4 Panasonic lenses -- does anyone use these.

[Steve Mullen]

Because JVC sent me several lenses I never had a chance to try other lenses. I know I don't want long or heavy lenses. I want more than the 3X zoom. And, I want full control by the LS300.

1) Power zoom
2) OIS on/off
3) Focus control for AF
4) Aperture control for AE

I'm attaching pictures of my current list of candidates.

double-click to enlarge

[Paul Mailath]

how about you list the lenses, might make it a bit easier?

[Steve Mullen]

Did you not read?

I'm attaching pictures of my current list of candidates.

>>>>> Double-click to enlarge <<<<<<

Did you not see the pictures?

[Paul Mailath]

so you want some advcie but you're too lazy to list the lenses, you just throw up a pic instead - good luck

[Noa Put]

What's not clear for you? The image shows the 4 lenses he wants more info about, unless you are too lazy to click on the link :)

[Jim Nogueira]

The Panasonic 12-60 is interesting in that it has a decent range; too bad it's f/3.5-5.6. You can get a used 14-140 (newer version) for around the same price, and get a lot more telephoto, slightly less less on the wide end. If the 12-60 was 2.8 or better, it would be on my list to check out.

The others don't do much for me personally.

[Frank Grygier]

Steven, I was wondering if you have considered cine primes. Rokinon with a Metabones or Veydra? I know no full control but the look and performance of the Veydra is quite impressive in my opinion.

[Noa Put]

I have the 12-32mm but my daughter took it with her on holiday, I"ll ask if she can bring it with her next time she visits so I can check for you.

[William Hohauser]

I have the 14-45 arriving tomorrow. Mainly for the OIS. Not so happy with the 3.5 f but we'll see how it works.

[William Hohauser]

The 14-45 Lumix lens arrived and I can verify that nearly everything works. Once again I am stymied by the OIS as I am with the 14-140 lens, the JVC menu has it blanked out and turning the lens OIS switch on and off doesn't give me a perceptible difference with my brief experiments although it seems compared to when I handled the camera with my Oly fixed 45mm the Pan 14-45mm gave a steadier image with the OIS on at full zoom. Less of my natural jitters made it into the image but I can't say for sure. A handheld shoot tonight should give me my answers if I use the lens. More on that in a paragraph or so.

The image from the lens is very nice. It vignettes on the full sensor and worse, the lens hood masks the sides. Zooming in to 18 eliminates the problems. If I use the lens, I plan to use the in camera zoom tonight and manually focus. We'll see.

Now why I am a little hesitant to use the lens tonight. I immediately put the lens on the LS300 and got this bizarre tearing of the image effect. You can see this in the first JPEG attached. At one point the camera went black and white for a frame and the tear moved from the top of the image to the lower part as you can see. Alarmed I thought my camera had gone bad so I immediately put on the Oly 45mm. It was fine as the second JPEG demonstrates. I put the 14-45 on my GH3 and it worked fine, JPEG 3, it's a nice lens. Figuring that some sort of electronic glitch had happened, although I can't say what, I put the 14-45 back the LS300. Works fine now!!!

I am bringing back up lenses for tonight as I was going to set the GH3 as a wide and do close-ups with the LS300 taking advantage of the focus assist. Who knows if the tear will return or not, at least it's obvious in the LCD and viewfinder and I can switch lenses quickly.

[Lee Powell]

The lenses listed in the OP are all variable-aperture consumer-grade kit lenses designed for casual still photography. Their zoom, focus and iris mechanisms are simplified to make them as light and compact as possible. As a result, both focus and aperture diverge as the lens is zoomed. Panasonic's electronic lens control compensates for these inherent mechanical flaws, but it cannot operate quickly enough to maintain an illusion of constant focus and aperture settings while zooming the lens. In practice, these lenses perform adequately for still snapshots and consumer videos. They are poor choices for professional purposes where reliability and predictable operation are high priorities.

