JVC GZ-MG37 Camcorder Reviewby David KenderPublished on Mar 24, 2006 10:00 AM
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Picture & Manual Control
Automatic Control (5.0)
The GZ-MG37 (Review, Specs, $384.95) allows you to shift between automatic and manual control via a small button located in the LCD cavity labeled Auto. The camcorder has decent automatic control, responding for focus, exposure, shutter speed, gain, and white balance. None of them were as outstanding as the upper-end Sonys, but they would suffice for a point and shooter. The strongest control is probably the exposure. It’s not a fine control, per se, but it does an excellent job working in tandem with the gain in low light. For instance, a room with mixed lighting and some darker areas will give the exposure a hard time, but an all-dark area allows the camcorder to kick up the gain into high gear and create a relatively bright, though noisy, image.
Auto white balance was not very good. Thankfully, manual white balance is readily accessible in the manual control menu (more on that in the section below). There are presets for white balance: Halogen, Cloud, and Fine (sunny). These controls tended do little in their corrections; the Halogen setting still gave everything the sickly blue-ish look that halogens lights tend to do. The Fine setting only seemed to boost reds and oranges, rather than creating a healthy color balance. You’ll be much better off doing a manual balance.
There are also a host of automatic controls that you can turn on and off, “hybrid manual controls,” you might say, that allow you to give some input in the picture process, but not too much and without a fine measure of control. These controls include Backlight Compensation, which boosts the exposure overall to accommodate a subject that is too strongly backlit. Spot Exposure Control is a simplified version of Sony’s Spot Metering. In the Sony version, you touch the area of the screen that you would like to meter the exposure by. In the MG37, there is a small round target that can be shuttled either left, right, or center by the joystick. While the Sony control gives you anywhere from 4-9 zones from which to choose, the JVC gives you only three.
The MG37 also has four auto exposure modes, which are settings that target exposure and shutter speed settings for specific shooting environments. Here, they include Twilight, Spotlight, Snow, and Sport. Sometimes they work, but you’ll usually find that your shooting needs do not match up perfectly with these presets. The picture might still be too dark, or the shutter speed too slow to capture the movement. We always recommend that you try to set the manual controls yourself. It’s fun, and you’ll have video you can be proud of.
There are, of course, a set of cheesy effects as well, as you’ll find with all consumer camcorders. On the MG37, they include Strobe, Classic Film (a slower shutter speed), Monotone (black and white), and Sepia.
Overall Manual Control (5.5)
The manual control set on the JVC GZ-MG37 is good. JVCs typically place right behind Panasonics in this category. With this camcorder, you get shutter speed, white balance, focus, and exposure (in EV steps). All of these controls are independent, meaning you can set the shutter speed, and then adjust the exposure, rather than having to choose (as with Canon’s priority modes). The only element that’s missing is aperture control, in F-stops (which Panasonic does have), a measure of greater exposure control than EV steps.
The menu system is split into two parts, the administrative menu and the manual control menu. The administrative menu is accessed by pushing the Menu button located inside the LCD cavity. Here you’ll find all the controls you do not typically need on the spur of the moment: recording quality, image stabilization on/off, clock settings, etc. To exit the menu, just push the menu button again.
The manual control menu are the controls you do want close at hand; these include exposure, shutter speed, and the other controls mentioned in the first paragraph. To access this menu, push down on the joystick. A horizontal row appears at the bottom of the LCD. Toggle through these with the joystick to make your adjustments.
The joystick itself is the best of all possible joystick controls on a consumer camcorder. Doubtless, this is a vast improvement over last year’s G series camcorders, which had a miniscule four-way touchpad, at the center of which was an Enter button so small it could only be touched with a fingernail. We’re pleased that JVC has borrowed from Panasonic’s good design and moved on to the joystick control. Canon made a similar move on their new ZR camcorders, so the industry must know a good thing when they see it. Also like Canon, JVC has placed the joystick on the LCD panel. While this makes one-handed operation impossible (something you can do on most Panasonics), JVC has probably found that most users tend to have a hand on the LCD anyway, either to steady it or to tilt the screen as they move to adjust for glare. Sony obviously feels this way, as their LCD touch screens are the sole means of manual controls. They’ve even placed a second set of zoom controls on the LCD panel. We’re not a fan of the touch screens, but Sony, JVC, and Canon surely do their market research. While we like one-handed operation, it may not be for everyone.
In conclusion, the MG37 has great manual control options with a simple, effective feel, and is one of the stronger points in favor of this camcorder. Does it do enough to compensate for a fundamentally poor video quality? Not quite. The same controls are also on their MiniDV camcorders, which are cheaper and deliver better quality.
Zoom (6.5)
The zoom toggle on the JVC GZ-MG37 is on the top of the camcorder on the right side for access with the index finger of the right hand. The zoom toggle is barely a sliver of a silver which stands out from the carbon-colored body of the camcorder.
