BTM_Pix

Sometimes the cheap plasticy build quality of the LS300 is a blessing

I've bought the old fella a Ninja V so I'm off to shoot some Superbike stuff in 4K60p on Monday.

They used Sony camcorders on the Shuttle and you can buy a mission flown one here https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SPACE-SHUTTLE-STS-112-FLOWN-CAMERA-NASA-With-COA-HISTORICAL-RARE/153362548148?hash=item23b51ec5b4:g:Gv8AAOSwdIFX1xwI I wonder what people who like to moan about gimbal shots being too floaty think about shots taken in actual zero gravity? "I find the shots they're getting from it to be a bit too gimbally for my tastes".

I always got the feeling about the LS300 that it was developed almost like a research project. Like a small team were spun off from the main development team to see what they could do if JVC decided to have a new division alongside the ENG stuff. I think that is why it has got a lot of innovative features in it because they were seeing where they could go with it and weren't restricted by having to fit it within the existing range. I think thats also why it has got a lot of features added to it over its lifespan as it is a bit of a passion project for the spun off team and whoever their project sponsor is within JVC. It reminds me of the Xerox PARC thing in a way so maybe another company will come along and incorporate the innovation into their own products and make more of a commercial success of them like Apple did in that instancr.

I'll put something up about it when I get back from this trip. I'm not a great one for phones but it is well suited to this task. The back of it is very grippy which is ideal unlike my Samsung which is like trying to hold on to an eel that has been coated in washing up liquid.

And absolutely punching the air level of good news for us Leica SL owners, especially the EF adapter. For Novoflex, possibly not such good news.

Had an interesting chat with JVC at BVE Expo today. They acknowledge the LS300 is a cult classic, which is evidenced by them selling more now than they did at launch. They had it on show with a Ninja V which again they acknowledge as the solution to the achilles heal of the viewfinder. It looks very well matched with it actually. The slow burn of the sales over such a long time hasn't resulted in mega sales in total and as it such an outlier of a product for them there seems little prospect of a follow up anytime soon.

If you want a completely left field suggestion then the Blackberry (yes Blackberry) Key One is quite cheap now. The reason I mention it is I have just got one and will be doing an update next week that has a special version for it. The reason being that it has a real keyboard so is perfect for operating the app without having to use the screen. I just need to do a custom mapping for it as I have got for the gamepads.

If you want a bit of an insight into how relatively rare this camera still is in the wild, I doubled the amount of Pocket 4K cameras that were being used at the BVE Expo in London today when I got mine out of my bag. I plonked it down on a table that Zeiss had left brochures on but abandoned to setup my app and immediately drew a crowd who thought I was an exhibitor. Of course I did not disabuse any of them of this belief and promptly started demoing the living daylights out of my app.

On the Google Play store I will pop the link up on Monday.

Live update from the exhibition floor... Shite. A day at the zoo tomorrow beckons.

I think the phrase "cinematic colour" relies far more on the first word than the second particularly when bearing in mind how many films that helped define and still inform the language of cinema were shot in Black & White. Ciematic, to me, is determined by every single element in the frame being directed and controlled. Everything from the lighting to the shot selection to the location to the art drection and on and on has to be intended and managed deliberately. If you haven't got that right before it hits the sensor then no amount of lossless codecs or grading is going to be able to inject that. Its why the "run and gun" approach, to me, just isn't compatible with it outside of some very specific circumstances. I think you can try and ape the aesthetic somewhat but with the best will in the world, pointing a "cinema" camera at three people at a table in an Italian restaurant is never going to look like it did in The Godfather unless you control all of those moving and non-moving parts. The good news is that it doesn't have to as it can still look "nice" and be exactly what you need but you just have to manage your expectations, especially as a one man operation. The better news is that if you do want it to look like The Godfather then there has never been a better time to be able to do that than now due to the accessibility of equipment. But the rest of it in terms of controlling and creating that image before it gets to your incredibly affordable sensor, and the graft that goes with it, remains the same.

