Another LS300 review

[B.J. Adams]

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

[Steve Rosen]

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...

[Lee Powell]

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.

[B.J. Adams]

@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?

[Lee Powell]

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.

[B.J. Adams]

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...

[Steve Rosen]

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...

[B.J. Adams]

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.

[Lee Powell]

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

[Duncan Craig]

I quite like how my J-Log footage is holding up:

YouTube (Short URL)

(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'

[Scott Berrington]

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?

[Jim Nogueira]

Nice work, Duncan!

[Duncan Craig]

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.

[Duncan Craig]

Here's some BTS stills

[B.J. Adams]

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