JVC GZ-HM200

Low Light Sensitivity (0.31)

JVC has shown a trend this year of manufacturing camcorders that are excellent in bright light situations, but have some severe problems when shooting under less-than-ideal lighting conditions. The JVC GZ-HM200 is not the worst offender in this case (that award goes to the HM400’s cousin model, the JVC GZ-X900), but it still didn’t put forth a good effort in our low light sensitivity test. The camcorder required 29 lux of light to reach 50 IRE on our waveform monitor—roughly the same amount of light required for the JVC GZ-HM400 to reach the same levels.

Both the Panasonic HDC-SD20 and Canon HF20 did better in this test, but they aren’t elite low light sensitivity performers either. In fact, most of the mid-range camcorders we’ve tested this year have had problems with low light sensitivity. Only certain high-end models—like the HDC-HS300 and TM300 from Panasonic, and the Sanyo VPC-HD2000—have done very well on this test in 2009.

Still, we cannot deny that the HM200’s performance in this test is sub par. The camcorder does offer an auto slow shutter feature (engaged by setting the gain level to auto), which will boost low light performance. However, using this feature produces motion trails and choppy footage whenever the camcorder decides to let the slow shutter kick in (the shutter speed drops to as low as 1/30 of a second with auto slow shutter turned on).

In the HM200’s defense, we did get some rather good scores in our low light color and low light noise testing with the camcorder. So, as long as you’re not filming in very low light situations, the camcorder should still be able to capture a colorful image without too much noise. Read the next two sections of this review for complete details. More on how we test low light sensitivity.

Low Light Noise (9.24)

The GZ-HM200 put up very respectable numbers in our low light noise testing. The camcorder averaged 1.28% noise, which is roughly half the amount of noise recorded by the Canon HF20. Unexpectedly, the high-end JVC HM400 also had more noise than the HM200. Of the comparison models below, on the Panasonic HDC-SD20 measured less noise than the HM200. More on how we test low light noise.

JVC GZ-HM200 Low Light Noise Comparisons
JVC GZ-HM200 100% Crop	Panasonic HDC-SD20 100% Crop Canon Vixia HF20 100% Crop JVC GZ-HM400 100% Crop More...

Part of the reason the GZ-HM200 did so well with this test probably has to do with the fact that the camcorder captured such a blurred image in low light. The camcorder didn’t show nearly as much detail in low light as the Canon HF20 or JVC GZ-HM400. Both the HM200 and SD20 had both blurry images and low noise in this test: blurring obscures desirable details as well as undesirable details (like noise).

Low Light Color (7.09)

The GZ-HM200 showed a significant drop in color accuracy when we lowered the lights for our low light color test. This is normal, however, and the camcorder’s 5.17 color error is actually better than average for a mid-range model. In low light, the HM200 showed us faded colors and it registered a saturation level of just 55.39%. This is a little below average for a camcorder of its class. More on how we test low light color.

Low Light Color Accuracy Performance
	Color Error Map
	The map on the left is a diagram of the color error. The length and direction of each line indicates how the camera processed each particular color while capturing video. The JVC GZ-HM200 produced a color error of and a saturation level of in our bright light color testing.

Looking at the comparison images below, you’ll see the HM200 isn’t alone in producing a washed-out and faded low light image. The rest of the camcorders in this set had even worse color accuracies than the GZ-HM200, with the closest competitor being the Canon HF20, which retained a fair amount of saturation and color depth.

Though the low light performance wasn’t as strong as the color in bright light, we were far from disappointed. We should note, however, that the GZ-HM200 had a slight off-color tone in its low light image—something we noticed on the JVC GZ-HM400 and GZ-X900 as well. The HM400 was a worse offender; you can actually see agreenish-yellow tone in the gray parts of the HM400’s crop above.