Category: FocusPulling Original

30 October 2015

Watson Duo Charger Base Station review (and chance to get it for free)

Written by Paul Moon

UPDATE: Thanks for entering this contest! The winner, Brian Henderlong, is announced below. More contests are on the way, so watch the feeds for more, coming very soon. Special thanks to B&H Photo and Video for sponsoring the prize giveaway.

a Rafflecopter giveaway
In a world of radically different standards, from lens mounts to flash memory cards, sometimes there’s a special kind of product to unify things we all have in common: like, the need for freshly charged batteries. And another thing: besides the travel-minded chargers we always get for free with each camera we buy, eventually we always return to home base (or studio space if you’ve got the room). Rather than setting out an octopus of cords and wall warts fighting for room on a surge protector, check out this Watson Duo Charger with interchangeable plates. I’ve been using mine for a few years now, and I can’t imagine working without it. You start by matching the base charger with a pair of plates that you choose, based on the battery type you want to start with, but the thing that’s so friendly and easy about this system is that the plates are under two bucks, available for every camera battery type you’ve ever seen (or heard of).

Another feature that very few camera battery chargers have is a percent-full readout, and the Watson Duo Charger has a backlit LED display showing the percentage full, with bar graphs, for each of the two sides. I found myself using it most often to see whether I even needed to bother charging a battery, because normally a charger just tells you whether it’s charging, or done – that doesn’t always help, because all batteries accept a little charging at first, even when they’re mostly full. Seeing how full is a big time-saver.

And then, what if you need to charge away from your base? Still worth investing in this system? Well, you could always bring the Duo Charger with all the different plates you need, as it’s not too big (and I like the way its power cord terminates in a standard AC plug, rather than a wall wart). But for even more portability, there’s also a wall charger you can buy, to slide any one of those plates into. It has retractable prongs as well, with a single LED to tell you when it’s finished charging.

The plates snap into place firmly, whether into the duo charger or travel charger. You may find that removing a battery from a plate actually causes the plate itself to slide out from the charger, though; it’s a compromise between making the tension too strong for the batteries, and too weak for the plates, but I found that getting into a habit of holding down the plate whenever removing a battery is the solution. Another feature I like is the 5 volts DC USB power port on the side, once again sparing us from yet another adapter in the mix.

You can get it for free (an $80 value), courtesy of B&H Photo and Video, by racking up points above to increase your chances before this contest is over on November 13 at 4:00 p.m. EST. Your odds are good, and if you win, you get to choose your version of battery plates. Good luck, and thanks for checking in! If you have any questions or concerns about how this cool new web app works, please leave them in the comments below.

October 30, 2015 FocusPulling Original Leave a Comment

27 October 2015

Speedmaster 25mm f/0.95 Lens for Micro Four Thirds

Written by Paul Moon

I was at PhotoPlus Expo this past weekend in New York City while visiting for a film festival I was in, and with only a half-day to make my rounds among familiar faces and brands, it was all talking and no filming. Just when it occurred to me that I should interview someone, the whole thing was over, and (as you know if you’ve ever been to one of these things) at the exact closing minute, convention center crews started rolling up the carpets and unscrewing the booths.

So, this video has pretty bad audio (even after ripping out the noisy gunk, as best as possible using Izotope RX 5), and not much happens here, but at least we get an exclusive glimpse of this exciting new miniature lens by Zhongyi. Under the name Mitakon, they’ve created an unbelievably tiny 25mm prime lens in the Micro Four Thirds format, which is on a crop lens pretty long (for example, it’s 57.5mm on a Panasonic GH4 shooting 4K video, and 75mm on a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera shooting 1080p video, compared to full-frame). But without thorough testing, I could at least see that the optical quality is tack sharp, and the focus/aperture rings feel very smooth and surprisingly functional despite the tiny size of the lens barrel. Its click-less aperture ring is filmmaker-friendly, and its all-metal construction feels durable. And as you’ll see in the video, it comes in a leather case that, while not something you’d bring onto a set (dudes), does suggest the manufacturer thinks you’re special: and it’s priced generously low, at $399, which is even less than the original estimate of $499. Compare that to SLR Magic, who are starting to price their lenses into the stratosphere for no good reason…

You’ll hear in the video too, that it’s shipping now from the manufacturer itself, and from B&H in the United States within the next couple of weeks.