In my experience, the OIS feature in the LS300 works only with a few of the current generation of Panasonic Lumix lenses. The f2.8 12-35mm and 35-100mm zooms appear to work reasonably well, but there are many reports of aperture fickering and OIS jitter with these zooms. I suspect JVC engineers have been stymied by Panasonic's proprietary lens control protocols and refusal to provide full technical documentation.

For shoulder-mount ENG purposes, I'd be interested to know if the OIS features of the Lumix 30mm f2.8, and 42.5mm f1.7 or f1.2 lenses are supported by the LS300.

[William Hohauser]

That's very true but there is only one LUMIX lens that holds the aperture thru the zoom range that I know of. There are no affordable M4/3 parfocal zoom lenses unless you have a suggestion. This is where the virtual zoom comes in handy on the LS300. 4x of safe focus live zoom.

The venue I was filming at had four colored lights illuminating the performance area and the f3.5 of the 14-45 wasn't cutting it on the LS300 so I put the lens on the G3 which is slightly better at low light than the LS300 and used my 1.8f 20mm on the LS300 which I had to push to 21db. The G3 was at 6400iso. Really gritty looking, yuck.

[Steve Mullen]

Originally Posted by Lee Powell

Their zoom, focus and iris mechanisms are simplified to make them as light and compact as possible. As a result, both focus and aperture diverge as the lens is zoomed. Panasonic's electronic lens control compensates for these inherent mechanical flaws, but it cannot operate quickly enough to maintain an illusion of constant focus and aperture settings while zooming the lens.

I try not to zoom while shooting, because I just don't like the look it creates.

I'm sorry I didn't add that lightweight was perhaps my priority. I tried the Rokinon JVC sent and it made the 300 front-heavy and overall way too heavy. Of course, I liked the fact it used the full sensor.

The 12-35 would be my choice -- but a 3X range seems a bit small.

So the 12-60 looks like my only choice. f/3.5-5.6 is nasty, but I realized I almost never shoot indoors or at night. My problem is reducing light in Vegas or Asia.

Does anyone have experience with it on the LS300?


PS: I just went thru everything I could find on Amazon and I don't see any Panasonic primes in the 60mm to 80mm range. With virtual zoom this would yield about a 15mm > 60mm to a 20mm > 80mm lens "zoom" lens. As a prime it should be faster than a zoom. Of course, it would need OIS. Did I miss something?

[Rob Katz]

Originally Posted by William Hohauser

That's very true but there is only one LUMIX lens that holds the aperture thru the zoom range that I know of. There are no affordable M4/3 parfocal zoom lenses unless you have a suggestion. This is where the virtual zoom comes in handy on the LS300. 4x of safe focus live zoom.

The venue I was filming at had four colored lights illuminating the performance area and the f3.5 of the 14-45 wasn't cutting it on the LS300 so I put the lens on the G3 which is slightly better at low light than the LS300 and used my 1.8f 20mm on the LS300 which I had to push to 21db. The G3 was at 6400iso. Really gritty looking, yuck.

william-

thanks for the share.

how did the ls300 look at +21db shooting with a 20mm/1.8?

be well.

rob
smalltalk.productions

[William Hohauser]

Not good. A very unpleasant digital grit makes it look like DV uprezed to HD. Of course the lack of any white light worsened the problem. Red and blue have less bandwidth during compression so they suffer more. If the venue had a couple of white key lights, even at the low illumination, things would have looked much better. I have attached one still from the shoot, it's not the worst from the evening and it's not the best. Also it's reduced from 1080 to 720 as an experiment to reduce the noise which you can see is still there.

Now heavy film grain I don't mind due to it's random and circular nature. It can work with the right footage. The grain coming from the LS300 has a rectangular look. The GH3 didn't look much better, just less digital. I am looking to see if there is any method to reduce the rectangular grain by covering it with an artificial film grain filter. The footage is already strange looking from the lighting so it's not going to be made worse by film grain. Or just edit the footage as is and reduce the final product to SD for online distribution.