Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Even before the whole global pandemic thing, vlogging was on the rise. This last year, though, seems to have caused a significant boost in the number of vloggers out there and many have taken to doing it on their smartphones.
We’re on lockdown again here in Scotland and getting out with a bunch of camera gear to shoot videos isn’t exactly possible right now. So, I’ve been testing out some smartphone vlogging gear over the last few weeks during my daily exercise to see how well they hold up.
Rode has launched a new range of Vlogger Kits aimed at vloggers and smartphone filmmakers. The kit comes in three flavours. There’s a Lightning-equipped iPhone kit, a Type-C USB based Android kit, or a universal kit that works with both (although you’ll need your headphone jack adapter cable).
Each kit includes a mini tripod, a phone bracket, microphone, windshield, light, lighting gels, and all the extra cables and bits you need to get up and running quickly. As mentioned, though, if you get the universal kit, you’ll need your Lightning or Type C USB to TRRS headphone jack cable. While you might prefer to go with a kit specific to your device, the universal one is handy if you use different types of phone (or camera) and want to be able to switch between them.
Although Japan Industrial Partners has essentially come out and said that it’s business as usual for Olympus as a camera brand and that it has big plans (particularly with video) for the Micro Four Thirds system in the future, many MFT shooters are still in doubt about what may come under the brand’s new ownership.
A report on 43Rumors today, also suggests that Panasonic isn’t all that confident in MFT’s future, either. They say that Panasonic doesn’t see a lot of potential for Olympus shooters to switch to Panasonic’s Micro Four Thirds products, suspecting that they’ll just stick with what they or move over to an APS-C or full-frame system.
GoPro Hero 9 has been officially announced. Now we can finally confirm what we saw in leaked photos and unboxing video: yes, it does have a color selfie screen and it’s capable of shooting 5K video at 30 fps. But there are some other improvements over its predecessor, such as a 23.6 MP sensor. So, let’s check out what the new and improved Hero 9 brings to the table.
It seems that Sony isn’t the only company finally seeing vloggers as a serious market. With the rise in vloggers on YouTube over the past few years, and particularly in the last few months as many are stuck at home, it was only a matter of time before companies finally started giving them what they really wanted.
Sony’s new ZV-1 vlogging camera seems to have been met with a very warm reception and now Panasonic’s apparently getting in on the action with the G100, according to 43Rumors, with an official announcement expected on June 24th.
Although pretty much everything was revealed through leaks already, Sony has now officially announced their new Sony ZV-1 compact camera. Essentially, it’s a Sony RX100 V, but with design changes and features that make it particularly suited to vloggers and YouTubers – a not-insignificant chunk of customers for cameras like the Sony’s RX100 series and its competitors.
Hoping to draw some of those customers away from the likes of Canon’s G7X Mark III, the 20-megapixel Sony ZV-1 has a flippy out LCD (not flippy up or down), minimised button layout and improved internal microphone, but with a hotshoe on top and a 3.5mm socket to plug in an external microphone.
Sony UK is teasing an announcement coming in six days and a few hours. The teaser doesn’t say anything about the camera. There’s no model name, no specs, nothing, just a silhouette and a countdown. Although, that silhouette might look slightly familiar to some.
If you spotted the leaked photos claiming to be the new Sony ZV-1 recently, then it’s pretty obvious that it’s going to be the Sony ZV-1 announcement. Sony’s new compact, which appears to essentially be an RX100 VII successor (but with a shorter focal length range) aimed at vloggers.
The first images of the upcoming Sony ZV-1 have leaked, courtesy of Sony Alpha Rumours, and they show an interesting looking camera that would suggest that Sony is finally starting to wake up the massive vlogging market.
Sure, Sony has had a go in the past with strange handle contraptions and finally adding a microphone socket to last year’s RX100 VII. But finally having a flippy out LCD should make life much easier. Oh, and it also has a hotshoe for your top-mounted microphone.
One of the major obstacles with vlogging is sound. Isolating the sound and having it record at high quality is a big deal. I strongly feel that we are far more inclined to stop watching something with bad audio than we are if the visuals are bad. We can put up with flickering pictures or low quality, low-resolution images for a lot longer than we can put up with bad audio. It seems Joby has done something to address this.
Superior quality on-camera vlogging microphone. That’s the tagline from the Joby website, and at just 80 grams, that’s quite a punchy statement. As of yesterday, February 29th, the Joby Wavo is available for £69.95 or $/€79.95. It’s designed specifically with vloggers in mind. Wavo is compact, portable and is constructed of some fairly decent materials.
Sony has announced the GP-VPT2BT Wireless Shooting Grip. Don’t get too excited, this isn’t a “grip” in the traditional sense that allows you to more easily shoot portrait orientation without contorting your arms. This is sort of like an advanced mini tripod. It’s not a new concept, and Sony has had the GP-VPT1 out for a while now, but the GP-VPT2BT takes this to the next level with built-in Bluetooth for controlling your camera remotely.
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube.
His videos have over a hundred million views, have been extensively published by news outlets, and has even received recognition from a few film festivals, such as International Ocean Festival
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