Adorama now makes its own photography lighting gear, and they recently sent me their Glow HexaPop 24″ softbox for review. The Adorama Glow HexaPop is similar to a standard softbox for still photography, but it’s got some nice umbrella-like features in the back so that it can collapse down quickly for transport. It retails for about $135 on Adorama with a current rebate offer. With this Adorama Glow HexaPop review I’ll tell you about some of the pros and cons in case you’re shopping for this kind of gear.
Pros:
Use with any standard flash
Lightweight
Quick setup and take down
Solid construction of the softbox
Soft, but crisp, light
Cons:
Although it is lightweight, only time can tell how well the plastic elements of the bracket will hold up
The Glow series of light modifiers includes all sorts of shapes and sizes, and this HexaPop version of their softbox is 24″. It’s a good, manageable size for shooting portraits on-the-go or doing quick head shots in tight spaces, etc. You could even wander an event like a wedding and shoot candids with this softbox in one hand and your camera in the other. I wish I had this with me on my three minute portrait shoot with Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos earlier this month! The six wires in the back of the softbox snap into place really quickly, and I could’ve set this up in no time.
Simply put, this is a nice, light softbox that will get the job done. Of course, if you want softer light, you’ll need to get something larger. They do make a range of light modifiers for still photography, built for both large studio strobes and smaller flashes. Stay tuned for a review of the Adorama Glow 71″ Grand Softbox, but the Adorama Glow HexaPop 24″ is a nice place to start for creating simple, soft light from your flash. I think it’s worth the $135 it’s going for right now on Adorama.com.
Hawaiki Color is a color grading plugin for Final Cut Pro X that is relatively powerful, easy to use, and costs a mere $50. (Tokyo Productions and Lawn Road provided me a copy for review.) In this Hawaiki Color review I’ll give you some pros and cons so that you can get a feel for the plugin before considering making a purchase.
(Above: Hawaiki Color’s own tutorial video)
First off, the layout is clean and easy to use. You’ll find three large color wheels and a series of sliders for color temperature, exposure, saturation, and hue/contrast/blur/sharpness. I love having quick access to these basic tools.
To use the Hawaiki Color plugin for Final Cut Pro X, first simply select which clip you’d like to adjust. Then in the effects tab at the lower right of your screen, double click on Hawaiki Color. It’s that easy. You can then begin to adjust the sliders and the color wheels.
Pros and Cons:
Cons:
The only feature I’m missing is selective color – the ability to selectively reduce or increase the saturation of single colors. It would be great to select cyan or yellow, for instance, and adjust the saturation of that specific color.
Pros:
Everything about Hawaiki Color is pretty quick, clean, and easy.
The quick sliders for contrast, sharpness, and exposure are very handy and either are better than the built in functions of Final Cut Pro X or do not even come standard with Final Cut Pro X.
The color wheels are standard and easy to use.
The sliders are accurate for fine tuning, especially when selecting specifically for lows, mids, or highs.
Thanks for looking and I hope this Hawaiki Color review is useful for you.
Amazon just released its latest tablet, the Kindle Fire HDX, which I photographed today for Wired. I also had a small amount of time with Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos for a few portraits. Have a look at the story here on Wired.com.
Camera and electronics retailer Adorama has created its own line of pro and consumer video gear under the name Flashpoint, and recently invited me to do an Adorama Flashpoint Matte Box System II review. At a retail price of $250 (plus the current $60 instant rebate), the Flashpoint Matte Box is reasonably priced. It is best for DSLR’s, but can be used with other digital video cameras as well. As with all DSLR video accessories, this piece of kit is not cheap but it is relatively competitively priced, given the features.
So what does it do? Of course, first and foremost the Flashpoint Matte Box System II prevents lens flares by blocking glare/reflections. The three big blades are easily adjustable to block unwanted light from natural and artificial sources. The kit also comes with two filter trays so that you can use a neutral density filter or other filter to make your video look exactly how you want it to, so you can save time on post-production.
The filter trays are plastic, which is fine, as is the body of the matte box itself. The matte box is lightweight and does seem study, although I am left wondering how it would take a fall on a hard surface. The large blades are lightweight metal, which is very nice. The whole kit feels light, which is really important to someone like me who likes the run-and-gun approach. I also travel a lot and need something lightweight. The Flashpoint Matte Box System II can be disassembled in just a minute and folds pretty flat so that it can be packed for travel.
(Above: Adorama’s video for the Flashpoint Matte Box System II and other accessories)
The final accessory included is a set of three rubbery donuts that fit around the end of your lens (see below). You just select one that fits your lens and slide it on to help keep light out. You then attach your camera to whatever video rig you have, and lightly press the end of the donut to the back of your Flashpoint Matte Box System II. Reviews I’ve read haven’t mentioned how easy these little guys are to use, and although I will probably lose them in about three days … it is these simple little additions to kits that make life so much easier.
Anyways, thanks for checking out this Adorama Flashpoint Matte Box System II review and I hope it helps you out. If you are shopping and are ready to upgrade your DSLR video kit to a rig with a matte box and other accessories, I would recommend that you consider the Flashpoint Matte Box System II.
Noise Industries was kind enough to send me a copy of the new FxFactory Pro 4.0 for review, and it’s a great toolkit for the video editor looking for relatively easy-to-use and affordable plugins that will make a video project stand out. In this brief FxFactory 4 Review, I’ll tell you a little bit about the platform, what it has to offer, and how to use it. It is a free update for current owners of previous versions of FxFactory Pro.
(FxFactory’s introduction video is below)
First off, it is packed full of features. FxFactory 4 contains a variety of plugins boasting more than 170 filters, transitions, and generators. New features with this update include support for Adobe Premiere, and of course it still works with Apple Final Cut Pro and Motion, as well as Adobe After Effects.
Using FxFactory Pro 4 is a breeze, as were previous versions, at least in my experience using Final Cut Pro X with FxFactory Pro. Once you install FxFactory Pro, simply open Final Cut Pro X and find the plugins automatically installed in the Effects Browser (Command + 5 will also open the Effects Browser). See below.
All of your new plugins will be categorized by the type of effect, so if you want to find a pattern or a sun flare image, just click the Generators icon in the Effects Browser and scroll through the multitude of options. Or if you want to experiment with some new transitions, just browse through the Transitions tab, etc.
Without going into detail about every single feature, I’ll highlight what’s new with this most recent update to FxFactory Pro 4.0. Photo Montage is a quick, slick way to animate photos for a slide show with various animation style choices. Motype 1.3 by Yanobox offers some cool title effects. Callouts 1.3 has a lot of nice animations for explaining ideas with text and clean line and dot animations. PHYX Cleaner 2.0 repairs footage to make it look crisp and clean. Split Animator 1.1 has several updates for its split screen features.
Overall, I think if you read this FxFactory 4 review you’ll know that I’m quite happy with the software. I think FxFactory is a great addition to Final Cut Pro X’s built-in features, and FxFactory 4 brings a lot of easy-to-use plugin features that will keep your projects looking sharp.
Thanks for reading and feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions.
Rolling Credits by SUGARfx is a Final Cut Pro X plug-in that generates some really nice credits to add at the end of your film projects. In full disclosure, I recently tried out this plug-in for a new project I’m working on thanks to a free license from SUGARfx. In this Final Cut Pro X plug-in review, I’ll be telling you a few of the quick pros and cons about the plug-in so that you can decide whether or not you’d like to drop the $49 on a new FCPX plug-in, or just continue to create credits with the built-in generators that come with FCPX. (Read more Final Cut Pro X reviews here).
First off, I like Rolling Credits because the credits look sharp. Aside from price, user interface, etc., the credits simply look good. See below for more detailed pros and cons:
Pros:
12 layouts offer a diversity of visual options.
Each layout is highly customizable, allowing for changes to motion, color, gradient, motion blur, etc.
As I mentioned, these Final Cut Pro X credits just look good.
Cons:
The interface is a little bit more complicated than it needs to be.
Importing your credits text also seems more complicated than it needs to be, although this may be the fault of Final Cut Pro X and its limitations. I have to type [TTL] before the title, for instance, which isn’t a huge pain, but seems a little bit old school for a 2012 version of a Final Cut Pro X plug-in.
For what you get as a user, I think a $29 price point would be a little better than the $49 sticker price.
Below is the video tutorial for the plug-in, produced by SUGARfx themselves:
XEffects is another plugin for Final Cut Pro X (FCP X) that I have found useful for adding more of that polished look to my video projects. The plugin offers 10 or 12 distinctly different transition animations. These transitions are pretty sophisticated and so when you watch them, they feel professional. Not cheesy. They are intense enough for upbeat videos, but with enough options for toning down the mood more a more serious commercial project. I would highly recommend the plugin.
Punchline is a plugin for Final Cut Pro X (FCP X) that offers some slick titles and transitions to spruce up your project and save some time with editing. I wanted to write a quick FCP X Punchline review so that editors out there like me can decide if they want to spend the money on yet another new plugin for FCP X. Personally, I enjoy editing and telling a story with visuals (since I’m a photojournalist), but I don’t usually want to spend a lot of time on animation, titling, etc. I’m also not ready to spend the money to outsource this work to a third party. Plugins are a great compromise here.
Punchline is available for $49 from SUGARfx. You get a set of about 10 or 12 different styles, all of which are highly customizable.
