Review: Polaroid Battery grip

Since I used to use my 5DMrkII mostly to shoot video or take architectural pictures, I did not feel like I needed to buy a battery grip. Especially since the one sold by Canon has a prohibitive price. But now that I have resumed shooting stills in a semi-serious way and most of my shots are portraits, I decided I needed one before damaging my wrist.

The product

After some googling, I bought the Polaroid grip on Amazon. Note that it is also available for the 7D.

I used to use a Canon battery grip with all my previous cameras and I really appreciated its texture and built quality. The Palaroid grip feels pretty much the same. The finish is not as great at what you can find on a Canon grip but it is close enough for me.

Trigger

The one big difference, and that is something you notice as soon as you take you first shot, is the different feel of the trigger button. It does not feel Canonish at all. You really have to press it hard to take the picture. Is this a bad thing? Not really, you get use to it after a few minutes but it could be an issue for people who put the AF and trigger on the same button (which is a bad idea anyways)

Handling

The handling is excellent. It does not feel slippery at all and the added weight really improve the balance of the camera.

Comfort

As you can see in the pictures, the grip texture is very similar to the one on the camera body and it not just a textured hard plastic like some other grips.

Batteries

While the grip can use 2 standard Canon batteries, you can also use an adapter to use standard AA batteries which is a great thing when you are travelling.

The features

Canon grip only provide additional battery capacity and better handling. Polaroid grip on the other hand is going the extra mile to add value, such as…

Intevalometer

The key feature of the grip (and the reason I picked it) is that it comes with a built-in intervalometer. It means you have one less piece of gear to put in your bag. From now on, whenever you are shooting, if you see an opportunity for a time lapse, you can do it. This is something Canon should put in all they camera bodies, like Nikon, until then I will use Polaroid grips.

Clock

When the intervalometer is not used, it shows the time.

Remote IR trigger

To top it off, Polaroid added an IR sensor on the grip and gives a remote trigger. While this is a great addition, I think they should have put the sensor somewhere else because there is not much room for it to see the emitter.

The bad

I have used the grip for around 10 hours of shooting so far and it performs great but some things could be improved:

  • The documentation about how to use the intervalometer is erroneous! I am probably going to post a tutorial on this soon to save you all some time!
  • The grip texture attracts more dirt than the one on the body (as you can see on my pictures). Nothing problematic but if you are a neat freak, you should be aware of this!
  • I had some random issues with the back LCD/intervalometer. The screen did not lit up. The solution was easy and worked every time: pull the battery off and push them back in.

Conclusion

At 80$, the Polaroid grip is a steal. I know there are some cheaper grips on the market but this is the best I have found in terms of built quality and features. I can hardly see how this could be a bad purchase. Even if you dont think you need a grip, you will appreciate this one for its additional features.

Where to buy

It seems like only Amazon has these right now. And remember, by clicking the following link before making your purchase, you help support this site and help me convince my wife that I should be doing this for a living!

Polaroid Battery grip for Canon 5DMrkII

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When the minimalistic approach yields big results

We talk a lot about gear on this blog: tripods, rigs, lens, follow focus, etc… We take for granted that you need all of these to create anything that looks remotely professional. After all, if you dont have a super stable and sharp image, your end product can’t be good.

Well, Greg Watermann proves us wrong. Look at his coverage of the band Scars on Broadway.

Q: How many cameras do you think he used?

A: A single one and only two lenses: a Zeiss 1.4 prime and a venerable 24-105L4IS. Even better: he captured everything in a single night!

Last time Greg talked to me, the clip was in the YouTube top 50 music video, quite an achievement! His minimalistic approach gave great results and I am sure he will get more gigs in the future.

So what makes the clip so good?

First we have to give credits to the editor, Guzmanian, who did a great job keeping the intensity high during the whole clip. But he could only do this because Greg got such a broad variety of shots to pick from. And that is what I want to talk about…

What can you learn from this?

As I said in my last user submitted clip review, I only post clips shot by others when I think there is something to learn from it. In this case, Greg showed us how important it is to get A LOT of coverage (dont forget, he was the only shooter!). The more you have, the happier you will be when sitting in front of FCP.