The slender zoom toggle didn’t really allow for fast and articulate engagement of zoom levels, and there was a tendency for the camcorder to jump from still to fast without a transition when shooting on the go. It tends to give the overall video a fun-ride sensibility that can be done without. If users have both time and some patience they will be rewarded with a number of variable shooting speeds from a slow crawl to the aforementioned light-speed option.
Focus (4.0)
There is a manual control option for focus on the JVC GZ-MG37, although your sheer excitement at hearing this should be greatly tempered. The focus control is entered by placing the camcorder in manual mode so the MSET manual control menu can be accessed. Once within this menu the focus submenu can be selected by using the left and right arrows on the joystick. Finally, the user can select the mountains/bust icons to begin shooting with “manual focus.” This is where things get tricky. All other manual controls listed within this menu allow the user to make alterations to their settings without having to leave the manual menu.
Zoom Power/Ratio (32.0)
The JVC GZ-MG37 has an optical zoom of 32x, which is possible in part due to the small 1/6” imager. There is also a maximum digital zoom level of 800x. The footage captured with a zoom rating of 800x is going to be hardly legible, and if image quality is already suffering from high compression levels, the digital zoom isn’t going to help matters. There is a digital zoom cap of 64x, which can be set by the user for a more reasonable digital zoom scale. Even with a level of 64x the user of the GZ-MG37 should definitely expect to see degraded image quality that is inferior to anything captured with optical zoom alone.
Focus, for some unfortunate reason, is different, although this difference is not intuitive and users will stumble for a while before either dismissing this feature or compromising their manual control integrity. To actually control the manual focus, the user will have to press the joystick inwards again when the manual control options are selected. This action will close the manual menu and display a minute sliding scale at the bottom of the screen that displays the bust/mountain icons on either end of it. If users wish to exit manual focus control they will have to press the joystick again, then press the joystick downwards to re-access the manual menu, which (don’t forget) was closed when manual focus was selected. This is unnecessarily circuitous and ruins an otherwise well designed manual control menu—which was the perfect foil to the atrocious (no exaggeration) administrative menu structure. Why it was not possible to provide at least one menu structure that was logical, well designed, and consistent is a mystery.
Exposure (Aperture) (4.5)
Exposure compensation is a feature included with the JVC GZ-MG37 and it, like all manual controls, is listed within the MSET manual control menu, which can only be entered when the camcorder is placed in manual mode. The MSET menu can be accessed by pressing the joystick inward and navigated through with the cardinal directions of the joystick control. The exposure control is the first setting encountered when this menu is opened and can be switched into manual exposure compensation by pressing the up arrow twice. The exposure compensation has a range of +/- 6 with a center setting of 0. The exposure setting is positioned on the bottom of the LCD as an overlay on the continual live view.
Shutter Speed (6.5)
To access manual control over shutter speed the user of the JVC GZ-MG37 must have the camcorder in manual mode. Once in manual mode the joystick will need to be pressed down to display the onscreen manual control overlay that is presented horizontally along the bottom edge of the LCD. The shutter speed manual control is represented by the acronym Ssp and must be highlighted by scanning with the right or left arrows on the joystick. When the shutter speed is highlighted the joystick can be pressed to open the control option for this feature. Press the up arrow to open the shutter speed range and navigate it with the left and right arrows. The shutter speed range for the GZ-MG37 is impressive in its breadth and the number of options with settings ranging from 1/2 second to 1/4000 of a second. When the shutter speed is being manually reset, the camcorder continues to provide users with a live view for visually gauging the adjustments made to manual control levels.
White Balance (7.0)
White balance controls are manually adjustable and listed within the “MSET” manual control menu, entered by placing the camcorder in manual mode and pressing the joystick inward. The white balance submenu can be accessed by scanning the manual menu via the right and left controls on the joystick. Once it’s open, the user will need to push the up and down arrows to scan this submenu. The preset options for white balance are settings of Auto, Halogen, Cloud, and Fine (which is apparently intended for outdoor shooting on a sunny day). The manual white balance option is activated by highlighting the setting and pressing the joystick inwards until the indicator starts and then stops blinking. This can be somewhat problematic since the small size of the joystick often caused fingers to slip and slide off the control in the midst of setting it. The white balance controls are a minimal menu overlay that will only obscure a slight portion of the LCD when being adjusted so that users still have a clear live view of the alterations made to white balance in real time.
Gain (1.0)
There is an automatic preset control over gain levels, located within the menu structure of the JVC GZ-MG37. However, the Gain Up feature suffers from heavy amounts of noise. This low light quick fix has neither the control, the dexterity nor the success of manual gain controls on Panasonic camcorders. If possible, skip this control and find better lighting. If it must be used, just be aware that your image will be as noisy as a Gwar cover band contest.
Other Manual Control (0.0)
There are no other manual controls on the JVC GZ-MG37.
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