Back to the LS300

[Steve Rosen]

I haven't been using my LS much in the last few months, but I needed to shoot a large fund-raising party last night for a documentary I'm making about a Latina activist. I knew it would be dark, noisy and elbow-to-elbow crowded so I opted to use my LS300 with a Rode NTG-3 mounted on-camera and a 17,5mm Norton f.95 lens. Even with the low light I kept the ISO at 400 and used the maximum aperture for a more filmic look (it's not a super-sharp lens wide open, but so what).. Again my favorite feature, the Prime Zoom, made it possible to work with a solid feeling manual iris and focus lens instead of one of those dreadful fiddly modern zooms (I have an Olympus 12-40, Lumix 35-100, EF 24-105 and EFS 17-55) and still get a little tighter if I needed.

In the olden times I often shot 16 with just a 10mm, and it was really fun shooting that way again.

I still believe that, feature-wise, the LS300 is the best designed camera available. If it was 10 bit I'd never put it down (are you listening JVC?). My biggest hardware complaint is with the aperture control that isn't very responsive with the available zooms - I will continue to wish that someone would offer and old-fashioned manual lens (like the Angenieux 9.5-57) with modern optics, but I know that'll never happen, so the Prime Zoom is a good alternative...

BTW, I should add that I use the LS on my shoulder with a Z-Finder (or Gratical) mounted off the handle, and a rail-mounted Aaton grip that I've had for over 30 years...