The List

What ever you are shooting, would it be a concert, a conference or a wedding, capture as much as you can of everything! And dont stick with macro or close up shots. Use your wide angle to give a sense of space and dont be afraid to pan the camera too. This is something I personally have to work on, my clips tend to be too static (I blame my photography background for this)

Here is my quick mental list of must have shots, what ever the gig I am shooting:

  • People at the venue (dancing, drinking, talking to the camera,..)
  • Outside the venue (people in lineups, venue signs, shots of people inside from the window)
  • Props (glasses, microphone, console, napkins, anything that can be linked to the event)
  • Food (plates but also in the kitchen, plates getting prepared,etc)
  • Close up of actions (paying for tickets, drinks, people drinking, etc)
  • People putting their coats on/off
  • People moving in / out of the venue

All of these short clips can be used to put a sense of time/chronology to your film or can be used as transitions when you dont have anything else.

I never took the time to formalize, maybe I should. Do you guys use such a list?

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IndiSLIDER Mini Review

This is a post from our contributor Jeremy. Regarding my slider, well.. I am still working on it. Getting my electronic slider working has to be my longest project ever! Stay tuned!

I have recently purchased an IndiSYSTEM – IndiSLIDER Mini and as much as I want to say I am in seventh heaven with the thing, it has its fall backs. I know that to go truly “pro” you have to dish out some major money to get a rig that feels like it is solid and worth every penny. Being on a tight budget, and watching other reviews online I went ahead and purchased the deluxe version for under $200. It is a pretty solid piece of equipment. I purchased this piece before purchasing a full blown video tripod and that is a mistake. It nearly tipped my Targus tripod over, and getting a smooth slide was impossible. So for a while I was left with using the legs that came with the slider to get some of the shots I needed.

Usage

Sliders are really made for one purpose, and the IndiSlider Mini does it relatively well. It glides the full 24″ with ease. It has the slightest amount of give when it comes to wiggling on the track that I found cumbersome. The handle that comes with the deluxe model is a must for HDLSR users. Without it, it would be hard to brace your camera and your slide would be choppy. The thing I really dislike about the IndiSlider Mini is that it is loud. When experimenting with a faster revile focus there is a distinct and prominent sliding sound that occurs. If the shot you are making has no audio, or will be dubbed in later, there is no problem at all.

With the handle it is easy to steady the camera and make your shot look awesome, but if you do want to include audio along with the shot, you are better off keeping the sliding motion slow and keeping your ears open to get the shot done effectively. I ended up shooting a scene 5 times before I was happy with the sound quality.

It’s not that I think IndiSystems are bad, in fact I love their whole concept of being affordable to the budget minded film guru. I am still looking online for a way to quite the system down without the use of grease or lubricant, only because I don’t want the residue getting on my other equipment.

I would give the system a solid 3 stars out of 5. Affordability is awesome, it truly does what it was meant to do – if you decide to purchase it, go with the deluxe version – the handle alone is worth the extra money. The professional in me finds the loudness of faster revile shots annoying and it takes up time looking online for ways to get around it.

Pros

Affordable. I like the legs that come with the slider. It allows it to be set on a solid surface (ex: ground floor, table, etc).

Cons

Wiggles a bit and is loud when being slid at a higher speed.

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Review: DSLRBot (camera to iOS trigger interface)

Disclaimer: Alberto contacted me two weeks ago to place some ads on the site. According to my advertisement policy, before accepting to put the ads on the site, I have to test the product so he sent me the IR cable for free (but I had to buy the app on the iTunes Store).

Anyone who ever tried to do remote recording with a 5DMrkii will tell you: it is complicated. The RC-1 and RC-5 remotes only work if your are in front of the camera (facing the IR sensor)  and since they are using IR, anything standing between you and your camera will block the signal. There are other ways, but nothing simple and cheap.

Say welcome to DSLRBot !

DSLRBot is an iOS application which sends a IR signal via a cable plugged into the headphone jack to the 5DMrkii. The setup time is minimal and only requires you to carry a small cable in your bag. Yes, it is that simple!

