Review of HD10 Camera

Ed Hill · October 24, 2004

Hi,

I previously posted a link to an HD10 project I shot. But it has some how disappeared. Not sure how or why?

Here's my assessment of the camera.

I've used the camera for an hour documentary, a music video for a rap artist, a video press kit for my client Brandy Rich and also 6 TV commercials.

I am charging these clients full rate for these jobs and I no longer ask clients if they want HDTV. I just shoot everything on HDTV. Clients with smaller budgets get the JVC HD10. If they want standard TV output

I just render it letterbox. The clients are happy. Clients with larger budgets get the Sony W700 series cameras.

The JVC HD10 camera has only one chip, which initially bothered me. But overall the image is good. I have run it on 60 inch HDTV screens and like the look.

EDIT >> Despite the small failings listed below, I am amazed at the detailed image on a HDTV screen. Given that this camera is about $ 4000 I like the result versus cost. Outdoors on an overcast day, the colors can appear nicely saturated, much like positive stock.

The camera has several small problems.

1) Outdoors: blacks will render with a slightly green tinge in direct sunlight.

Also the video image may have slight color noise under certain light conditions.

This is corrected in post.

2) The camera doesn't have true manual control of exposure. The manual mode

allows you to set either the aperture or the shutter speed, not both. It still uses the auto exposure to vary the setting that you did not set.

If you set aperture to F2.4 the camera varies the shutter speed. This is very irritating. If shooting a backlit interview, and you set exposure for the face, hoping to overexpose the sky. The idiot camera uses auto exposure and exposes for the sky leaviong the face dark.

Typically, I will use ND filters to force the aperture to open up, and set the so called manual setting to shutter manual of 1/60 or 1/30. This limits the camera to the widest aperture possible. But this work around should not be needed. The JVC engineers were foolish to not put full manual control in what they market as a "professional" or prosumer camera.

3) The camera only has a 6 f stop range and will tend to crush blacks and shadow detail or crush highlights under high contrast lighting.

When the Sony HDV camera (FX1) comes out, with true manual control, they will take away JVC's business in this market segment.

If you would like to see samples of this camera at work I will post the URL.