Category Archives: Reviews

Canon C300, Red Scarlet and some more thoughts

So. So, so so. Canon announced the C300 and … I’m assuming you know what that is. Let me explain further.

The Canon C300 is a Cinema Motion Picture camera. It costs $20,000. It is not cheap. It has an EF and a PL lens mount, so you can use a crapton of lenses on it. With the release of the C300, Canon also released several new lenses, such as the Cinema 30-300mm EF lens. It looks like this.

Apparently OK ish...

Well – now you have all the knowledge you could possible need about that – on to the Red Epic. I mean Scarlet. Something else I must explain.

Originally, in around 2009, the whole idea behind the Red Scarlet was that it would be the affordable on the Red Beasts. It was intended to be around $2,500-ish and it was gonna be awesome! For the same price as a DSLR, you could have a proper motion picture camera that would have all the features you’d expect and it would shoot at 3K! Sadly, only fixed lenses, but I’m sure they could have come up with something. This beast would have looked like this. I would have by all means bought one of these over a 5D mkII or a 7D.

What the Scarlet should have been

But oh no. Red recently announced the official new Red Scarlet. It is basically a smaller version of the Red Epic, with less epic features (like only FPS up to 60 and only 4K resolution). On the upside you can have interchangeable lenses – so if you just happen to have a Red Epic or a Red One lying about – you could use those lenses instead – or you can buy a mount that allows you to attach any Canon lens to it for a mere $500.

But I still haven’t told you about the real problem with this new Scarlet. The price. At $10,000 – it’s not cheap. But if you buy only the ‘brain’ as they call it (the rest of the world calls that a body) – it’s best and only use is as a paperweight. Why you ask me? Because after buying that – you also need to buy the LCD screen ($1,600), the battery ($500), the Red Mag (the only thing these cameras can record onto – $1,800), Red Station (the only way of getting this footage onto a computer – $250), some batteries ($515), side grip (for handheld – $950) and the list goes ON and ON and ON… But it does look cool:

Not so great.

The bottom line is – to buy a functional Red Scarlet – you have to have around $16,000. Not so appealing any more. Ryan Connolly from Film Riot had some different thoughts on these cameras – which you can take a gander at.

Of course, I have never actually touched any of these in real life – I’m basically going of spec sheets, but I leave you with one thought.

Are these cameras really 5 times better than a Canon 5D mkII given they cost at least 5 times the price?

Alex, signing off.

Windows 8 Hands-on Review

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First of all, I will start with my general opinion of where Windows, and Microsoft, seem to be going. Unfortunately, they seem to be deliberately moving away from Apple and OS X… trying to be different in their own ‘special’ kind of way. I think this was a fundamental mistake. It’s not that I do not like Microsoft products, I think that Windows 7 was one of the best operating systems in the world in terms of performance – not necessarily looks – but definitely performance. But I was (not very) recently, after installing OS X Lion, struck by how well it just worked. And it does look better than Windows.

After a quick look at the Windows 8 Start Page (pictured below) one thing struck me. Windows Phone. Why would you do that to a desktop operating system? To me it makes no sense whatsoever. If you don’t believe me, take a look at the photo below it.

Courtesy of windowsfordevices.com

What the hell is this? Image courtesy of Samsung

After much deliberation on the reason for this bad idea, I have concluded that Windows 8 is intended to be run heavily on tablets. But, as with everything Microsoft makes, there are several problems with this.

Firstly, why on earth would you make a desktop operating system that is designed to run on tablets? The very idea is absurd. This is because an operating system has to be designed in a way that users of previous versions will be able to interact with in a conventional fashion. But the problem runs deeper than this. It might, just might, mean that Microsoft is focusing more on their mobile operating system because they think that is the way of the future – and therefore they could save some design work by just copying over some of the graphics files. This may sound harsh, but I am trying to get my message across.

My second problem with this idea is that Windows 8 actually can’t run on most tablets, because they need minimum screen resolution of 1024×768 to run their new metro-style apps. This means that the tablets themselves have to be more expensive, because that’s a lot of pixels to fit on a 5″ to 7″ screen. There’s an article on Life Hacker, specifically about this topic here.

People may criticize this argument. But I do think there is something fundamentally wrong with making an operating system that is designed to run on tablets and desktops (and laptops, obviously) simultaneously, as the platforms are SO different. And, now it won’t even run on most current Windows 7 tablets, you effectively get the worst of both worlds.

Setup

Fairly average stuff. There are three builds to download: 32-bit, 64-bit, and 64-bit with developer tools (basically Visual Studio 2011). So you download the massive (5BG-ish) ISO from their standard HTTP server,which for me took around an hour. Then you do something with it. You can either install it nativley (which I would not recommend now), or you can run it in a Virtual Machine, using something like VMWare Workstation or Oracle VirtualBox. But there is a catch. For some reason unknown to man, it is LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE to run any version of Windows 8 in VMWare Workstation 7.x . So upgrade, or give up.

Then, once you have successfully installed it, which does take quite a long time, you can finally start playing with it.

The Start Screen

I feel I have ranted about this enough, in the previous section. I don’t particularly like the way it looks, and I don’t really like the functionality either. I prefer the desktop, which you can only get to by clicking on one of the panels. I suppose you could be called old-fashioned. But I don’t really care.

