The JVC GR-D295 is, for the most part, a good performer. It's very responsive and quick to adjust focus, white balance, and exposure when panning to a new subject. There were times when the autofocus took a couple of seconds to lock onto the subject in the center of the screen, and in dim conditions, the camera sometimes had trouble finding focus when the lens was zoomed in.
When we used manual modes, the camera performed similarly well, though navigating through the menus to change exposure and other settings was a time-consuming process. The digital image stabilization worked well in the first half of the zoom range, but once you zoom past about 15X, you'll want a tripod to stabilize your image. The zoom control is responsive and easy to use for both quick and extended magnification changes.
The viewfinder provides a clear image, though it's not sharp enough to use for precise manual focus. The 2.5-inch LCD is better for this purpose. It offers decent detail and is visible even in direct sunlight.
The GR-D295's built-in microphone performed well for its type. Its front placement helps prevent the videographer's voice from being dramatically louder than that of the subject.
Though the JVC GR-D295's feature set might seem appropriate for a more expensive camera, the video quality is decidedly low-end. Footage shot with the 680,000-pixel CCD showed stair-step jagged artifacts around some sharp color demarcations, for instance, though it's not as bad as what you see from some DVD and hard disk-based cameras, which compress their video with MPEG-2. Outdoors, colors were vibrant yet accurate, and exposure and white balance were on target, but the video just lacked the sharpness and detail that you get from cameras that use larger CCDs. Still, outdoor footage was acceptable if not impressive.
In both tungsten- and daylight-lit indoor settings, footage looked extremely grainy. Color was relatively accurate, though the automatic white balance sometimes ended up choosing a bluish tinge. Shooting in the Night Alive mode brought out color in dark situations and eliminated some of the visual noise, but the jerky slow-shutter effect and blurry motion and panning gave the footage a surreal effect. The video light helped a bit in both standard and Night Alive modes, but it's relatively weak, so it worked only for subjects within a few feet of the lens. The illumination diameter was small enough that even nearby subjects ended up looking as if they were lit by flashlights.
The JVC GR-D295's CCD's resolution is actually slightly lower than the 1,024x768 maximum still-image resolution, so pictures are interpolated to the larger size. Photo quality is extremely poor, with shots lacking detail and with noise and artifacts evident in indoor and outdoor photos alike. These shots might be suitable for e-mail, but don't plan on using the still-camera function for prints or important memories.
- See more CNET content tagged:
- JVC,
- footage,
- CCD,
- camera,
- photograph
JVC GR-D295:
