Product Review: 8x Zoom Lens

 

I recently ordered an 8x zoom lens for my iPhone. Digital zoom on an iPhone looks pretty terrible and of course you can’t zoom the video camera at all. This seriously limits potential video shots and needed to be remedied. I already have a 2x zoom which doesn’t do much so a greater zoom was necessary. I happened across a blog post on GeekSugar that reviewed an iPhone lens wallet that showed a telephoto lens. I followed the link and ta da: PhotoJoJo.

I placed my order very easily, something most ecommerce stores could learn from. I received my new lens on Friday. Here it is:

 

Yes, the dinosaur came with the lens.

Nice box. It reminds me of the one my iPhone came in. Very expensive feeling.

The lens comes with lots of stuff:

tripod, instructions, cleaning cloth, lens with caps for both ends, adaptor case, tripod adaptor.

To use the lens you must use the case included. This is unfortunate since this means it won’t fit on my OWLE and require me to change cases to change lenses. The funny box on the right uses spring tension to hold your iPhone and attaches to the mini tripod.

You can rotate the lens to focus for close or distance shots.

This is the building across the street from me. This is a straight shot, no HDRI, no grid, no zoom, no effects.

This is the digital zoom with the iPhone 4s. It’s easy to see that it’s dark, but not easy to see how distorted this image is. Click on it to view the image full size.

Unfortunately the raw image out of my iPhone was 2.3 MB, too large to upload to my library. So I saved this for web, at maximum. Click for full size.

There is some vignetting and a bit of a fish eye or wide angle lens distortion. This is probably fine for my application but it’s possible that the vignetting can be fixed by taking an Exacto knife to the lens adaptor case.

Here is a side by side of the two images. Click to enlarge.

Here is a very brief video test of the zoom. This is the first time I’ve been able to see textures of the Moon before. The bright light seems to be an artifact caused by the lens, we’ll see if this becomes a big deal.

Product Review: Hague Mini Motion-Cam Stabilizer

I did a little research on camera stabilizers because I found any moving footage was every choppy. I’ve known about Steadicam for years, they were used in both the MTV and Pantene commercials I worked on. I needed a Steadicam for my iPhone!

I had no idea if such a thing existed but lo and behold it did! Sort of. Most stabilizer manufacturers make a prosumer device for small, light weight consumer cameras, perfect for an iPhone. I checked out reviews, specs and videos for stabilizers from Steadicam, Hague, Lensse and some great DIY stabilizer videos. Seeing as how I don’t have a machine shop, the last option was out. The Lensse was reasonably priced but most reviews said it was difficult to balance. The Steadicam Smoothie looked good, but again, was reviewed as being difficult to balance. I also read up on the iStabilizer but with its name, it’s cheaper price, and it’s lack of reviews made me nervous. I looked at the Manfrotto 585 ModoSteady Stabilizer but a single review that compared it to the Hague stabilizer, with words and video changed my mind. I settled on the Hague Mini Motion-Cam Stabilizer. It’s a mouthful, and you can only get it from their site, so there are no Amazon reviews, but I saw a bunch of videos on YouTube for it and it seemed to fit the bill. It arrived today. Now, I should be clear that a stabilizer is not an easy tool to use, but it’s essential to smooth movement and motion shots. I remember a Steadicam operator telling me he had to be certified, I believe it. A camera stabilizer ads an immense about of professional polish to your video project, but it takes patience and practice.

Here are the undoing photos, I’ll be adding video to this post in a day or so.

The only complaint that I have is that the Hague site wasn’t clear about the fact that the stabilizer came with an iPhone adaptor so I ordered one. Now I’ve got a $25 adaptor that I don’t need. Let’s see how good their customer service is. Unless someone wants a heavy duty, weighed and stable iPhone tripod adaptor (@stevegarfield…)

Review of Splice and SlowMo

While working on my iPhone film, I’ve been testing various editing applications, many of which I’ve mentioned already. I wanted to share more detailed info on a few of them. Tis post covered SlowMo and Splice. The former is strictly for slow motion, the later handles editing and slow motion. I won’t be reviewing Splice as an editing tool, you’ll see why soon.

