JVC LS300 : Going to have one for 2 Weeks, Want me to test something 4 U?

[Gary Senda]

Hi Ebrahim,

Here's a little review about the camera. If you go on dvxuser or other forums, you can read negative comments by panasonic fanboy: I can understand them, they are very frustrated and without any perspective for the future (as me 2 weeks ago). I think this camera has many advantages:

1) the VSM, the S35 sensor and the micro4/3 mount give you a unique lens versatility: you can mount every lens you want, digital or manual focus. Furthermore, this camera has allowed me to save all the money I've invested in M43 lenses

2) VSM is well enginereed: as you can see in the first frame, there are not evident artifacts

3) someone has said: this camera has not a filmic look. Sincerely, I cannot understand this kind of opinions by people that has never tried it. Surely S35 sensor is more filmic than m43 one. Secondary, the camera is fully configurable, has a cinema gamma and a cinema color matrix and you can achieve the look you want. You can even set the gamma value, but no scene files. Finally, in PP you cam make what you want

4) EVF is terrible. On the other side achieving a perfect focus is very easy. All my manual focus clips in 4k were simply perfect, without any external monitor or viewfinder. There are 2 focus assist: magnify and color peaking with B/W screen: you can use them in the same moment, they are fully compatible. If you use the 2 FA at the same time you have always a perfect focus, even in 4k and even with a fully open iris

5) Achieving the right exposure is not as easy as making focus: no waveform, no histogram, only one zebra position, in wich you can set the lower and the upper limit: you need to practice

6) the use of the dual slot is very clever: you can make a. series recording (with hot swap); b. parallel recording (a copy of the clip in the second card, very useful in important productions); c. normal recording in slot A and proxy recording in slot B and d. you can record continuosly on the second slot, regardless the pause button

7) there's a connector for external power supply (no false battery), very useful. If you connect an external power to the camera you can charge the battery while shooting (good) but no battery charger in the package. On the other side, a shotgun mic is included. No remote control also. If you need remote, you can use your smartphone.

The camera is small an light, but if you use a serious lens it is unbalanced and is mandatory that you put an hand under the lens in handheld shooting.

Finally there are the streaming functions, but I have never tested it.

The biggest lack? An effective monitoring of the manual exposure. This is my first request for a future firmware (if that were possible with a simple firmware update)

 

Regards

 

Gary

[Gary Senda]

Hi Ebrahim,

Here's a little review about the camera. If you go on dvxuser or other forums, you can read negative comments by panasonic fanboys: I can understand them, they are very frustrated and without any perspective for the future (as me 2 weeks ago). I think this camera has many advantages:

1) the VSM, the S35 sensor and the micro4/3 mount give you a unique lens versatility: you can mount every lens you want, digital or manual focus. Furthermore, this camera has allowed me to save all the money I've invested in M43 lenses

2) VSM is well enginereed: as you can see in the first frame, there are not evident artifacts

3) someone has said: this camera has not a filmic look. Sincerely, I cannot understand this kind of opinions by people that has never tried it. Surely S35 sensor is more filmic than m43 one. Secondary, the camera is fully configurable, has a cinema gamma and a cinema color matrix and you can achieve the look you want. You can even set the gamma value, but no scene files. Finally, in PP you cam make what you want

4) EVF is terrible. On the other side achieving a perfect focus is very easy. All my manual focus clips in 4k were simply perfect, without any external monitor or viewfinder. There are 2 focus assist: magnify and color peaking with B/W screen: you can use them in the same moment, they are fully compatible. If you use the 2 FA at the same time you have always a perfect focus, even in 4k and even with a fully open iris

5) Achieving the right exposure is not as easy as making focus: no waveform, no histogram, only one zebra position, in wich you can set the lower and the upper limit: you need to practice

6) the use of the dual slot is very clever: you can make a. series recording (with hot swap); b. parallel recording (a copy of the clip in the second card, very useful in important productions); c. normal recording in slot A and proxy recording in slot B and d. you can record continuosly on the second slot, regardless the pause button

7) there's a connector for external power supply (no false battery), very useful. If you connect an external power to the camera you can charge the battery while shooting (good) but no battery charger in the package. On the other side, a shotgun mic is included. No remote control also. If you need remote, you can use your smartphone.

The camera is small an light, but if you use a serious lens it is unbalanced and is mandatory that you put an hand under the lens in handheld shooting.

Finally there are the streaming functions, but I have never tested it.

The biggest lack? An effective monitoring of the manual exposure. This is my first request for a future firmware (if that were possible with a simple firmware update)

 

Regards

 

Gary

​

[TSV]

So, I am back from my little shooting trip (See picture below ;-)) and I was testing the LS300 this afternoon (on the balcony) with my 12-23mm since I was not really impressed by the Olympus selection they gave me... Well I have to dig into the settings (I rested the camera) but look at these 3 samples. It look like that the colours are smoothed with some kind of candy effect. Are my eyes deflective or? 

Also if you check on the 3rd video, I have some strange effects on the electric poll on the right side, something that I never saw with my GH4 for example.

Folder with 3 sample videos : https://mega.nz/#F!K582lYRB!0qD2XJUVcgbEseinx6lSEA 

[jagnje]

looks good to me...

[TSV]

Hi Everyone

I just uploaded a few more videos. You have all de details in a TXT file which will give you the details on each files 30 or 24p, shutter speed, ND or not, ISO...

https://mega.co.nz/#F!eg1TXKLL!WBv81oNbDStmsc0rYvkPtQ

I will try to shoot low light video, skin and rolling shutter soon.