Since most Micro Four Thirds bodies like the Panasonic GH4 lack image stabilization, this fully manual lens at such a long focal length will be a struggle to use hand-held. But with proper mounting stabilization, this can be a winner. Consider, too, that a Micro Four Thirds sensor has one Achille’s heel: poor low light sensitivity, and thus digital noise. With enough latitude to open your aperture up to f/0.95, your footage has a fighting chance in less-than-ideal lighting conditions.

October 27, 2015 Blackmagic Cinema Cameras, FocusPulling Original, FocusPulling Original Video, Panasonic GH3, Panasonic GH4 1 Comment

19 October 2015

Atomos Master Caddy Docking Station: Got Something Faster?

Written by Paul Moon

When you use an Atomos recorder like the Shogun or Ninja Assassin, there’s no getting around using those Master Caddy II cartridges. Kind of a hassle, they’re not tool-less, with four tiny screws that need a screwdriver. Other than adding a layer of plastic protection, they don’t really do much, and become disconnected easily, as they merely use the same standard flimsy SATA drive connector designed for use inside of a computer case.

There’s always been the Atomos Powered Docking Station product that mates your Master Caddy II with your computer via USB 3.0 using its single main blue plug, or USB 2.0 using the included pair of plugs. Even at faster USB 3.0, which has a maximum theoretical speed of 5 gigabits per second, the Atomos Powered Dock has often been dogged with the suspicion that it’s a bottleneck, slowing down transfers. It might be the internal USB 3.0 controller, or something else; but rather than figuring out the reason, I thought I’d run it through some tests and let the data speak for itself.

Problem is, that Master Caddy II also increases the height and width of the cartridge surrounding the standard SATA connection, so you can’t just plug it into a typical 2.5″ hard drive dock. You can’t even plug in a standard internal SATA connector, because it won’t go in all the way as the caddy recesses the connector a bit. So, to do this test, I had to go through the hassle of unscrewing the four caddy screws, and remove the hard drive for testing.

The most simple but also ideally spec’ed tool for this is by Sabrent, seen in this picture, which plugs straight into the bare 2.5″ SSD, and terminates in a USB 3.0 plug (also the additional USB 2.0 connector for more power, if necessary). It features a protocol called UASP that may or may not be available to you, depending on (for example) your computer’s motherboard, for up to 20 percent faster speeds.

Benchmark using Sabrent Dock — Benchmark using Sabrent Adapter

Connected into the Sabrent, my SSD holding numerous Atomos Shogun files performed appreciably faster, as seen in my actual benchmark report above. However, the speed improvement was mainly in the write speed category, which is far less important for the primary reason you’d hook up your Master Caddy II: you’re only reading from it most of the time, to ingest footage onto your hard drive for editing.

Benchmark using Atomos Powered Docking Station

You can verify this above by comparing my benchmark using the Atomos Powered Docking Station, where the write speeds are considerably slower. Are these tests of much practical value? Not really. First, you still can’t plug the Sabrent Adapter straight into the SSD when it’s screwed into a Master Caddy II – though it would have been nice to use the Sabrent instead, because of its faster speeds, UASP compatibility, and more portable form factor. Second, and again: this isn’t really a workflow for writing onto your SSD, mostly just reading from it for ingesting media, so the speed gain isn’t such a big deal anyway. But I’m glad I checked this out, hoping you find it useful too – and please let me know if you’ve gotten different test results using other products.

October 19, 2015 ARRI Alexa and Amira, Blackmagic Cinema Cameras, Camera User Groups, Canon Cinema EOS, Canon EOS 5D Mark III, Canon EOS 70D, Canon EOS Rebel/70D/80D, FocusPulling Original, Panasonic GH3, Panasonic GH4, Reblog, Sony a7S, Sony CineAlta F3/F5/F55, Sony NEX-FS100, Sony NEX-FS700, Sony NEX-VG10/VG20/VG30, Sony PXW-FS5, Sony PXW-FS7 atomos, master caddy, ninja assassin, sabrent, shogun 1 Comment