SlowMo

SlowMo is pretty basic; shoot or load video, slow it down, purview and export the final footage.

Splice

Cool opening page and easy interface for an app that handles editing, cropping, slow motion.

As you can see, it’s simple enough to crop, slow, and compile clips for a final edit, which takes a bit longer than iMovie but not as long as ReelDirector. But, before I waste time talking about it’s editing capabilities, this is why it doesn’t matter:

640×480 is the highest resolution this app offers for final output. If you have the time to sit through the video below, you’ll see that, when compared to 1080p output from other apps, this one does not fit into my workflow. The Splice clip is at the very end.

A New England Love Story Documentary Part 5

I finally got a chance to do some lighting tests using my SIMA (SL-10HD) LED light. It connects via cold shoe to my AR-4i, OWLE, or my iPhone via its connector arm and iPhone tripod adaptor.
The SIMA uses 2 AA batteries, has no DC input. It comes with an arm that allows you to attach it to a tripod, or tripod adaptor-equipped iPhone. It provides 600 lumens for 45-60 minutes.

 

 

Here are some test photos and a test video.

 

A New England Love Story Documentary Part 4

I spent the day working on my script. I had been using Evernote for writing until it became useless. When typing the app froze, when saving it crashed. Apparently users have been having this problem for months with no resolution. So, I switched to Pages, Apples version of Word. Unfortunately there is no movie script app and formatting in the iPad was seriously slowing me down. I spent some time today checking out script writing apps on the iTunes store. There weren’t many, only 2-3 of the apps below are for film script writing, and I found one other under “script”, but that was $40:

I ended up buying. It works pretty well, I got a whe scene written today. I also had some time today to record a new video showing off a couple of new iPhone accessories. I’m still in the market for a good extra battery solution and some way to attach external hard drive space.

 

A New England Love Story Documentary Part 3

In this post I discuss a creative block that almost led me to drop my entire story line and start from scratch. Luckily, I had an epiphany. I also ran into a technical issue, I expect it’s the first of many, but resolved as well. It was a good week.

A New England Love Story Documentary Part 2

This is part 2 of my documentary. I look at the audio accessories I’ll be using to make my movie. I have an OWLE which came with it’s own microphone and a Fostex AR-4i that is a stereo recording device for iPhone that came with 2 microphones.

Here is audio test footage.

A New England Love Story Documentary Part 1

Here is part 1 of the documentary I’m making as I shoot my first movie.

My First Movie

 

Many of you who read my blog or have seen my portfolio know that I’ve done a bit of video work for my clients. There has been some video shooting, mostly editing and motion graphics. These projects were of course marketing projects with (usually less than adequate) budgets.

I got into doing video, and design itself, because I wanted to make movies. Unfortunately I lived in the wrong coast and was too practical, so web design became my career choice. I’ve always had stories in my head that I wanted to get out through movies, but didn’t have the money or the equipment.

A few months ago I picked up a side project doing a video for a major marketing event. The video was shot in and around Times Square. I used a big Canon HDV video camera for shooting, After Effects for animation, and Final Cut for editing. While shooting with the big pro camera I also shot with iPhone. In the end 50% of the final video was from the iPhone 3Gs. That device had a 3.2 megapixel camera and shot 640×480 VGA resolution video at 30 frames per second.

3 months ago the iPhone 4s was released with an 8 megapixel resolution camera that’s shoots 1080p HD footage.

It’s time to shoot a movie!

While I’m writing, testing, planning, I’ll use my 3Gs to record every step of the way. I’ll leave videos and photos here or you can see the videos on my YouTube channel and pictures in my Tumblr blog.