Also, you will see a "BAD" tag on two files. This tag mean that despite having on the LCD everything perfectly done (AF, Zebra and so on) the result was disappointing.  

So far there are a lot of thing that I like on this camera and a lot that I do not like (50/50). I like the fact that you can set a limit on the low and hight aperture range. For example on my 12-35mm I set the lower limit to 2 and the upper limit to 8, since I know that above F8 my lens really sucks (Diffraction). Another thing that I noticed and I will need to test it again is that the LS300 seems to provide a wider zoom (with the same lens) than on my GH4... I will try this more carefully tomorrow, but each time I had to significantly move the LS300 toward the subject in order to achieve the same result as my GH4 was offering.

Finally, and I will go on in details soon on this, but the LS300 give an impressive result in closed environment when you have full control on the lighting and so on. Outside and on the go the LS300 is much more difficult to master and the LCD monitor and viewfinder really does not help.

Cheers

[richg101]

Another thing that I noticed and I will need to test it again is that the LS300 seems to provide a wider zoom (with the same lens) than on my GH4... I will try this more carefully tomorrow, but each time I had to significantly move the LS300 toward the subject in order to achieve the same result as my GH4 was offering.

 

​the sensor is s35 on this so will give you a wider fov than the gh4 from the same lens.  It also sounds like there is a feature which maps the image circle of a lens and crops in to accommodate - since it's a s35mm sensor in a m4/3 mount, maybe this is to accommodate the fact that users might use m4/3 lenses with image circles not capable of covering s35.

[TSV]

​the sensor is s35 on this so will give you a wider fov than the gh4 from the same lens.  It also sounds like there is a feature which maps the image circle of a lens and crops in to accommodate - since it's a s35mm sensor in a m4/3 mount, maybe this is to accommodate the fact that users might use m4/3 lenses with image circles not capable of covering s35.

​Hi

You are talking about the VSM, where indeed you can "Crop" to match your M43. But I was not expecting (even with the camera set to M43) that it will give me a wider view. This is actually a good news ;-)

[IronFilm]

Remember also the GH4 has a small crop in 4K relative to m4/3

[TSV]

Hold on guys, it seems that the UL on Mega did not worked as planned.

[TSV]

Everything is back to normal now, I re-uploaded all the files.

[Gary Senda]

It is normal that in 4k this camera has a wider zoom than GH4: when in 4k, the GH4 uses a smaller portion of the m43 sensor. In addition, some m4/3 lenses (as the zuijo 14-35 f2) produce a bigger circle than the standard m43 one and you can set VSM at 86% without vignetting. The downside of this camera is the poor support for manual exposure: only one zebra position, no waveform, no histogram and for this reason my trend is to underexpose. (If they only could add a waveform in a future firmware update). For the remaining, I like this camera and it is enough for my needs

Regards

Gary

[TSV]

I am uploading 2 new more video (Skin tone)... It was taken with what JVC recommend for M43 lenses an Olympus 12-50mm 3.5-6.3. ISO was at 640 each times and at F7.1.

https://mega.co.nz/#F!vw1D2ThD!Z1sNqpoujmjrng4ePpHFEw

I will take some low light videos tonight before I send back the camera.

My final thoughts are pretty much the same. This camera will give you great videos if you are fully controlling your environment (Lighting and such) not that good for a "Run and Gun" Camera. 

The menus and UI is so 1999, the LCD and Viewfinder is really bad, missing so many things that could help you shooting a perfect video like a better EA meter and even an Histogram. Again Sold a 496,800 Yen in Japan (Above 4000 USD) I would definitively buy something else like a pair of GH4 or A7S with a Shogun, or... an URSA Mini 4.6?

[sanveer]

I just noticed, that the JVC is planning on bringing a lot of features via a new firmware update, which will only further improve the features on the camera:

http://pro.jvc.com/prof/attributes/features.jsp?model_id=MDL102318

[arellaTV]

Whoa. What could 800% dynamic range mean. Isn't that a huge increase o.O.

[IronFilm]

Think that means 3 stop increase? (If 200% increase means one stop etc)

[sanveer]

Whoa. What could 800% dynamic range mean. Isn't that a huge increase o.O.

I believe that means 12 stops of Dynamic Range.

Also pushing the Bitrate substantially higher to help preserve details better,  noy to mention easier for post work. 

[arellaTV]

Oh okay, I get it! Thanks guys! Seems pretty solid. Curious to see what the footage will look like and if anyone would do any DR tests (xyla chart or even informal ones).

Btw, if you put a speed booster on this, would it cover the full size of the super35 image sensor? It would be cool if a speed booster could expand the circle closer to aps-h or full frame. I tried searching for details on this but can't seem to find anything. The Metabones XL page says it isn't compatible with LS-300, so I presume that means all of the MB mft speedboosters are incompatible. Still thought I'd ask!

[TheRenaissanceMan]

It's just a measure of how much highlight DR is preserved by the camera's REC709-compliant gamma curve. Remember, a stop is a doubling of light. So 800% puts you between 4 and 5 stops over middle gray. 

[Guest Ebrahim Saadawi]

It's just a measure of how much highlight DR is preserved by the camera's REC709-compliant gamma curve. Remember, a stop is a doubling of light. So 800% puts you between 4 and 5 stops over middle gray. 

So judging by the standard rec709 DR the J-LOG should have about what stops with an ''800%"? Such a weird way for then to declare the DR.

[Mattias Burling]

Would love to see a user review with new firmware. 

That zoom rocker thing is also cool as hell imo.