Part 1 of GY-LS300 Field Report

[Steve Mullen]

My report on the LS300 went live today on The Broadcast Bridge:

https://www.thebroadcastbridge.com/c...campaign=Daily

Noa reports that 120fps HD will be available in April.

Part 2 (Working with J-log) and a possible Part 3 (Creating a Filmlook with the LS300) will follow "shortly."

We are now deciding if an in-depth on Log and LUTs should precede Part 2. Curious how many feel they would like an in-depth on LOG and LUTs.

[Noa Put]

Great article Steve, Log and LUTs is still some kind of mystery to me and it would be great, not just for me, but for anyone to gain better understanding how to handle these. For instance, I need to shoot a interior redesign of a building soon and I will be dealing with harsh contrasts if I am shooting on a sunny day, I think shooting in JLOG would have an advantage but have no idea how to get a nice image out of it.

Also getting a filmlook out of this camera would be very interested to know about if you have a secret formula to share with us :) The general consensus seems that people find this camera has a broadcast video like image with lot's of detail and accurate color representation but that it is nowhere near in displaying a filmlook, personally I find that the term "filmlook" is the most over- and misused term in this digital age, I watch a lot of films that play in cinema and whenever I hear someone claim they provide cinematic films with a filmlook I see something different compared to the jvc look but it mostly don't even come close to what I perceive as a filmlook so I would be very curious and interested to see what you have come up with. :)

Anyways, eventough the number of active ls300 users on this forum seems to be very limited I am sure your articles will benefit many and the best part is, it's free :) Keep up the good work.

[Lee Powell]

Great work, thanks for the link.

With J-Log1, I've been slowly warming up to using it for production work. Its main value to me is also its major drawback - no in-camera adjustments are needed or allowed. Your only choices are setting exposure and white balance. That makes J-Log1 pretty much foolproof for commercial shoots, where consistency and reliability are top priorities. But it also makes on-site review of footage problematic - how much do you want your clients to see before you have a chance to grade the footage with a good LUT?

Before J-Log1 arrived, shooting with the LS300 was much more of a nail your shot in-camera proposition. While it could be graded as well as any 8-bit H.264 camera, the LS300's limited dynamic range and mediocre low-light performance made in-camera tweaking preferable. What really made that approach pay off was JVC's adjustable Pedestal, Gamma and Shadow controls, which enable you to boost shadow and mid exposure while keeping highlight exposure unchanged. With experience, you could get in-camera results that rival J-Log1's post-processed results, though not quite as much DR.

What I'd like to see in an in-depth article on J-Log1 usage is a serious attempt to analyse the LS300's log curve and produce a technically accurate reference LUT. This is the major missing piece of the J-Log1 workflow that JVC has failed to provide. While I have enough grading experience to roll my own LUT's, they're more esthetically pleasing than technically sound, and I find the J-Log1 color palette a rather pale place to start from. I'd much rather use an independently calibrated LUT as a starting point. The undocumented LUT's JVC has provided via download fall far short of the mark, and have only been adapted for use with Adobe Lumetri, making them completely useless for my purposes.

[Steve Rosen]

Thanks for the article Steve, very informative... I hope it encourages more people to consider the LS300 so that in the future we may see that 100/200 mbs option - and of course 10 bit.

This camera does everything the hoped for AF200 would have done, plus more (like Prime Zoom).

Lee (above) I agree that JVC really needs to provide a pro-quality out-of-the-box LUT for J-LOG1. I know they're listening. maybe it'll come with J-LOG2?

[Steve Mullen]

JVC did release a LUT and I've used it to turn J-log to ready-to-use REC.709.

Thank you all for your kind comments. I will post links this weekend -- although I think JVC has these same links.

I think I will do LOG/LUT before Part 2 of my review because although I thought I understood this stuff, when faced with an actual camera I had to go back and really dig in. It's like I thought I understood RAW until I had a Digital Bolex. Amazing how one can think they understand something until faced with doing something.

I realize WE are not many -- but JVC used to post links to users groups. Maybe they could do this again. For many years they posted links to my PROHD Handbooks. I think I've written about five. I still have people buying my 2008 GZ-HD7 HDV camcorder eBook!

PS: Did you notice an airplane in the sky in Figure 19?

[William Hohauser]

Excellent article. You have increased my admiration for this camera and solidified my intention to get one this year and get rid of my annoying Panasonic GH2 (I'll keep my equally annoying GH3 as it's a great unmanned wide camera that can record for hours).

[Lee Powell]

Originally Posted by Steve Mullen

JVC did release a LUT and I've used it to turn J-log to ready-to-use REC.709.

I tried the Adobe daylight version of JVC's LUT pack in After Effects on an outdoor shot. The resulting colors were oversaturated and the dynamics were still flat. What I want is a reference LUT that's independent of color temperature and documented with full calibration details. Lacking that, JVC's LUT's are not even useful as a starting point for further grading.

[Steve Mullen]

I use a LUT only for logging, trimming, and editing in FCP X. Then I turn it off and grade in Resolve.

Alternately, create a Preset with the JVC LUT gamma bumped up and dial down saturation.

[Alex Humphrey]

My minimal experimentation with J-Log and the JVC LUT for FCPX was mostly decent out of the box, however I had digital video noise in unexposed flat fields. J-Log being 800 ISO and some noise, I seem to have alleviated this by going into my settings and changing my J-Log default setup of having Gain Preset Low from ISO 800 to ISO400 in the switch settings. Perhaps an engineer can explain how shooting ISO 800 is the preferred method for HDR/WDR Log to get the maximum dynamic range, but I would prefer no video noise.

Anyway chased my cat around the property for a while with my Rokinon 8mm fisheye and I think I have eliminated the slight video noise in shadows. In fact I changed my gain LMH from 800, 1,600 and 3,200 to 400, 800 and 1,600 and planning on just shooting 400 for the time being.

[Duncan Craig]

I've found while shooting in Log that min/max exposure meter shows the maximum recordable value is reduced to 400 when you set the gain down to 400.

Presumably the camera's dynamic range peak will be reduced...

[Lee Powell]

Originally Posted by Alex Humphrey

J-Log being 800 ISO and some noise, I seem to have alleviated this by going into my settings and changing my J-Log default setup of having Gain Preset Low from ISO 800 to ISO400 in the switch settings. Perhaps an engineer can explain how shooting ISO 800 is the preferred method for HDR/WDR Log to get the maximum dynamic range, but I would prefer no video noise.

In ITU709 mode, the minimum ISO is 400. If you swtich to J-Log1 from ITU709 mode, the camera will multiply your current ISO setting by 2, hence you get ISO 800 by default in J-Log1 mode. However, there's nothing "preferred" about ISO0 800, you can easily adjust J-Log1 to ISO 400 and save it as a preset. But if at some point you switch into ITU709 mode and then back to J-Log1, it will silently reset the camera back to ISO 800. To avoid this quirk, always use your ISO 400 preset to switch into J-Log1 mode.