JVC GR-D290 review

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 stabilisation worked well in the first half of the zoom range, but once you zoom past about 15x, you'll want a tripod to stabilise 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 64mm (2.5-inch) LCD is better for this purpose. It offers decent detail and is visible even in direct sunlight.

The GR-D290'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.

Image quality
Though the JVC GR-D290'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 artefacts around some sharp colour 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, colours 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. Colour was relatively accurate, though the automatic white balance sometimes ended up choosing a bluish tinge. Shooting in the Night Alive mode brought out colour 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 in both standard and Night Alive modes, but it's relatively weak, so it worked only for subjects within a metre or so 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-D290's CCD's resolution is actually slightly lower than the 1,024x768-pixel 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 artefacts evident in indoor and outdoor photos alike. These shots might be suitable for email, but don't plan on using the still-camera function for prints or important memories.

Edited by Aimee Baldridge
Additional editing by Nick Hide