Welcome to the Zeiss Sonnar FE F4 24 to 70mm Lens Review for the Sony A7/A7R by ItsDanKReviews!
The new Zeiss Sonnar FE F4 24 to 70mm has a good amount of contrast and sharpness and really is only bested slightly by the 35mm 2.8 which is the fastest and sharpest FE lens available in the range so that's not bad at all.
Both lenses are T* so you'd expect good performance out of them anyway but I can see quite a few being discouraged by the price.
The real winner for the new lens is the optical steady shot which is almost better than having a steady cam rig. The film I took with it was mostly with one hand and with two hands you can almost convince people that you had shot on a tripod, it's that good and you can see that footage when I get around to uploading it to YouTube.
All in all, great lens if you want a high quality, constant AF solution that comes with in-built stabilization and weather sealing. Check out some of my shots with the lens and comparison shots with other Sony A7 Lenses below on my Flikr!
The A7/A7R Metabones Adapter Review for Canon and Nikon to E-Mount is finally here
and I had a good amount of time to test the third party metabones adapter on both the major lens systems.
Here's my breakdown:
Canon Metabones Adapter Pros:
Auto Focus
No need to touch the metabone adapter during operation
Solid build quality
Canon Metabones Adapter Cons:
Slow to focus (although quite sharp and accurate)
Bit of a tight squeeze and no click when you attach a lens
Nothing else to report really
Nikkon Metabones Adapter Pros:
Great fast manual control
Solid build quality
Clicks on and off easily
Nikkon Metabones Adapter Cons:
No automatic model available
Can't see actual aperture whilst shooting
Nothing else to report.
What a year it has been for Sony and their Mirror-less camera range from the NEX refresh to the RX-1, RX-1R and now the A7 and A7R.
We all knew the Sony A7 was coming, it had been rumoured for the past year and indeed here they are. The video covers all the main points of the A7 and it's been a very photographic weekend for me personally. I started with some long exposure photography, moved to car photography, portrait photos, and finally some nature shots with Kitty, my pet Caique parrot.
The Alpha 7 ditches the NEX branding in an effort to be seen as slightly more professionally inclined although the pricing of both the Sony A7 and A7R is well within consumer and enthusiast reach. The real brilliance of this system is the use of the E-mount in a full frame sensor and it opens up the possibility for most photographers to simply jump on board with their existing glass without too much trouble.
I know one question is bound to be asked by those watching this video and that is "Should I choose the A7 or A7R?"
The answer is a bit more complex than you would think and no, I don't recommend jumping onto the A7R just because you can afford it. In fact, it's all down to what type of photography you plan to do primarily.
A7:
Built for speed, great burst mode, faster at focusing with phase detect autofocus
Smaller MP count but better ISO performance in low light
Meant for shooting moving subjects
A7R:
Massive 36MP sensor, great for landscape shots and huge prints
Slower shutter speed and larger files to process
Magnesium alloy front, made for super zoom lenses
Billet cut dials for a slightly more premium feel.
Hope it helps guys, hit that subscribe button and don't forget to like my video up!
The Sony A7/A7R (Alpha 7, Alpha 7R) Battery Grip is finally here and I'll be doing a full hands on review of it and how to install it! The VG-C1EM makes shooting portrait style much, much easier and all the while you're able to double your battery life and increase the amount of stability you have as well.
Pros:
Great stability regardless of whether or not you are shooting portrait or landscape.
Only drains one battery at a time.
Doubles battery life of the A7 or A7R
Exactly the same layout as the A7 in landscape with a manual focus button, custom button, two dials and a shutter
Cons:
Preview mode still thinks the camera is shooting in landscape
It doesn't make you coffee in the morning or tuck you in at night.
Overall, a great accessory, probably by far the most important one for the Alpha 7 and Alpha 7R.
Be sure to check out my Alpha 7 (A7) Review here: http://youtu.be/WrVYcdOXDSE
Hi guys welcome back to Its Dan K reviews.
Today we are looking at the HTC One, the phone that shouldn’t be able to
receive WiFi, Bluetooth or LTE signals but does so due to some pretty brilliant
engineering.
