version of Focus Assist that lets you get a closer look at the subject. It’s not bad, but JVC’s is better. One small complaint – the two previous HD Everios had their Focus Assist buttons better placed on the front of the camcorder. The GZ-HD6’s button is relocated into the mess of buttons in the LCD cavity.
The Focus Assist in action
Don’t like the peaking and black & white image? No problem. To activate manual focus without Focus Assist, just push down on the joystick. A small icon of a man and a mountain will appear at the bottom of the screen. Then push left and right on the joystick to adjust.
Exposure & Aperture (7.06)
There are multiple ways to adjust exposure on the JVC GZ-HD6. The simplest is listed as the first item in the Function menu, labeled “Adjust Brightness.” This tool, equivalent to what other camcorders would call “exposure,” has a range of -6 to +6, and makes the image darker or brighter. It’s great for beginners who aren’t as familiar with terminology. However, it would be a little less confusing to actually use if a scale appeared on screen. Instead, only a little number appears in the upper left corner when activated. Once you make your adjustment and push in on the joystick to “lock in” your setting, you can’t change it without re-entering the menu. Sounds confusing? It is.
The second method is actually just a beefed up auto exposure adjustment. Push up on the joystick not once, but twice, to activate the spot-meter. This creates a small red target in the center of the screen. The target can move one spot left and one spot right, but not up and down. The area within the target is weighted more heavily in the autofocus adjustments.
The third method is Aperture Priority. In this mode, you can select the aperture value, and the camcorder automatically adjusts the shutter speed for exposure correction. Aperture settings include: f/1.8, f/2.0, f/2.8, f/4.0, f/5.6, and f/8.0. This is a scant amount of values which only gives you minor degree of control. Both Canon and Panasonic offer more. Sony, on the other hand, does not offer aperture control in any of its consumer camcorders.
Shutter Speed (6.45)
The shutter speed is activated with the Shutter Priority mode, located in the Function menu. The inverse of Aperture Priority, in this mode you control the shutter speed and the camcorder automatically compensates with aperture changes. Settings include 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/15, 1/30, 1/60, 1/80, 1/100, 1/250, 1/500, 1/1000, 1/2000, and 1/4000. The camcorder is very good about correcting exposure at low speeds. Even the 1/2-second setting produces a properly exposed image, though it took the camcorder nearly 15 seconds to figure out the adjustment. This range of controls is comparable to the competition.
White Balance (6.25)
The white balance settings are also located in the Function menu. Settings here include Auto, Manual, Fine, Cloud, and Halogen. As described earlier, auto white balance adjustments are strictly mediocre, so you’ll want to avail yourself of the options here. The lack of indoor settings is disconcerting, because you’ll certainly encounter more than halogen lighting in your house.
Making a manual adjustment is far more complicated than it should be. The interface is just poorly thought out here. Most controls are activated by scrolling over to them until the text is highlighted, then pushing in on the joystick once. If you do that here, you might think you’ve made the adjustment, but you haven’t. Instead, you have to push and hold on the “MWB” selection from within the list of options. Eventually, the icon blinks and the colors adjust. In practice, it took us several tries, and we deal with camcorders all day long. I pity the newcomer.
White balance controls in action
Gain (2.0)
Only Panasonic camcorders offer actual control over the gain in the realm of consumer camcorders. However, JVC gives you some degree of control – the ability to turn the auto gain control (AGC) on and off. This is standard on all JVC camcorders. It surprised us, therefore, that the GZ-HD6 added one more option to the list.
In addition to gain options of “off” and “AGC,” there is a new option called “Auto.” But wait … if AGC stands for Auto Gain Control, how does that differ from auto? Well, let’s go look in the manual. Huh … not a thing. In fact, this manual is pretty useless for penetrating questions such as this.
So we put it to the test. As near as we can tell, the Auto setting allows the gain to go up much higher than the AGC setting. If you’re trying to keep noise in check, AGC may be the better bet, but point and shooters will want to leave it in Auto mode.
Other Manual Controls (4.0)
Zebras - In the Function menu you’ll find the Zebra feature, which creates moving, striped patterns on areas of the shot that are overexposed. There are two settings, 70 percent and 100 percent, that correspond to IRE levels. In the world of commercial broadcast, there are legal limits to how bright your image can be, with 100 IRE being the very upper limit. For home video shooting, zebra patterns are just a useful check on exposure.
Sharpness - The Sharpness controls are located in the Function menu. When activated, a scale appears in the lower portion of the screen ranging from -5 to +5. In theory, it controls the level of in-camera sharpening, or the contrast boosting along line edges. In practice, you’ll want to use the control sparingly. Too low and the image looks out of focus. Too high and it looks noisy.
The Sharpness tool in action
Color Bars - The GZ-HD6 offers the ability to output the HD SMPTE color bar chart to calibrate your monitor.
x.v.Color - This is the Sony-branded term for the new xvYCC color standard. It allows for a deeper and more accurate representation of color. Unfortunately, recording in xvYCC is useless unless you have an xvYCC-compliant HDTV, which is still rare. Don’t forget an HDMI 1.3 cable. Older cables will not support the color.
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