01Mar Samsung 840 EVO 1TB SSD $485 and Samsung Magician problems
Looks like the Samsung 840 EVO 1TB SSD drives are back on sale again. Right now you can pick them up for $485 with free shipping on ebay which saves you about $25 compared to retail prices. 840 EVO drives are currently my top pick for SSDs, great value, good software, and great performance.
I’ve been running the Samsung 840 EVO 1TB SSD in my desktop for about a week now and the speeds are looking great. Transferring my OS from my old SSD to the EVO was pretty painless with free Samsungs migration software. It took a little less than an hour to clone the drive and about 15 min to install it in my desktop.
Speeds are top notch and performance feels a little bit snappier than my old SSD. The current generation of SSD drives seems to be held back mostly by SATA speeds as opposed to the drives themselves.
The only issue I’m running into right now is that the Samsung Magician software seems to think that every drive I have installed on my desktop is a Samsung 840 EVO. This little hiccup has blocked me from testing out the RAPID mode feature. It’s disappointing as the results I’ve seen on my laptop are pretty impressive and I was looking forward to testing those speeds on my desktop.
If anyone else has run into this problem and solved it, let me know. I’m waiting to hear back from Samsung tech support to see if they have an answer, if I find anything else out I’ll let you know. Even with this little problem I’m still pretty impressed the 840 evo drives in general.
01Mar Used Gear Watch: SmallHD DP6 monitor with Canon LP-E6 plate
The SmallHD DP4 with it’s 800×480 screen resolution will set up back $449 for the basic model or you could pick up this used SmallHD DP6 monitor with its 1280×800 display for $550 with free shipping on ebay. While the DP6 might not be quite as nice as some of the newer OLED 7 inch monitors SmallHD sells, it offers two advantages. First, it’s much smaller (5.6 inch vs 7.7 inch) and second at $550 it’s $450 less then AC7-OLED and $50 less then the AC7-LCD. I’ve had pretty good luck with the DP6 and $550 is a pretty good deal for a monitor that used be over $1200 a year ago.
28Feb Generic Edelkrone rigs showing up on ebay
It looks like someone has finally started cloning the Edelkrone rigs. This generic clone from india looks like it has most of the same features offered by the entry level Edelkrone rigs at about a 1/4 of the price. At $378, it’s still a very pricy rig for a clone and I have no idea how well this thing
is made. If you feel like taking a chance and don’t have the $1200 to spend on an official Edelkrone rig this guy might be a valid option. If you decide to take the dive send me some pictures and opinions, I’d be interested to know how it turns out.
28Feb More on those cheap $6 LED christmas lights
A number of you were asking about filming those cheap LED christmas lights I posted yesterday. I haven’t seen any problems with them on video but I thought I’d shoot this quick demo at 24p and 30p so you can get an idea of what they look like on film. As you can see from the video, there isn’t any flickering or any other noticeable problems with these lights at either 30p or 24p.
Because these lights were pretty close to the camera, they were a bit overexposed in the video and the green color doesn’t stand out very well. If you move them to the background and increase the foreground lighting a bit, you get very nice looking bokeh and the green stands out. A set of these in red that are shaped like a heart could be a great edition to a Valentine’s Day photo or video shoot.
27Feb Nice Bokeh with Cheap LED lights
Cheap Christmas lights are an easy way to add bokeh to pretty much any shot. Place your Christmas lights 5 or 6 feet behind your subject, open your aperture up to f1.4, and you’ll be getting beautiful little sections of bokeh in no time.
These lights aren’t anything amazing, but you can get them in pretty much any color, they’re lightweight, and they put out enough light to add some nice bokeh to your image or video. I have a few of these around in red for Valentines day and green for Saint Patrick’s day. The splash of color and bokeh and really bring some interest to an otherwise boring shot of something like the Zoom h4n above.
26Feb Zoom h4n memory card load times and the slow boot problem
A number of you have sent me emails about incredibly slow boot times when using the Zoom h4n. Instead of replying to the question multiple times, I thought it might be easier to address it here.
The Zoom h4n is a pretty decent field recorder for the price, but it doesn’t seem to play well with large capacity memory cards. I haven’t had this problem on the Tascam DR-60d or any of my other field recorders for that matter. The problem seems to be limited to the Zoom h4n.
The slow boot time isn’t a huge issue, as long as you stick to cards in the 4GB to 8GB range boot times stay under 1 min which isn’t horrible. That’s also enough space to get you through an average day of recording. Not sure what causes the Zoom h4n to have this problem, but as long as you are aware of it, you can avoid the 3 or 4 min wait times larger cards can cost you. In this case it looks like larger cards aren’t the answer.
26Feb Azden FMX-DSLR XLR audio adapter in the field
I took the Azden FMX-DSLR out on a shoot earlier this week in an effort to get a feel for it in the field. Instead of mounting the FMX-DSLR on the bottom of the camera I opted to mount it underneath of a rail mounted belly pan. This keeps the camera at the same level and gives you easier access to the FMX-DSLR controls.
With the Azden FMX-DSLR in this position it’s pretty easy to ride the faders and make quick adjustments to incoming audio levels. I’m right handed so this worked out pretty well for me but I could see this sort of mounting being an issue if you’re left handed.
Having the audio inputs facing the back of the rig makes it a little easier to switch between wireless units and a boom mic XLR input. The down side to this positioning is that the battery compartment is on the opposite side of the audio inputs which means it’s pretty much blocked off in this mounting configuration. Thankfully Azden didn’t exaggerate it’s battery life ratings, a fresh set of batteries made it just fine through 8 hours of shooting.
The only issue I really ran into while shooting with the Azden FMX-DSLR is the location of the phantom power switches. Its not that they were hard to get to in this configuration, the switches are on the outside bottom edge and easy enough to find. However the recessed nature of the switches meant that I couldn’t turn phantom power on and off with my fat fingers. I had to pull out a keys from my pocket each time I was switching between boom mic and wireless feeds which was kind of a hassle.
In the audio department the Azden FMX-DSLR XLR adapter did great. Sound quality was good, phantom power worked fine, and the battery life was good enough to make it through a full day of shooting. I don’t have any complaints on it’s performance.
21Feb Manfrotto 501PL plate disappointment
For light weight camera gear Manfrotto fluid heads are a pretty good value and I’ve standardized my kit around the 501PL QR plate. I recently ordered this 501PL plate from amazon, as you can see from the video it’s not a very good product. If you’ve used this QR plate, it’s pretty easy to spot the problems.
This is what a normal 501PL plate looks like, infact even the cloned versions look like this. The QR plate I ordered from Amazon looks legitimate, the packaging (you can see in the video) looks like the real thing and the numbers on the package check out. It appears Manfrotto has quietly started feeding these inferior QR plates into the market. An insertable plastic numb? What a load of crap. Thanks Manfrotto.
20Feb Sony Vegas Pro Premium $149
I’m not a Sony Vegas user, though I do use Sound forge regularly, even so, many people use it and love it as their primary editing program. Normally the Pro version of Sony Vegas will set you back about $300, but right now on Newegg they have Sony Vegas Pro Premium on sale for $149 for the next 48 hours. Use promo code EMCPHHP93 at checkout to get the discount. Sony Vegas Pro Premium includes a copy of Sound Forage as well as DVD authoring program making it a great value at $149.
19Feb Samsung 840 EVO 1TB drive $479.99
Samsung 840 EVO 1TB drive $479.99 on ebay with free shipping. I just bought one, the seller only has a ranking of 6 so this is probably only for the brave. Hopefully it shows up and isn’t some kind of refurbished drive.
