15Nov DSLR FILM NOOB Podcast Episode 65
Episode 65 of DSLR FILM NOOB podcast is up. Mitch from planet5D.com joins me to discuss Electronic Tilt-shift, Sony rumors, Sun spots in the a7 line, Micro SDXC cards and more.
You can find the show notes here. You can find the show on itunes here, Soundcloud, or under the podcast tab above. You can also leave questions on reddit at r/dslr.
15Nov Tascam DR 70d tripod mount is junk
I picked up the Tascam DR 70D a few months ago to replace my Tascam DR 60D. The DR 60D has been a great unit over the last few years and still does a decent job, but the attractive size of the new DR 70D tempted me into an upgrade.
There are a number of good upgrades to the Tascam DR 70D over the original. With the DR 70D you get individual volume controls for every channel, XLR channels for every input, a 3.5mm stereo input option for channels one and two and a better overall control layout. Menus are virtually unchanged and recording mode labels in the menu system are still as confusing as the original.
Audio quality in the Tascam DR 70D is pretty comparable if not identical to the Tascam DR 60D. Each channel features the same 64db of gain available in the DR60D, and the noise floor seems to be about the same so don’t expect much change in that department.
While the Tascam DR 70D is thinner and provides a lot of upgrades to its older brother, there are still some problems with build quality. This is actually one of the more frustrating aspects of the DR 70D design. Tascam lulls you into a false sense of security with the what appears to be a metal 1/4 20 tripod mount. While the mount is metal, it’s cheap cast pot metal. This is something that’s supposed to support a full DSLR camera and lens , yet it snapped off on me after only a few uses.
While I under understand that a device at this price point isn’t going to be as durable as a $1000+ Sound devices unit, it should be able to withstand normal use. After all, every picture you see of the Tascam DR 70D shows it under a camera, yet mine managed to break under the weight of a 5d mark III and Tamron 24-70mm f2.8 lens. While that’s a somewhat heavy combination, it shouldn’t be enough to send your camera crashing to the ground.
This piece of low grade cast metal and a bit of plastic are all that keeps your camera gear in place. It’s unfortunate that Tascam decided to go cheap on this portion of the DR 70D, This problem ends up being a black spot on what would other wise be a great little field recorder.
13Nov PNY 64GB Micro SDXC card $28 for fast performance
I’ve been using Sandisk micro SDXC cards for a few years now and despite the claims of quality I’ve often had dropouts. Normally it doesn’t start causing a problem until I get a good 20 or 30 minutes of footage on a card, but lately it’s been getting worse. Now that I’m starting to put the Z-cam E1 through testing, I figured it might be time to pick up some more reliable cards.
After doing a little bit of looking around, I came across these 64GB PNY cards. I haven’t taken a look at the price of Micro SDXC cards in 6 or 7 months and the $28 price tag was surprising. I asked around and it turns out a number people I know were actually using these cards with positive results across the board. With that in mind I figured I may as well pick one up for testing.
Crystal Disk Mark tests were extremely respectable for such an affordable card. Read speeds are hitting higher than advertised and write speeds are keeping up with more expensive Lexar x1000 cards of the same size (and double the price).
I’ve been using the 64GB PNY card in both the Z-cam E1 and the Hero 4 black edition of that last few days for a number of shoots. No drop outs so far, if it makes it through another few weeks of shooting, I might pick up a couple more. I’m still blown away by the $28 price tag.
13Nov DSLR FILM NOOB Podcast Episode 64
Episode 64 of DSLR FILM NOOB podcast is up. Devin from impulsenetworks.tv joins me to discuss the Metabones firmware update, Tile light, Panasonic’s YAGH adataper price cut, Kickstarters and more.
You can find the show notes here. You can find the show on itunes here, Soundcloud, or under the podcast tab above. You can also leave questions on reddit at r/dslr.
10Nov Samsung 950 pro 512GB m.2 SSD, fastest SSD yet?
Over the last few years, SSD drives have advanced in leaps and bounds. We’ve gone from $300 for a 120GB glitchy Sandforce based SSD to 1TB SSD’s that saturate SATA bandwidth and now to the Samsung released the M.2 950 pro which is arguably the fastest consumer drive yet to hit the market.
At a price of $349, the 950 pro can handle sequential read speeds of up to 2.5GB/s and sequential writes of up to 1.5GB/s. Those speeds are more than double any standard SATA SSD and slightly better than Intel’s 750 drives in both price and performance.
On the downside, you’re going to need an M.2 slot that supports 2280 drives, if you don’t have that you could always fuss around with one of these adapter. If you’ve built a new system in the last few years, you might already have what you need. My mid tier Gigabyte LGA z97 board for example has a single PCIe m.2 slot that might soon have one of these installed.
When I look at a drive like this, I start to wonder what I would do with the speed. While it’s easy to arbitrarily say “give me more power”. I should probably take a closer look at what the bottlenecks are in my system before I start adding yet another SSD to the mix.
09Nov First look at the Z-cam E1 camera 4k M43 body
I often complain about kickstarter projects, over the years I’ve had bad luck with ruffly two out of every 3 campaigns I’ve contributed to. However I do still occasionally put my money down on things that look extremely interesting and the Z-cam E1 camera looked good. The promise of the kickstarter campaign was a Gopro sized 4k capable M43 camera with the same sensor as the Panasonic GH4. At the time, this was the only camera of it’s type that actually had a release date. Since then, we’ve had announcements for cameras like the DJI X5 and Blackmagic Micro studio, but the Z-cam E1 camera is still basically the first to market in this category.