Tests

I have played with the application in various conditions (inside, outside, cloudy day & sunny day) and I only had issue once in very sunny situation where the light would hit the camera IR sensor. This is a common issue with IR technology and the solution was to place the IR LED closer to the sensor and voila!

Is it reliable? Except in the situation described above, I never had an issue to start/stop a clip.

Something I have not tested yet: how long can you extend the cable and still get a signal? 6 feet is not enough for some of my special needs.

Other features

While I was mostly interesting in the remote capabilities for video recording, the DSLRBot can do more:

  • HDR bracketing (soon)
  • time lapse (very flexible)
  • very long exposure (as in over 30 seconds)
  • take still images (of course…)

All GUI pages are well done and easy to use. I really like the shot list feature in the movie mode: after you press the stop button, an entry is created in the shot list. You can check/uncheck the shot with a simple tap if you think it is going to be a good take. Once you are done shooting, you can email the list and use it to filter the garbage clips without having to look at them. Just make sure your camera and iPhone are in sync to prevent catastrophic errors.

Another nice feature of the app is how it records GPS location when you take stills. Simple and effective.

Here is a demo of how the HDR menu will work. This is not the kind of shoot I do these days but I may want to revisit my HDR skills to test this once it is released.

Value

This is not the kind of application you use everyday (unless you do specialized shooting), yet if you happen to need one of its features, you will be happy to have this little trick up your sleeve. The investment is minimal in both cost and gear space (who doesnt already have an iPhone?) so you can pack the cable in your bag every time you go out. If you think this is something you could use, get it now so you wont regret it when the need rises.

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iMovie 11 review

iMovie is one of these apps may proish shooter dont want to touch, yet could benefit a lot from. I know because I used to be in this category. iMovie felt too amateurish compared to FCP for me to even dare to use it. At each iLife release, I would give it a shot but never managed to complete a project, always feeling too restricted.

Enters iMovie11. It is still very amateurish at its core (Movie trailers & themes), yet it has some very practical features which make it a great tool to edit something in a rush or to get a draft.

Lets review some of its key features.

Good

Edit native H.264

The first of these features is that you do not need to transcode your clips to ProRes. It saves times and HD space so you can start editing as soon as you are home.

Visual segment selection

Being able to visually select clip segments without having to watch the whole clip is extremely useful. While it is not new and it is also (somewhat) possible in Final Cut, it has to be my favourite feature of iMovie.

Rolling shutter

This little checkbox took a lot of people by surprise. First because it is not advertised on Apple site and second because it actually works. Well, for panning shots. You still have to be careful about jelloying your clip but at least pans are not a dont-do anymore.

FCP XML export

Once you have your rough cut, you can export the clip into a FCP XML file to continue the edit in FCP (or Premiere). I dont know if this features was there in previous version but its the first time I went far enough in my edits to make use of it.

Less good

Clip import

iMovie gives you two choices regarding clips import: either move the files to your project folder or copy them. There is no way to just reference them. I guess the development team does not want to confuse users so they decided to put all project related files in a single directory.

Clip grading

No matter which clip I used, I never managed to make the adjustment sliders work. They systematically destroy my clips. If you are not planning to grade your clips in another software, I highly suggest to not shoot flat or you will end up with a near impossible clip to grade in iMovie.

Compression

While iMovie offers presets to most popular video sharing sites, there are no ways to control the quality of each of these presets. And unfortunately, these presets really damage image quality. If you want to do something decent, you either have to use the QT export or Compressor (via FCP XML).

No precise editing

While I love the fast and rough way to select clips to insert in the timeline, I wish there was a way to trim clips at a specific timecode.

Overall impression

If you can’t afford Final Cut or Premiere Pro, iMovie is the way to go. It is way better than Premiere Element (which was a big deception). Then again, even if you cut using pro apps, you may want to give it a shot, it is fun!

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Shape WLB Composite Review (HDSLR Rig)

Last Saturday, I had the pleasure to shoot a movie for a friend (more on this in another post). Since we were shooting for the Kino Kabaret (kind of a film festival), we had access to a lot of sponsored gear which is how I managed to put my hands on the  Shape WLB Composite. I already talked about the Sumo a while ago, the composite is its big brother.

