Sunday, June 22, 2014

JVC PX100BAG - what a disappointment!

Ah, it's been a year since I posted anything here.
It's been a busy year.
After the death of the Panasonic, I went shopping online, and after much, much searching, I thought I found the perfect camera for me.
Small, lightweight, good video camera, and also takes good pictures, if the online reviews were to be believed.

I think they were all paid to write a better review than what the device would have gotten on it's own, or did not test it properly.

Not too long ago, the JVC was dropped, and it's LCD screen got a crack in it. Rather than repair it, I thought I would just get another camera that is not such a huge disappointment.

I'm quite happy with the Canon 70D, which does actually do what I want. Don't get me wrong, the JVC does have a couple of tricks that I will miss, like extremely fast framerate, or auto time-lapse.

However, that does not make up for poor picture quality.
Here is what I am talking about:


This is a cropped part of an image of my wife's canon Rebel Xti,
Click on the image for native resolution.


Below is a crop from near the center of the image from the JVC, taken at the same time, at the same event. Notice the poor picture quality on the boy's hair, and the compression artifacts on the tree. 
Unfortunately, that's not the worst of it. 
What drove me really batty was the amount of light bleeding over in high contrast areas. See the blue shine on the tree?


 Terrible for something that costs over $1,000.00, especially when it was touted as a cross between a DSLR and a camcorder.

So, what is the video quality like?
The poor optics really did not help the video, either:
I froze a frame, exported it and cropped it:



Here is the same scene, but from the Canon 70D.
It's a bit of an unfair comparison, the camera has just been released, and is twice the price of the JVC.

 In conclusion...
1. I'm happy with the Canon 70D.
2. Don't believe everything you read online. 
3. Your mileage may vary
4. If you know of someone that stocks spare parts for JVC/Kenwood, I would like to know.

;)