Because they can is the short answer. It is entirely subjective term so can be interpreted in many different ways by many different people. And is. If I'm being cynical I'd also say including the word 'cinematic' in any YouTube camera review or tutorial is guaranteed to get clicks from those seeking an answer to the question. The correlation between such videos on YouTube and the offering of a LUT pack or ebook or some such by its creator is reasonably high too. There is no answer to the technical question about how to create something that is so subjective. And if you search for the threads on here that have attempted to do that then they don't end up well.

Does anyone else seem to remember that this question has popped up on here previously at some point? As far as I recall, the general consensus was that you need to go into the Settings menu of the camera and make sure "Motion Cadence Colour Science Mojo" is set to ON. Have a go with the Search option just to make sure I've remembered correctly though.

€11.99 Monday

I'll be attending for a couple of days from tomorrow afternoon. I'm doubtful there will be any new products to lust over but I'll keep you informed if there is anything noteworthy. If you have any requests (I think a few of use were interested in the new Sennheiser XSW 2.4gHz system ?) then I'll try and accommodate. If there are any fellow EOSHD members who are going that have a Pocket 4K then I will have the release version of my 3C app that you can have a look at it if you find me. And as a bonus, if you are the first one who finds me then you can have a free copy installed right there and then. The challenge of course is to find me based on the fact that you only have pseudonym and absolutely no picture of me to go on In the best tradition of the old British newspaper competitions you will also have to say "You are BTM_Pix and I claim my free Android app"

Here is the completed User Guide. So you know its very, very imminent now EDIT >> REPLACED WITH NOT COMPRESSED TO DEATH VERSION User Guide For 3C v1.1 by CDA-TEK Ltd .pdf

With a 0.7x adapter the overall crop factor is 1.05 so a 50mm gives a FOV of 52.5mm

You put your finger on the orange dot in the middle and slide it to the left to move focus nearer and right to move it further away.

I'm not sure I follow why it removes that possibility? With a full frame lens you set the VSM scaling to 100%. So a 50mm lens on a 0.7 speedbooster would then be 52.5mm FOV (50 x 0.7 x 1.5). Not quite full frame coverage but very close. And faster. Yeah, it certainly helps something cheap and cheerful like the Tamron, especially as it sharpens it up a bit as well which is important at the long end with that lens. With it having IS it is actually a good all round solution for ENG stuff with the LS300. That Canon 18-135mm would be very interesting regarding if the servo zoom add on could somehow be integrated.

Its now getting to the point price wise of being silly. If we get our Samurai V at NAB then it will be very tempting.

True enough (and with an external recorder, albeit a more expensive one, it actually blows the LS300 away) but the OP has MFT lenses so I was factoring that in and it was also responding to his point about it being superseded if he bought one.

Yes, it acts as an APS-C camera would so you get full coverage with an APS-C lens and a crop of a full frame one but obviously you can also use a Speedbooster on the full frame lens to get a lot of that crop back as well as an increase in speed. One aspect that seldom gets mentioned is that if you want you can actually use an APS-C lens on a Speedbooster to make it faster and then use the VSM to crop back into it to counteract the vignetting. So, for example, I have a Tamron 16-300mm all purpose travel zoom that is a bit slow at f3.5-f5.6 but on a Speedbooster it becomes a far healthier f2.8-f4 and I set the VSM to 85% to take out the vignetting. Ditto for the Sigma ART 18-35mm f1.8 it becomes f1.2 and the VSM at 85% maintains its field of view as though it were on an APS-C camera. With a little extra reach as well of course courtesy of the additional zoom function.

You can use the slider on the app screen, the increment/decrement buttons on the app screen, the one shot AF button on the app screen or the joysticks. The rationale is to be able to focus (and do all the other controls) without touching and thereby disturbing the camera when it is on a gimbal/tripod/jib.

Then no. It is two separate things. The live view from the camera is purely for monitoring (using some separate hardware) as the camera does not allow external control to simulate its screen being tapped.