View Full Version : How's the zoom control?


Stephan Ahonen
April 29th, 2006, 08:41 AM
Now that I can actually record 720/60p, I think I might get one of these. I'm a sports photographer, so the high frame rate and a fully-manual lens are extremely important to me. I know that when I tried shooting sports on an XL1 I hated it, the lens just couldn't keep up with me, and I had a list of pet peeves about the lens a mile long.

But I was just wondering, how's the zoom control on the JVC stock lens? How fast does it go from full wide to full tele, and how good is it at doing very fine creeping zooms?

Steven Thomas
April 29th, 2006, 10:19 AM
It can crawl real slow.
If you need to do real fast zooms why not disable the rocker and go manual.

Stephan Ahonen
April 29th, 2006, 10:38 AM
It can crawl real slow.
If you need to do real fast zooms why not disable the rocker and go manual.

Yeah, that's what I have done in the past when I'm stuck with a slow servo. In fact when I shoot pro sports for live broadcast all the zooms on the big studio cameras are full manual. It's just nice to have a good fast zoom servo when you're shooting handheld.

Andrey Sherbina
April 29th, 2006, 08:19 PM
I bought HD100's and I use them to shoot conferences and meetings, and I had to buy JVC focus and zoom controllers and they are nice. I like zoom. It is fast enough, allmost as fast as manual control. I do not know speed in seconds.

Mark Silva
April 30th, 2006, 10:28 AM
Stephan are you going to use a different lense? The stock one shows CA after about 75% zoom. I do use it and try never to go in that far, until I get an adapter and the S16 lense setup.

Stephan Ahonen
April 30th, 2006, 11:31 AM
I might stick with the stock lens for a while until I can afford high quality glass. I flipped through the Canon catalog and thought I found one I wanted until I noticed it was $25,000. Eek.