JVC GY-HM100 Beta Sight

Jeremiah Fry used the JVC GY-HM100 on a shoot covering humanitarian work in a leper colony in India.

Embrace A Village, a nonprofit Christian organization in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India, provides medical treatment, food, housing, hospice, and other support services to thousands of people who are stricken with leprosy and banished to the lowest rung of Indian society. Last year, when I learned that Embrace A Village founders Joe and Patricia Clendenny needed someone to produce documentaries to raise awareness about the plight of India's lepers and their organization, I volunteered.

I work as a videographer for Church of the King in Mandeville, La., and I operate my own New Orleans-based freelance media business, Light in Motion. I knew the shoot would require traveling to leper colonies throughout India, so I needed to travel light. My kit included a new JVC GY-HM100 camcorder, six 16GB SDHC solid-state memory cards, handheld lights, two LaCie 1TB drives, and an Apple MacBook Pro.

The JVC camcorder's phenomenal HD picture quality captures the character and definition in people's facial expressions and conveys what it's really like to be in these places. Because it's so compact and unobtrusive, I could hold it and shoot for hours on end without tiring. I found that people acted naturally because they weren't self-conscious in the way they would have been had a larger camcorder been focused on them.

My wife and I shot in India for two weeks in October and November. We captured hundreds of hours of native 720p24 HD video on inexpensive, reusable SDHC cards. One of the best testaments to this JVC camcorder is that I was able to hand it over to my wife, who had no prior experience shooting with it, and she was immediately able to operate it with ease and capture fantastic footage as well.

The camcorder is easy to use, but I can't say it was an easy trip. We shot in all kinds of extreme conditions, including rain, fog, dust, high heat, humidity, and cold nights. Despite the conditions, the camcorder never missed a shot. I was also pleasantly surprised with the GY-HM100's energy efficiency. I figured it would use about six rechargeable batteries per 12-hour shoot day. But it only used two batteries per day—a big bonus because electricity was scarce at most locations.

Beyond the weather, the camcorder also had to endure some abuse from curious onlookers. People often grabbed the GY-HM100 or handled it roughly when trying to see the video play back on its flip-out LCD monitor. Thankfully, its solid construction withstood every hit.

The GY-HM100's audio capabilities are great. The camcorder has two XLR inputs with phantom power, but you can use one microphone and set different audio levels on two separate channels manually. This was useful when I interviewed couples; the man was often much louder than the woman, but I was able to get good levels on both and minimize my work in post.

In the remote areas where I shot, I conducted several interviews in small rooms, often with limited natural light (no windows) and maybe a candle. Thankfully, the GY-HM100 provides three preset buttons. I programmed one preset to quickly crank up the gain, and I used a second as a toggle for a zebra pattern to minimize overexposure.

After shooting this project, I am a big fan of JVC's decision to record on SDHC cards. I always have a still camera with me, which also uses SDHC cards, so it's convenient to share one type of recording media between both. I never had to worry about humidity issues, which have slowed down some of my other tape-based projects in the past, and the camcorder's dual-slot design allowed me to change SDHC cards on the fly without missing a shot.

The JVC GY-HM100 can record in Apple QuickTime .mov files, which can be directly edited in Final Cut Pro.

I miss having zoom controls on top of the handle, and I'd like some sort of iris control near the focus ring. That said, it's great to have access to a second record button on the viewfinder. With 1/4in. CCDs, the GY-HM100 is not going to provide the low-light performance of more expensive 2/3in. camcorders. However, with my small Litepanels Micro LED camera light, I was able to keep video noise to a minimum during my shoot.

It's always nicer to have interchangeable lenses, but I can't complain about the Fujinon glass on my GY-HM100. It offers crisp focus on close objects and provides smooth zooms. Plus, the built-in optical stabilizer made a noticeable difference in my handheld shots.

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Without this camcorder's amazing price, performance, and workflow benefits, I could not have captured such incredible images, moments, and stories from such remote parts of India. It's a rugged, lightweight, portable unit, and its ability to record native QuickTime .mov files provided me with some powerful workflow advantages.

Each night, I connected the camcorder to my MacBook via a USB cable and dragged the .mov files directly into an Apple Final Cut Pro folder without needing to spend time ingesting the footage. I also made backup copies of the video on my LaCie drives and reformatted the JVC SDHC media cards for the next day's shoot.

For me, the JVC GY-HM100 has proven to be enabling technology. It has put an incredibly powerful, affordable HD studio right in my hands.

The Embrace A Village project should be finished in February. I'm editing two 40-minute films for DVD distribution. The first will be geared toward the Christian community, the other for medical, scientific, and educational audiences. I also will edit two shorter videos for Web distribution. For more information about Embrace A Village, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, please visit www.embraceavillage.org.