The good

The best part about this rig is the quick handle system. Simply put, they are the best handles I have used on a HDSLR rig. Contrary to those on the old Sumo which had a bit of slack, once set, these handles wont move at all. If you want to change their angle, simply press the red button at the end of the handle and adjust them to the desired position and you are set. If it takes you more than 3 seconds, you are slow.

The next improvement over the Sumo are the multiple adjustment knobs. Contrary to the Sumo which is built in a straight line, the composite can off-set the camera to the side which make it much easier to use my Z-Finder. Every single part of the rig can be adjusted using either red levers (almost as good as those from Zacuto) or black knob. While it can take a few tries to find the perfect adjustment, once you found it, the rig is both comfortable and super stable.

The less good

The rig was given to me already assembled and looking at the assembly plan, I am glad it was. Contrary to the Zacuto Striker and other small HDSLR rigs which can be setup in less than 2 minutes, the Composite takes some time to assemble and requires tools. Nothing serious when you are aware of it but it could cause some issues if you are in the middle of nowhere and need to make an adjustment.

The only issue we had with the rig was the #$%#% camera plate. I am used to work with the Manfrotto plate system. They are pretty much the standard in photography/videography so I was surprised to see Shape using a different kind of triangle shaped plate. This plate caused us a few issues: first we had to figure out how to remove it from the holder (not as easy as it sounds, some blood was spilled) then we had to used a screw driver to attach it to the camera. This is for me the biggest problem: you dont want to have to use a screw driver every time you want to attach/remove your camera from the rig. It is another piece of gear to keep track of which can get lost and it slows down the shooting. That being said, the plate system is very sturdy and I was never afraid about the camera falling off the rig.

Finally, the rig is priced in the upper end of the market segment. At about 1500$, it is expensive but one has to realize that compared to toys rigs like the RRM Nano series, this is a pro level rig. It will outlast every other piece of gear you own. At least, it feels like it would.

Conclusion

Like I said in my initial review of the Sumo, this rig is perfect for everyone but the traveling videographer (who needs something more compact). It is stable, comfortable, extremely durable, comes with everything you need out of the box and will fit pretty much every physiognomy. If it was not for the tool requirements, I would have given it a perfect score.

Note: I am really sorry about the pictures. We were so busy on the day of the shoot that I totally forgot to take pictures of the rig so I had to use Shape promo pics.

Gear discussed in this review

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RRM follow up

Just a quick follow up on my post about the new Red Rock Micro Nano Rigs announcement. I receive an email from Brian, and he is not too happy about my comments on the announcement. Well, I would not be either if I was in the RRM gang.

I wont go into the details of the email exchange (dont worry, everything was very civilized and polite!) but I think it would be fair to RRM to state a few points.

First, these rigs were build around two restrictions: cost and weight. They receive a lot of requests for lighter rigs and wanted to have an offering for the market segment. Now they do, I just wished they put the rigs weight on the product page (!). Also, they should use lighter bodies for their product page too. Regarding the cost, well.. it is cheaper than Zacuto for sure and I doubt anyone is complaining on that front!

We also talked about the lowdown handle not positioned correctly: it should be pointing in front of the rig instead of at its back. Brian told me the handle direction can be configured to fit what ever the owner wants, so that is a good thing. Still, I think they should have shown it in at least one of the picture. He did not comment on the use of the hot shoe mount, which is a bad thing if you are using heavy lenses.

Also, I told him about a bad experience I had with a Captain Stubling where the knob of an handle got loose and made the rig tip over and fell off the table on a concrete floor (the lens survied by miracle!). It seems like they recently improved the knobs, which is a good thing:

and my guess is you were also probably using an earlier version of our handgrips, which we’ve really improved over the past few months including all-machined clamps and lift-and-lock knobs

Could anyone confirm this?

While this exchange did not change my mind about the usability of the Grippit and Low Down for users of heavy HDSLRs (7D, 5D, etc…) it provided more info on the products.