Build quality is a mixed bag. The E1 is made out of metal and feels nice and solid, but the fit and finish falls into the prototype category. Buttons are spongy, protective flaps for usb ports fall off easily and the flange fits some lenses overly tight and others loosely.
The battery compartment on the E1 requires a custom battery. While Z-cam is kind enough to include two batteries with the E1, you currently can not buy extra batteries and the only way to charge batteries is via the camera body. So you basically need to charge up both of your batteries, shoot until you run out of juice, and then charge again. If you would like to shoot longer, you’ll need a USB power pack and one of these barrel adapters.
On the bright side, we get a mini HDMI port instead of a micro HDMI port. The barrel plug supports 5 volts at 2 amps which leaves open a lot of power supply options. The wifi app works as good or better then the Gopro’s offering and the on screen controls are easy enough to figure out.
Shooting with the E1 isn’t bad but, the firmware is still pretty rough. The quality of the 4k image recorded (above) running firmware version .16 (earliest version) is what I would describe as cellphone camera quality. Down scaled to 1080p, the image is a bit better then a gopro, depending on the lens you choose. At the kickstarter price I paid, I would say it’s still pretty decent, but with full fledged cameras like the Panasonic G7 capable of shooting 4k at a price of under $600, a camera like this is still a pretty hard sell.
I’ll continue to shoot with the E1 for a few more weeks before I decide whether it’ll be put on ebay or stay in my normal camera collection. Right now, i’m not very impressed with image quality, the lack of things like audio level meters, poor implementation of Z-log, and poor focus support for Olympus lenses make this a questionable purchase. Hopefully we’ll see major improvements in the E1 camera when future firmware updates are released. I’ll continue to test, and post more results as spend more time with the E1. As of right now, i’m lukewarm on the camera.
09Nov DSLR FILM NOOB Podcast Episode 63
Episode 63 of DSLR FILM NOOB podcast is up. Mitch from planet5D.com joins me to discuss the E1 camera hands on, Olympus Air, Black magic Studio camera, Sony a68, Canon 4k and more.
You can find the show notes here. You can find the show on itunes here, Soundcloud, or under the podcast tab above. You can also leave questions on reddit at r/dslr.
04Nov DSLR FILM NOOB Podcast Episode 62
Episode 62 of DSLR FILM NOOB podcast is up. Devin from impulsenetworks.tv joins me to discuss the Samsung 950 pro, Robocam, Olympus 300mm, snapseed, and more.
You can find the show notes here. You can find the show on itunes here, Soundcloud, or under the podcast tab above. You can also leave questions on reddit at r/dslr.
02Nov Olympus Air is a strange little camera
The Olympus Air is a strange little lens sized package. It’s not really a full fledged camera and yet it’s not really a toy. In away it’s very similar to the concept behind the Sony DSC-QX100. However, unlike the QX100, the Olympus Air is equipped with a Micro Four Thirds lens mount as well as the same 16 megapixel sensor seen in other Olympus bodies.
Olympus really seems to offer up a strange mix of features with the Air. As a camera you can actually put a lens on this thing lock in some settings and use the button at the top of the air to half press for focus and full press to blindly take pictures of the world, no cell phone or tablet required. It might sound strange, but there is an interesting and attractive appeal to shooting blindly and discovering what you’ve collected at the end of the day. I’ve take this out a number of times with a couple of primes and just snapped off random shots all day long. It’s fun to do, but you really have to get a feel for what your images are going to look like.
They haven’t skimped on image quality with the Olympus Air. You have a very nice M43 sensor that’s capable of 1/16,000 of a second shutter speeds which reduces the need for ND filters in full sunlight. Olympus also provides 10 frame per second burst mode so that even shooting blind something is bound to turn out. These features are very impressive for something this size and price. On the other hand you have very simple things like ISO and aperture settings stuck behind a clunky menu system on a wifi tethered phone or tablet and an app that’s a bit painful to use.
Charging the Olympus Air is very simple, it uses the same micro usb connection that’s seen on most modern cellphones. If you want to shoot blind, you can save battery life by turning off Wifi and if you really get desperate for power, 4 screws will allow you access to the battery for somewhat labor intensive change out.
The 1/4 20 mount at the bottom of the Olympus Air and it’s tiny size allow you to mount this thing anywhere. Combine that with wifi controls via your cellphone and you have an interesting option for both video and stills. If you need to use this like a Gopro with an interchangeable lens, the Olympus Air could easily be mounted in a car, refrigerator, glove box, or anywhere else a tiny remote camera would come in handy. It isn’t an action camera, but it comes close.
While the Olympus Air is a very interesting concept you have to ask yourself “who’s it really for?” If you are looking for a fun affordable camera to play around with, the Olympus Air isn’t actually ready to go out of the box. You’ll need to invest in at least one lens if not more and you’re still working with a capable yet crippled little camera.
For me, the only way the Olympus Air really makes any sense is if you already own an m43 camera and lenses. At $299, it’s a great little backup stills/video camera if you are willing to put up with the headache that is the Olympus O.A. app. After all it’s cheaper than a actual camera body and the 16 megapixel sensor does a great job with stills and video.
What do you guys think, is it worth a video review?
01Nov DSLR FILM NOOB Podcast Episode 61
Episode 61 of DSLR FILM NOOB podcast is up. Mitch from planet5D.com joins me to discuss Leica SL, Light L16, drones, Nikon d810, and more.
You can find the show notes here. You can find the show on itunes here, Soundcloud, or under the podcast tab above. You can also leave questions on reddit at r/dslr.
