$3000 4K FULL FRAME HIDDEN GEM: JVC GY-LS300 - YouTube

This guy is definitely amped - must have been a long day - but I pretty much agree with his assessment... It is too bad that there isn't a way to control noise in camera - my solution, when intercutting with BM cameras is FilmConvert.. You can dial in some grain..

I do always disagree with the "plasticky" comments though - modern plastics are pretty good (look at football helmets - not that JVC uses that material).. I've been using mine pretty hard for well over a year with no problems - and plastic is light, so there's less mass, and mass can cause problems as often as the structural integrity of the material..

He didn't touch on my main gripe - 8 bit... To truly outdo a DSLR, or compete with Sony & BM, a camera these days needs 10... That's why I tend to use mi Pockets and Micro more for jobs that will require serious grading...

Still love the "on paper" features he mentions...

Stronz is mistaken, there is no "noise reduction" in the LS300. In J-Log1 mode, the LS300's Sharpness control is automatically turned OFF (as are all other Camera Process settings except White Balance and exposure). As a result, you will ALWAYS need to increase sharpness in post, in addition to applying a LUT (and noise reduction if needed). You can confirm this by putting the LS300 in ITU709 mode, and manually turn the Sharpness setting to OFF. Of course, sharpness has nothing to do with the selected gamma profile, and it would REALLY help if JVC enabled the Sharpness control in J-Log1 mode as well.

Unlike the LS300, the Panasonic GH4 and its predecessors do not allow you to turn off the camera's Sharpness control. Even when set at minimum sharpness, these cameras will enhance the sharpness of both JPEG and H.264 images. Although the GH4 is blessedly free of moire, its Optical Low Pass Filter is designed for 16 megapixel still photography rather than 1080p or 4K video. As a result, a significant amount of the crisp detail you see in GH4 video is due to sharpness-enhanced aliasing artifacts. The LS300 looks soft by comparison, primarily because its OLPF is designed for 4K video rather than still photos.

@Lee I don't need all this sharpness imposed on me by the camera, at least if I am trying to achieve a filming look? soft is better right?

Yes, the thing about sharpness is that you can always enhance it in post, but once it's burnt in, you can't easily remove it without degrading the image. J-Log1 footage looks soft straight out of the camera, but the detail is there, it's up to you to decide thow much of it to bring out.

Thing is, I don't want sharpness. I was "soft" cinematic look.

Stronz only used a rental for a couple of days, so I don't think he's going to rent one again just to make another youtube video.

I would like to see samples of this "plasticy" look he's talking about.

I've mostly used REC709 on the Ls300 and graded lightly in post, and the footage holds quite nice...

As an old film guy, I'm pretty sick of all the 4K show-off footage, and really prefer a softer look as well...

As for the plasticky look, I know what he means... occasionally you're a situation where a person's face looks Photoshopped... It happens often on broadcast football pregame shows, where they're trying for a lot of detail and chroma - and it just looks like s**t...

Once in a while I get something similar with the LS300. Just last week I shot an interview (in J-LOG) with a young Mexican man for a documentary I'm making, and sections of it have that artificial pasted-on feel... As I said in an above post, I use FilmConvert to soften, dialing down the gamma and grain to my taste.

I'm really spoiled by the excellent S16 sensor Micro and Pocket cameras, and work to get my LS footage to match them as closely as possible.. And it does in most cases...

The LS300, of course, has the advantage of the S35 look, built in NDs, XLR phantom audio, and it has the VSM feature so I can use the lenses from my BM cameras and make them even more versatile...

In this price range there is no one perfect camera... For convenience, the LS300 is miles above anything else... and for the cinema look, you can get it in post with a little experimentation and patience...

So basically this "plastic" look in skin tones is not something that Stronz is imagining out of nowhere.

I never noticed this, but I'm mostly shooting in REC709 so far.

In my experience with cinematic jargon, "plastic" is the antonym of "filmic", both terms highly correlated with certain well-known brand names.

I quite like how my J-Log footage is holding up:
https://youtu.be/SrDgNZPvYq4

(The link won't be around much longer - I'm waiting for a replacement product image then it'll go live at 1080p on the client's website).