By the way, if you are in the Montreal area and plan to buy one of these rigs, I would love to steal it from you for a day to test it out.

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Lightroom 3 Review Pt 3: The Develop Module Updates: ACR 6.1, Improved Noise Reduction, Lens Correction Tool

This part 2 of Jon Lightroom 3 review. You can see the introduction in is first post and the second part here.

ACR 6.1

The newest incarnation of Lightroom uses the new Adobe Camera Raw 6.1 for it’s RAW conversion. Since this is a review of Lightroom and not ACR, I’m not going to get into the nuances of the newest ACR suffice to say that overall it appears to be an improvement over previous versions. One of the first things new users will notice is an exclamation point icon on the bottom of some images. This message is that LR wants to apply the new ACR default settings to the image. Upon allowing the update, you will notice a slight change in the handling of shadows, color rendition and a few other areas and overall, it looks good. If you’re someone who prefers the camera manufacturers software for RAW conversion, you’re probably still going to prefer those. The color rendition, quality of detail and overall fidelity provided in those programs (Canon Photo Professional, can’t speak for NX2) still has an edge over Adobe’s CR. This should be expected, given that ACR accommodates almost all types of RAW images and therefore isn’t quite as specialized as those from the Camera makers. That said, for those who do prefer ACR for it’s convenience and options will be very pleased with the new engine overall.

The only downside to the new engine is that you need to have ACR 6.1  running on your system, meaning you need to be running Photoshop CS5. If not, than you will need to render RAW images in LR before opening in Photoshop, which means an extra TIF (if that’s your selected preference for external editing) on your drive and more time spent waiting for an editable-image to be created before being re-opened. Of course, LR offers the option of “open anyway” rather then “render using Lightroom” but the results are inconsistent and frankly a bit unreliable for accurate rendition and conversion. So, if you’re not running CS5 be prepared for a little extra leg work to reap the full benefits of Lightroom3’s develop Module.

Noise Reduction Improvement

Adobe is pushing heavily the improved performance of Noise Reduction in LR3, which is no surprise since Noise Reduction is an item of large interest for photographers given the “Noise Wars” being waged between the camera manufacturers to push the high-iso-noise-performance envelop further and further. So the question is, how good is LR’s new noise reduction? The short answer is very good, in fact certainly better than previous versions of Lightroom and Photoshop. Luminance and color noise are handled nicely with details staying largely intact (compared to previous versions) and realistic. To get a sense of the improvement, I’ve set up the comparison below between LR3 and LR2, Aperture3 and noise Photoshop plugins Nik Dfine and Imageonic Noiseware. I’ll be posting the results soon.

Lens Correction Tool


Another crucial addition to the develop module is the inclusion of the Lens Correction tool. The LC too is taken directly from Photoshop, with all of the same parameters with the exception of scale and edge transparency (I would not recommend using the LC tool for scaling anyway). In addition to the default Photoshop parameters, Lightroom has raised the bar by including it’s own camera/lens profiles- similar to DXO software. These profiles, when applied, automatically correct a the image based on the lens and camera preset detected by LR. This is an excellent feature, and works well for most images. I would, as a recommendation use the automatic profiles as a starting point, as different images shot in varying situations will certainly require different levels of correction. Another great feature is the ability to batch lens correct, as the lens correct option has been added to the list of options when syncing develop settings across a number of photographs.  Overall, the LC tool is yet another vital work flow time saver especially when trying to stay solely in Lightroom for image editing.

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Lightroom 3 Review: part 2

This part 2 of Jon Lightroom 3 review. You can see the introduction in is first post.