One last thing I really hate about the start screen is this. Once you have clicked on the ‘Desktop’ panel you arrive at the desktop. Pretty standard. So now I’m just going to click on the start menu and BAM. I’m back at the f***ing start screen again. What did I do wrong? Oh – I see. I have to hover over the start button to get the start menu. If I click on it I go back to where I just came from. NOT FUNNY.

General Functionality.

I have only got a few words to say. Internet Explorer still is not a modern browser. Everything else is the same as Windows 7. Except the fact that there appear to be two control panels, which is very confusing. And – I like the new Task Manager. It gives you more power to end them processes when Windows 8 can’t cope with them. Overall, not very impressed.

Backwards Compatibility

Everything what works with Windows 7 works with Windows 8. In most cases, everything that works with XP works with Windows 8. (Let’s just forget Vista shall we?)

Conclusion

Overall, although I may be called harsh, I cannot really see the point of Windows 8. It seems to fall in the cycle with all other Windows operating systems. Good – bad – good – bad. Example: Windows 2000 (Bad) – Windows XP (Good) – Windows Vista (Bad) – Windows 7 (Good) – Windows 8 (Bad) etc….

I also think that if Windows continues to continue in this direction – Apple will win. Full stop. Because, even though some features have come across from iPad to Mac, no features except for some names, like Safari, have ever gone from Mac to iPad. Apple has realized that iOS and OS X should stay separate.

Windows 8 itself is basically just Windows 7, and the world will soon be all Mac.

Goodbye.

Lowepro Flipside 300 Review

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The Tardis - Large inside, small outside

So, after recently buying a second lens to go with my AWESOME second-hand Canon EOS 300, I felt that I needed a proper camera bag to go with it. As some of you might know, I do commercial work for my school, and each time I do I usually get paid enough to buy a new piece of gear, which is how I managed to fork out for this definitely not inexpensive camera bag. But it also got me thinking.

I am planning to do some more work for them soon, I will probably be able to afford another lens soon. Therefore, I should buy a bag that has enough space for any sensible future purchases. I also wanted to get a good quality, reliable and trusted make.

So that pointed me to a Lowepro, and the best size for me would be the 200 or the 202 depending on the series. Then, I decided that there were three different models that I would consider – the Fastpack, the Slingshot and the Flipside.

So I went into my local branch of Jessops to compare them, only to be greeted by a rather patronizing member of staff. So I ignored them, because I seemed to know more then they did, and looked for the bags. There were several drawbacks that I noticed about the other two bags – the Fastpack seemed to have very little space for a camera considering how big the bag actually was, and the Slingshot only had one strap. Not a good idea if I’m going to be carrying it around for several hours on the tube.

So I decided to buy a Flipside, but on looking at the prices in Jessops, immediately left and headed straight for Amazon, where I found, to my astonishment, that the Flipside 200 was more expensive than the 300. So I bought that one instead, and it arrived two days later.

So now I have explained my choice of bag, I will get round to the review.

As I said before, Lowepro is known for it’s reliability and durability, and this is no exception. Just from the look of it, I can tell that it;s not going to fall to pieces any time soon, in comparison to one of Jessops’ own brand products, which felt like it might disintegrate without too much difficulty.

The Flipside is unique among bags as it opens from the side that faces your back. This has three main advantages – firstly it is far more secure in crowded places as it is impossible for anything to be surreptitiously lifted from your bag, a real plus if you’re carrying gear worth four figures. The second advantage is that with most camera bags, in order to extract your gear you have to put the bag on the ground with the side that usually touches your back on the ground, meaning that when you put it back on again, any dirt that was on the ground goes straight onto your clothes. Thirdly, with the waist strap, it is now possible to get to your gear without actually taking the bag off. All you have to do is take off the arm straps and swivel the bag round to your front, so you can use your bag a little like a table. This may be hard to imagine this – so here is a photo.

Flipside Table

This bag is a bit like a Tardis, in that despite being very compact and slim on the outside, it has a vast, cavernous space inside. There should be plenty of space for my current and future camera gear, including two bodies:

Canon EOS 300 Film SLR
Canon EF 28-90mm Kit Lens
SIgma 70-300mm ‘Consumer-Grade’ Lens
Gorillapod SLR Zoom
Velbon CX4780 Video Tripod (more about that later)
(~~Future~~) Canon EOS 600D
(~~Future~~) Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 (otherwise known as the fantastic plastic)
(~~Future~~) RØDE Videomic

Here’s a picture (from DigitalCameraReview) of the interior with gear pretty similar to my own:

Inside the Flipside

As you can see, there’s plenty of room for around five lenses, let alone three. You can also see that there is a massive pouch at the top for random accessories like a Lenspen or some filters, which can be removed if you wish, allowing for a super-long lens to be attached to the camera.

On a final note, there are some little pockets on the outside for storing items such as memory cards and perhaps the odd instruction manual or two.

All in all, a very trusty bag. I would highly recommend it. You may be paying a lot, but I strongly advise you to not take the cheap way out and buy a crappy own-brand from a shop. Lowepro FTW.

Alex, Signing off.

Newfangled Me

The incoherent musings of Alex Forey