JVC GZ-VX715 Everio

My girlfriend won a camcorder in a lottery drawing, took tickets for 10€, and won a JVC GZ-VX715SEK Everio Full HD Memory Digital Camcorder. Quite a nice camera, we don't have one yet, not that I wanted to buy one, but if you get it for free, you take it :)

It's a new model from this year, and it's listed at Amazon for 340£.

Only downside is, that I bought her a new Panasonic Lumix TZ31 for christmas, didn't give it to her yet, but it was already bought before she won the camcorder. The Panasonic can also film in full HD 1080p, on the other hand, the JVC camcorder can also make photos :dry:

The Pansonic even has a bigger optical zoom, so I don't know if we should sell the camcorder later, or just keep it? Which one would be the best for both tasks, or does everyone has its own strengths?

Have you used them both much?

A good thing to do would be to use them both for a while, and then compare the usability and output quality and decide from that which is best.

She got it 3 days ago, and it's still packed and wrapped.

I will give her the Panasonic camera only for christmas, so she doesn't have it yet. Perhaps we will sell the JVC camcorder, so we will leave it as it is for the moment, I don't want to test them both, and then later sell one of them, you will only get the full price if it's still new, unpacked. Perhaps we can also go to a local shop and try to get it replaced by something else.

The JVC camcorder has some very nice features, such as low light really wide 1.2F aperture, zoom mic, optical stabiliser, smartphone/tablet app support, WiFi etc... but for still photos it's using interprolation technology to produce 10MP images, so they are not true 10MP images, but 3x 3.3MP images merged together (one for each RGB light source), so for stills it isn't so great.

It all depends if you intend to take more video or still photos. A camcorder will always be more convenient and give you more control over filming, whereas a camera will have better optical zoom, and larger optics and sensor for still images, and in turn that benefits video, giving it more of a film look/feel than a dedicated camcorder, but often has slower focusing during video recording than a dedicated camcorder.

My wife has a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ100 and it takes really nice photos. It is more of a bridge camera than a compact though, but I would pick that over a camcorder. It's video recordings look good but it is more fiddly to film with than a dedicated camcorder. Audio is normally better in a camcorder too, although it all depends on make and model.

I would suggest leaving the Camcorder packed up until you have opened the camera at Christmas and had chance to test it out. If its video abilities are good enough for you needs then sell the Camcorder. If however you will be wanting to do a lot of video then I would keep both and use each for its main purpose.