Import Dialog


One of the first things you’ll notice about LR3 is the new import Dialog, which is largely different than previous versions. The simple dialog box of old is gone and replaced with a full screen window complete with a large preview area. The preview area is the most significant improvement- you can now preview images and video before importing and can un-check any you don’t want to ingest- a nice feature (and overdue!). However, in exchange for a more sophisticate import dialog we are also given a slightly more complex interface, with essential source and destination information on opposite sides of the screen. This can make a normally simple task of simply importing, renaming, and adding metadata, cataloging and backing up a little more tedious. It also doesn’t help that they’ve now included a few seemingly unimportant options for these tasks, for example the rename images by shoot in addition to custom name. In other words, LR3 will add the words “shoot_whateveryouwant-1”. It would be just as easy to do this with a custom name, and with this option they’ve just made the list unnecessarily longer. Another annoyance of the new import dialog is that you will get it when importing ANY new images, even simply updating a folder. This essentially creates an extra step in the workflow, i.e. importing tiffs or psd back into LR after they’ve been processed in Photoshop. For photogs who require speed and consistency and are used the efficiency of previous versions of Lightroom in this regard may be surprised when they find themselves being slowed up by these little nuances of the new import dialog.

[Read more...]

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Columbus V-900 geo tagger (Review)

My trip to Iceland was my first serious photo trip. And, since baby girl is coming soon, it will probably be the last one for a while too! Anyways, I seriously geared up for this trip and brought with me every single gadget I could think of.

The first of these gadget I want to talk you about is the Columbus V-900 geo tagger. I may have bitched a bit (ehh.. a lot) about Aperture 3, but one of its coolest feature is the addition of Places. While I could complain for a while about the way it was implemented (like the requirement to be connected to the internet), it is still a great tool for the travel photographer.

I am sure some of you are thinking “Why use a separate device? The iPhone can do the job!”. True, but having a separate gps has a few benefits:

  • it has better reception / precision
  • much longer battery life
  • smaller
  • more robust
  • always in tracking mode

I am sure the iPhone can handle the requirements of most people, but if you are not comfortable having your iPhone hanging from the back of your bag while in the rain, please keep reading…

The device

As you can see on the picture below, it is much smaller than a GPS or iPhone. This is a nice thing when you think that you will have to carry it with you all the time. Also, its simplistic design ensure that you don’t accidentally turn it on/off. While it is not water resistant, I have found that putting it in a ziploc bag does’nt affect performance while keeping it safe.

The front panel of the device has a single button and 3 status LEDs. While the device captures your location every few seconds, you can also click on the button when you are at a special place to make it easier to identify the location afterward. This is a feature I should have used more during my trip to set some reference points to ease the photo-GPS associations.

The features

The geotagger comes with a lot of features but I have to admit that I restricted myself to the bare minimum: geo tracking. For examples, the Columbus can beep when you exceed a predetermined speed, record voice messages or be connected via Bluetooth to your computer to acts as a GPS.

In my case, I received the unit only a few days before my trip and read the instructions while on the plane. Not wanting to jeopardize my logging, I stayed away from all these features.

Once the trip is captured, you have to transfer it to the computer. I dont understand why but the computer will not recognize the card while it is plugged in the V-900, you have to use a separate card reader. It is not so much of a problem but still, it means you have to carry one more peace of hardware in your bag.  It is also worth noting that the USB cable used to charge the device cannot be used to plug an external HD to your computer. I discovered this the hard way. So, if you plan to carry a single USB cable for both your Columbus and External HD, you better use the HD cable for both.

Now that your log files are on your computer, you have to convert to a format that is readable by your favorite application. In my case, I had to convert them to the gpx format for Aperture. The task is done using the free application provided by the manufacturer. IMPORTANT NOTE: the version that comes in the box does not export to gpx, you have to get the latest version (free on the manufacturer website).

Conclusion

My overall impression of the device is positive. While it is not the cheapest of the bunch, its high precision and long battery life make it stand out from the rest. I would advice it to every travel photographer or location scouts. There are some hurdles, like the cheap USB cable, but nothing to worry about.

Amazon does not sale this device but offers instead the VGPS-900 which looks pretty much the same. I just dont understand the bad reviews because the device has been working flawlessly for my whole trip.

For those still waiting for the story about my trip, here is a teaser of the locations we shot at. FYI, my plane landed in Akurery and we drove around the island clockwise.

Edit: I have had two visitors pointing me toward the Amod AGL3080 GPS Data Logger. It is a cheaper alternative and with Aperture 3 geo tagging, it solves the biggest issue owners had: linking pictures to GPS data.

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