Plasticy? Not a phrase I'd use.
I guess one man's 'noise' is another man's 'grain'

Duncan, your shots look great! That was a lot of shooting by the looks of it, and with nice movement. What lenses did you use? And how did you grade the footage?

Nice work, Duncan!

Cheers Gents.

There's wasn't much of a brief for this job, so I went on a quick recce and the client's only real concern was that we had to keep disruption to a minimum.

The production line switched to making our specific colour and design when we needed to start filming, and we only had the parts to produce five of our ovens, so I had to film it as fast as I could.

There was some daylight in the factory as well as fluorescents and some other nasty discharge lighting. But the strong key lighting in the video is from a 1.25kw and a 2.5kw Arri MSR. Hiring the 2.5 was probably overkill on my part and AFAIK it was dimmed throughout as well as heavy diffused. Next time I'll just hire 2x 1.25kW instead.

I filmed it all using my trusty Hague Multi-Jib on a Heavy Duty Manfrotto tripod, and that's on a Vinten tripod dolly so I can wheel it around the location on my own if I need to. The client were watching my 22 inch location monitor via wireless HDMI.

I always joke with my assistant about lens choices, because although I own a set of five Samyang t1.5's I mostly seem to just use the 35mm. I used the 85mm for the shots of the team and I think the 50mm was in there for one or two shots as well.

In FCPX I used the 'Epic' look from Luster Grade on an adjustment layer. And I've done a few colour corrections under the adjustment layer to balance between shots. The file on YouTube is a quick export at 720p, but the proper 1080p image is clean and sharp.

Here's some BTS stills

@Duncan thanks for sharing all this with us. It's always a pleasure to read & learn. Thanks

duncan-

the footage was lovely.

those rokinon/samyang primes did just fine.

and, of course, so did the jvc ls300.

i even thought the youtube compressed version was also very pleasing.

thumbs up to your obvious talent and thank you for sharing the "how-to".

be well.

rob
smalltalk.productions

Does anyone use the Panasonic GH4 as a second camera with the LS300? I'm particularly interested in how the Log recording on the GH4 might match.

I've just got a Zhiyun Crane gimbal and although it could manage the weight of the LS300, the camera is a little too big to fit, so I'm using an a6000 for now. But the GH4 might be a good fit.

Mannequin Challenge BTS - YouTube

All I can say to that is that I applied the JVC LUT to some GH4 footage I received that was shot in LOG and it worked great. Personally I have a GH3 and it mostly matches to the LS300 in Rec709.

Does anyone use the Panasonic GH4 as a second camera with the LS300? I'm particularly interested in how the Log recording on the GH4 might match.
I worked with Paul Leeming to fine-tune a calibrated LUT to convert LS300 J-Log1 footage to Rec 709 specifications. The resulting colors match very well with GH4 Cine-D footage converted with Leeming's GH4 LUT. Both LUT's are available for a nominal download fee at the Leeming LUT One site:

Leeming LUT One (http://www.leeminglutone.com/)

I bought the Leeming LUT for the LS300 a while ago. I tried it for a short while, but didn't get the result I was hoping for, so I returned to the JVC LUT and did further corrections using the controls inside mLUT.

I'm particularly interested in seeing GH4 Log footage next to LS300 log footage.
From what I can tell online the Cine-D mode isn't what I'm looking for.

By the way, in the UK the GH4R (which includes extended record times and Log) currently has £200 cashback, so it's only £799. That's a steal, right?

I'm only scratching the surface of color correction, but I'm surprisingly like the 3 strip emulation consistently and doing a minor S curve to that (color finale plug in) .

I wonder about a B camera for my JVC LS300 as well. GH4 (or 5 when it comes out?) or the lower resolution but less compressed Blackmagic Pocket camera and up rez to 4k to match? Maybe just shoot prorez out of the BMPCC since so I don't think I really want to deal with post with raw right now. (though I still covet the Digital Bolex D16) that I never got.

