JVC Everio GZ-MC500 review

In the gimmicky-feature category, you'll find the usual assortment of fades, wipes, and digital effects: sepia, black-and-white, classic film, and strobe; 40X and 100X digital zoom; and Tele-Macro, which enables extreme close-ups of objects a couple of feet away.

Because it captures MPEG-2 video--a compressed format that can be recorded on the hard drive and flash memory media that this camera uses--the GZ-MC500 offers four video-quality levels. Each makes a different compromise between image quality and recording time. These range from Ultra Fine (720x480 at 8.5Mbps, one hour total on the included Microdrive) to Economy (352x240 at 1.5Mbps, six hours total).

Also, due to the MPEG-2 system, the camera offers convenient playback capabilities. You can instantaneously switch from clip to clip via a thumbnail menu system, and individual clips can be reordered or deleted easily, freeing up space for more shooting.

Although the native resolution of its sensors is just 1.3 megapixels, the GZ-MC500 outputs stills at five resolutions, maxing out at 2,560x1,920. There are two JPEG quality levels to select from. Other photo-specific features include a selection of three ISO levels, a self-timer, a continuous-shooting mode, and autobracketing. The camera's pop-up flash has several modes, including red-eye reduction. You can also connect the GZ-MC500 to PictBridge-compatible devices for direct printing.

Two Windows software applications come with the GZ-MC500: CyberLink DVD Solution for video editing and DVD authoring, and Digital Photo Navigator 1.0 for organizing stills.

The JVC Everio GZ-MC500 responds quickly to inputs from its relatively few external controls. The focus ring and the zoom rocker are particularly easy to manipulate for controls on a camera of this size.

Autofocus and autoexposure were accurate but sluggish in their response. While these systems react nearly instantaneously in some camcorders, with the GZ-MC500 we often experienced a significant delay while the camera caught up to a change in composition or lighting. On the other hand, the digital image stabilization system performed well without significantly degrading the image.

The greatest limitation of the LCD is its relatively small size, which is hard to avoid on a camera this tiny. However, the screen is bright enough for viewing an image in direct sunlight, which is fortunate since this Everio offers no secondary viewfinder.

We found audio performance typical of a small camera that relies exclusively on a built-in mic. Capturing a certain amount of camera noise is inevitable, and there's an overemphasis on unwanted environmental sounds due to the microphone's lack of directionality. The quality of sound recorded with video varies with the video-quality setting you select. A wind-cut filter is available to help reduce low-frequency rumble.

The supercompact size of the JVC Everio GZ-MC500 is due largely to its use of Microdrive and CompactFlash media instead of MiniDV cassettes. But using those media has an impact on video quality too, since they don't record the DV-format footage that MiniDV cassettes do. Instead, video is saved in MPEG-2, the same compressed format used by mini-DVD camcorders and also used to fit full-length movies on commercial DVDs. As is the case with DVDs, this form of compression can render outstanding image quality, but it can also produce distracting artifacts depending on the nature of the image and the degree of compression.

This Everio provides four different video-quality modes, from Fine, which fits one hour on the included 4GB Microdrive, to Economy, which squeezes six hours into the same space. Surprisingly, even the Economy mode was quite watchable, though it has a slightly strobelike quality and easily visible compression artifacts.

In the better video-quality modes, the GZ-MC500 produces crisp video that has a slightly muted color palate. The quality of this video is not significantly better than what you'd get from the best single-chip MiniDV camcorders. However, the three-chip system does pay off with stills that are exceptionally good for a hybrid camera.

Due to its high pixel count, the GZ-MC500 produces wide-screen video that is every bit as sharp as its 4:3 video. Unfortunately, this high pixel count also results in inferior low-light performance. To get a reasonably bright image under less than ideal lighting, you have to set the camera to automatically boost the gain, which results in a grainy-looking, washed-out image.