The phone reeks of desperation, financial desperation
that is. Quite a few balance sheets and the last three quarterly results
suggest that this may just be HTC’s last throw of the dice. The CEO even came
out to say that if this phone isn’t a runaway success, he will personally step
down from his position. So, if HTC are willing to bet a single phone on the
company’s entire future, you’d expect this phone to be at least decent.
I think I’ll start at the design because
it’s the most obvious place to start and by now I’m getting use to people
asking asking to hold the device, almost as if they’ve never seen a mobile
phone before. It’s a large phone but it doesn’t feel large, the curved back
fits nicely in the palm and the sand blasted aluminium reminds me of the
macbook pro. Of course, this phone was designed to convert a few i-sheep here
and there and HTC have made no secret of this either, they’ve even coupled a
lovely itunes contact sync app into the sense launcher, a smart software
decision, something I’ve rarely ever said when it comes to HTC.
The diamond cut chamfered edges, laser cut
speaker grills, CNC machined unibody and milled polycarbonate make this phone a
looker, it’s certainly a welcome departure from the sea of plastic fantastic
Galaxies and all too common iphones available on the market. The Camera is a
4MP ultra pixel shooter that features larger pixels for greater low light
performance and it’s got optical image stabilisation to assist in making your photography
experience largely blur free. The speakers are large and front facing, HTC
calls them “boomsound” speakers, one of the few marketing terms that actually
lives up to the hype. All of this and I haven’t mentioned the screen which is a
4.7 inch super lcd 3 panel of full hd resolution, it lays claim to being the
most pixel dense screen on any mobile device ever with a mental 469 pixels per
inch.
So after a week with the device, what do I
like? What don’t I like? How have I adapted the phone to suit me?
Well for starters, I like the camera. I
like it, a lot. I’ve been waiting for the day where I could use a phone to
start my own Video blogging and that’s exactly what I’ve been able to do with
this phone and in fantastic quality as well. You can check out those HTC One
filmed videos out in full by visiting my personal channel or heading down to
the bottom of my itsdankreviews youtube page.
Pictures with the rear facing camera look
great, indoor shots look even better thanks to the pixel size but where this
phone really excels is in the low light shots it’s capable of although be
warned, that only applies to the rear facing camera, the front facing camera is
actually quite full of noise in most of the shots I attempted either indoors or
in low light. The default camera is quite good in that it’s actively designed
around the touch to focus and shoot principle, which, mostly reduces camera
shake at the expense of a delay in shooting. If you don’t want to miss a second
though, there is the Zoe mode which takes a combination of burst stills and
video.
On to the IR blaster and I never thought
I’d use it but here I am, I don’t even want to go back to my traditional
remote. It’s great for turning the TV on and quickly accessing all the shows
that are currently showing and going to be on. It’s useful. I like it. A lot.
Now onto the software and you’ll see that
I’ve replaced blinkfeed and quite a large part of the sense interface with Nova
launcher. Blinkfeed, for one, was just bulky and made it harder for me to
access the content I wanted to upon unlocking my phone. RSS feeds are also not
supported so good luck finding the type of news you actually want if you are in
any way source picky (which I am). There are some positives though, the phone
app is in my opinion, much improved over previous versions and I actually
prefer it to the stock phone application that I’ve been using on my galaxy
nexus. The reasonis simple, I can predictive text reveal contacts just by
dialing. This is something that’s been around since Nokia 3310’s and it’s a
shame that stock android never adopted it.
The colour reproduction on the screen is in
my mind, excellent, it’s easily one of the best viewing experiences I’ve had on
LCD. Viewing angles are good and 4.7 is big but I would have preferred a 5
incher on a phone of this size. The button arrangement is new for HTC, a double
tap opens the multitasker whilst a long press gets you into google plus. I
still would have liked to have the HTC button bring me home but it’s okay, it’s
not hard to get use to.