@Alex - I'm currently considering the Panasonic G85/80 and GX85/80 as B-cams as well. The built-in 5-axis image stabilisation looks too good to pass up at that price! Panasonic picture profiles have always been a conundrum, they've changed them with nearly every G, GX, and GH model, and provide little information on how they actually look. The AF100 and GH4 V-log L firmware debacles soured my attitude toward Panasonic's customer support and their refusal to boost 1080p bitrates above 30Mbps has been disappointing. The GH4 is a remarkable camera, but even its 4K bitrate is marginal - 100Mbps compared to the LS300's 150Mbps. I think the GH4's best results are seen only when using an external 10-bit recorder or downsampling its internal 4K video to 1080p.

@Lee. good points. Makes me want to just get a Blacmagic Pocket and see what I think of working with raw as well as their 10bit pro res with film gama. I could imagine the camera I didn't get Blackmagic production 2.5k of a fun pocket cinema camera with a couple lenses for traveling and uprez to 4k if I had to. probably mostly shoot ProRez instead of CineDNGraw at first. The most interesting things I saw with BMPCC was removing the IR filter and shooting video in Infrared ( Blackmagic Revival: Experimentations with Infrared video and stills | Philip Bloom (http://philipbloom.net/blog/infrared/) ) For multi cam shoots for simplicity... maybe smartest thing is a 2nd JVC LS300. though a less compressed camera would be nice.

Last posts are very interesting, as I was thinking of getting rid of my Nikon DSLR and get the new GH5 (when it comes out in March).

GH4 will go down in price further as the GH5 will come out.I think the price of the GH5 will be $1800-$2000 so one has to see if it's worth getting or just get another LS300....

GH4 will go down in price further as the GH5 will come out

Currently it's as low as it gets, there is a big cashback now from Panasonic if you order from the UK, I can get the gh4r (without recording limit) for 770euro excl vat right now which is almost half the current price that I have to pay in Belgium.

Too bad the Cashback will end when the GH5 will come out!!

Last posts are very interesting, as I was thinking of getting rid of my Nikon DSLR and get the new GH5 (when it comes out in March).
As great as the LS300 and GH4 are with 4K video, they both leave a lot to be desired in low light conditions. Yes, the speedbooster is a godsend and I can shoot at ISO 1600, but not without relying on Neat Video to clean up the shadows. Nikon DSLR's fit right into MFT's high-ISO performance gap and Nikon lenses work beautifully with the speedbooster. While Sony makes good low light cameras as well, Sony has few lenses and doesn't interoperate nearly as well as Nikon with MFT. In cases where I have just one chance to nail a difficult shot, I'm going with Nikon.

For what it's worth, panasonic has made improvements in dealing with noise at high iso's, my little gx85 looks more usable at 6400iso then my gh4 does. My Jvc on the other hand has some pretty ugly noise patterns at 6400iso

JVC GY-LS300 2017 REVIEW | "FULL FRAME" 4K for $3,000 - YouTube

Speaking about the GH5 here is a frame. Ungraded, VLOG, 10bit, 4K...
Can I say that there is too many noise?

Footage comes from here: http://download2117.mediafire.com/vg5dzggviodg/m5rrourqi6sp8a1/Neumann+Films+-+Panasonic+GH5+Footage.zip

pretty hideous grain. any idea what ISO it was shot at? 5,000 or so? I get a little with the JVC LS300 at about 1,600 on J-Log, though it is not nearly as noisy as that frame grab is. I normally keep mine at 400 (Manually overriden ISO to lower than default J-Log)

Yeah.
The point I alrrady own a good camera at 400 iso, BMPC.
Now I am looking for something run n gun (hd) that needs to be brighter, faster to setup, but with footage that can sit next to BM's or can replace it in my corporate things (4k)
Wull LS300 work for me?

I'm coming round to the idea of buying a GH5 now.

Moreso since Newsshooter uploaded three really informative videos, this one in particular: https://youtu.be/uMrekQZWGjs

I don't think that frame grab is at all representative of normal shooting. Just look at the 'Ice' documentary, lots of handheld with available light. Looks really great, even at 4k60p with a 180 degree shutter.

Ok. Want to sell it?

Are you looking to buy a second hand ls300?

Sell the JVC you mean? No the LS300 will be my main camera for a few years at least.
I'm talking about the GH5 as a second camera.