On the subject of getting use to things,
there is one, massive, design flaw that has existed on every single HTC device
since forever and it’s even worse with this phone. It is. The power button. HTC
have flat refused to bring the power button to the location that makes the most
ergonomic sense, the right thumb. The power button is placed on the top left of
the device. This makes unlocking your phone a largely uncomfortable one handed experience
as you attempt to shuffle a finger to the top left whilst using your thumb to
swipe up to unlock.
If you can get past that design flaw then
maybe, just maybe this is the phone for you. As far as battery life goes you’ll
easily get a full day of use although your own mileage may vary. The phone
additionally features AC Wireless which, when coupled with an AC router will
turn your 4G LTE outdoor experience into a 5G WiFi experience when at home.
In conclusion, I highly recommend this
phone if you want the best in hardware design and one of the most satisfying photography
experiences that you can get on any android device available.
It’s been Dan K, don’t forget to subscribe
by clicking the middle of your screen and more importantly, like the video up!
Ask any questions in the comment section below and I’ll see you guys, next
time!
Hi guys welcome back to itsdankreviews, today we are looking at the beats solo headphones. From the get go I can tell you that the build quality is impressive, it's well crafted and in my mind it looks good on my head as well but that's about where the quality ends. The first time I played a song with these on my head I thought the unit was broken and after a bit of a play around I discovered that this is just how the unit, actually, sounds.
It's as if the design portion of this headphone took 50% of the budget with an additional 40% going towards marketing and finally the last 10% was invested into two incredibly small audio drivers which repeatedly succeed in underwhelming the listener with under tuned mids and undefined treble. Maybe the festival of bass was further amplified by an equally bass laden equalizer, the kind you can find turned on by default on the HTC One. Ironically, when "beats mode" is turned on and you're actually using beats headphones, the result is that you need to turn the volume up to actually hear lyrics and by the time you do that you've exceeded the spectrum of base that the headphones can actually deliver which results in a sound that's pretty close to an un tuned radio.
Short conclusion? For 250 Aussie dollars go do yourself a favour an buy the Klipsch s4 in ear's for 60 bucks on ebay. Not only have they been the best in ears you can buy at that sound price, you'll also not be wearing a big label on your head notifying everyone that you've spent 250 big ones and have no idea what sound quality is. Better yet, 250 can get you some decent audio technica's or the Klipsch x10i in ears. Hope you guys enjoyed the review, be sure to hit the like button and subscribe! It's been Dan K, cya guys next time.
Welcome back to ItsDanKReviews, today we look at the HTC One and it's Camera, Video and Audio quality through a bunch of samples I took and edited together during the day.
All samples from the HTC One are 1080p bar the photos which are all native 4MP stills. Low light photos are an area of which the HTC One excels in as you can see from the footage although low light video seemed laggy at best and I wouldn't particularly recommend turning that mode on for filming at least. I haven't tested HDR footage just yet and then there's Zoe's which is just an entire other area to have a look at as well.
Are you impressed? What do you think? Let me know in the comments section below!
Hi guys welcome back to Its Dan K reviews. Today we are looking at the world's smallest WiFi router, it's the ASUS WL-330NUL. It's small enough to fit in your pocket and that's mainly because it's designed for those who travel quite a bit. In comparison, it's a little bit bigger than a Double A battery and much smaller than an eclipse mint can.
Basically the ASUS WL-330NUL is a plug and play device on Mac's and a short install device on windows. Simply click the router icon when it's plugged in and install the router utility, select advanced to see the wireless key and use that to connect external devices such as other laptops, mobile phones and tablets. When using the device when it's not connected by USB to a computer, the WiFi password can be found on the side.
You can broadcast the net from any Ethernet cable that is delivering it and you can power the device from the wall with the included Wall to USB charger. If you suffer from battery anxiety and have bought a powerbank, you can also use this to power the unit.
The pocket router works without an Ethernet cable as well and can rebroadcast current connectable WiFi signals from your laptop just by connecting to them, particularly useful if you are using a pay as you go log on internet system, the type that is found at many hotels, airports and transit lounges worldwide.
Hope you guys enjoyed the review, if you've got any questions, hit me up in the comments section below and as always, it's been Dan K, like the video up and subscribe by clicking in the middle of your screen! Cya guys next time.