I bought a Zhiyun Crane gimbal recently and while my a6000 works well on the gimbal https://youtu.be/sTziAJq5dFA the picture isn't amazing and there's no Log option. Also I'd need something better than the kit lens (probably the SEL16F28).

The a6300/6500 seem to have major problems with overheating and rolling shutter.

I'd considered the GH4R as the price has been as low as £740 recently, but I think the lower noise, better autofocus and in camera stabilisation will make the GH5 a better option even though it's a lot more money. Obviously I already own the 12-35 and 35-100 so I won't need any new glass, and the older lenses will have a firmware update to bring them up to date with the GH5 dualIS II. The XLR audio interface looks pretty good too.

Funny because you can find many used c100 and c300, FS5 and FS7, Gh4, AS7m2 etc.... but it serms that all JVC LS300 camera owners want to keep theirs!
:-)
Must mean something good

It might mean that sales of the LS300 are incredibly poor, and the resale value is really low!

Seriously though, there's enough demo material around to show what the camera can do.
If you think it will work for you, then go for it!

I might sell mine, I have used it mainly for weddings last year and only to cover the ceremony or a occasional speech but I do prefer smaller camera's, like the GH4, just because I carry a few of them in a backpack and they are much easier to move around and set up and also much easier to shoot handheld now with the IBIS.

I find the image out of my ls300 better then my panasonic camera's, the color looks more natural which sometimes gives issues matching it up with my gh4 or gx80, as soon as I got a taste of working with IBIS on my gx80 and a g80 that arrives next week I knew that this is what I actually need for my kind of work.

Of all my camera's that I use now at a wedding, the ls300 gets used the least which is why I"m having doubts if it's worth holding onto it.

Noa.
You are in Europe so it could be easy to get it here in Italy.
Let me know if you sell it.
My email is marcello.mazzilli@gmail.com
Maybe it could be good for both to speak noe about the price even if you are not sure yet to avoid kerping up an option that might not work for one of us. Let me know.

My camera kit, in one bag, is the LS300 as the main camera, a GH3 as the second camera and space for my GH2 if I really need it. Plus extra batteries, camera mikes, compact LCD light and AC adapters. I can pack my tripods into one case as well.

I have a job soon where a musician/programmer is doing a concert using an iPhone app he created to generate sound so I'll set it up with one GH locked down on the iPhone which will be on a stand, one GH as the wide shot and I'll operate the LS300 as a handheld on a SpiderBrace shoulder mount. He'll later edit the footage to create a promotional film for the app.

I skipped the GH4 as it didn't add much that I needed (V-Log is nice but not compelling) and the GH5 still holds the DSLR camera form factor, which after using a real video camera like the LS300, I am not interested in it. The GH cameras are very, very good cameras and you can get excellent results but the LS cameras are designed for video work.

A friend who I work with on occasion got the GH4 after seeing what I could do with the GH3 and he usually uses it in 4K as an unmanned camera while he uses his Canon 7D as the main camera because that was what clients were demanding for awhile. Now his corporate clients are less interested in the Canon and are actually interested in his standard video camera which is a JVC HM700!

Great William!
What lenses do you have in your magic bag?

I rarely take the LUMIX 20mm off the LS300 camera and if I do it's usually for the Olympus 45mm. I use the Virtual zoom extensively. That gives me enough range for my main work which is filming interviews or doing handheld. I also have the LUMIX 14-140 lens, a 14-45 OIS lens and a 12-42 zoom. The 14-140 is terrible on the LS300 but works fine on the GH3 outdoors. The 14-45 OIS is for handheld in decent lighting conditions but it has to be treated with respect, it doesn't behave like a video camera OIS. The 12-42 lives on my unmanned B-camera for wide shots of performances and sometimes interviews.

@Duncan

Hi've paused my LS300 purchase for now.
Got a deal with another camera and I'm going to test it. If it ends up not working for me I think I can sell it in a few month and even make money on it and then go back to think at the JVC.

Guess which camera is it?
4:2:2: 8bit 4K in camera 300mbits
Fixed 10x lenses
Log file