Here are some pros and cons:
Pros:
Easy to use
Quality transitions
High energy, which is good for sports and entertainment videos
Cons:
Variety – I might like to see a few more styles of transitions.
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You can watch the official FCP X Punchline plugin tutorial below:
Today I’m doing a PluralEyes FCP X review because there is now a new version of the popular PluralEyes software for Final Cut Pro X that might help speed up your editing process, especially for DSLR shooters. Singular Software’s popular synching tool for Final Cut Pro 7 is sure to be a hit with video editors using Apple’s new FCP X, but I’ll break down a couple of the reasons why you may or may not want to buy this plugin. Here are a few pros and cons:
Pros:
PluralEyes FCP X is more reliable than the built-in sync function in FCP X. At times the built-in sync gets confused.
PluralEyes FCP X can handle tons of clips and sync them with ease. It is basically impossible to sync more than two clips in FCP X without PluralEyes
PluralEyes FCP X can sync multiple video clips with the same audio clip. This is something crucial for me and other DSLR shooters. We often shoot with continuous audio on a recorder like a Zoom H4n, but we stop and start the video because cameras like the Canon 5D mark II and even the mark III cannot shoot longer than 12 minutes and 30 minutes respectively. So if I film an interview that has two or three video clips of, say, 10 minutes each and an audio track of 30 minutes, I can only sync one of those video clips to the audio in FCP X. Unless I have PluralEyes. Otherwise I have to sync the other two video clips by hand, or I have to cut the audio during the interview into multiple clips, which just makes things even more complicated and is a bad idea.
Cons:
It does take a few more clicks to sync clips using PluralEyes, whereas with the built-in FCP sync function, you can right click and select “synchronize” and you’re done. PluralEyes takes a minute to process, and to export to PluralEyes from FCP X you have to leave the timeline and view the entire list of projects, which takes a moment as well.
As usual, I’m going to complain about the price here. If you’re like me and independent, it’s tough to budget for anything more than essential gear. If you are spending $150 on a plugin for use on a piece of software that costs $300 total, then you better get a lot of use out of it. PluralEyes for FCP 7 was a comparable price, but it was a fraction of the total price of FCP 7, and now that FCP X is much, much cheaper, it’s hard to justify spending 50% of the cost of the original software on a plugin.
Thanks for looking and I hope this PluralEyes FCP X review was helpful to you …
Yanobox provided me with their new color manipulation plug-in for Final Cut Pro X, called Moods. In this post I will review Yanobox Moods and tell you a bit about its pros and cons and why you might want to try it on your next Final Cut Pro X project.
First off, as always, this is an honest Yanobox Moods review for Final Cut Pro X, but I did want to make sure and mention that yes, Yanobox sent the Moods software to me for free. That said, I will still try to be objective in this review. Second, right off the bat, I like Moods because it is simple, easy, and user-friendly. The software does not necessarily go far beyond what is already built into Final Cut Pro X, but it is still useful, intuitive, and comes with some great color-correction/manipulation presets. I tested out Moods in FCP X on my new project, The Tallest Hurdle, which is about the surprisingly common trend of child burn injuries caused by accidents with cooking fires in Nepal.
What’s great about Yanobox Moods is that you can preview a preset by simply moving your mouse over the preset. You will see the visual effect on your selected clip without even having to click. That is slick. There are several options for presets in Yanobox Moods and Final Cut Pro X makes integration with the plug-in a breeze. Click on “Effects” while in FCP X and review the Moods preset options. Select a preset or start from scratch using the array of sliders and wheels that control everything from shadow color tones to gamma, exposure, and more.
What’s not so great about Yanobox Moods is that it seems to draw much more energy from the computer in order to render changes as compared to say, using the built-in color and exposure controls in FCP X. Other than that drawback, I can’t really find a reason not to use Moods, unless you are tight on money. Otherwise, for $50, it’s really not a bad deal at all.
If you liked this Yanobox Moods review for Final Cut Pro X, you want to see more reviews, or just want to disagree, go right ahead! Let me know what you think or send me a question. I will be reviewing another software plug-in for Final Cut Pro X soon – Singular Software PluralEyes for Final Cut Pro X – so stay tuned. Thanks for viewing.
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Here is the Moods tutorial video, which is just an introduction by Yanobox that they put on YouTube for beginners:
Singular Software has just released PluralEyes for Final Cut Pro X. PluralEyes was the go-to plugin of choice for video editors syncing audio using Final Cut Pro 7, and now the plugin is available: PluralEyes for Final Cut Pro X. I will be reviewing the new plugin soon.
As DSLR shooters, we have to use external audio recorders because our cameras don’t record audio very well. And as you may know, to sync audio in Final Cut Pro X it is as easy as three clicks – just click the audio track, the video, and right click to select “synchronize clips.” This is great and a feature that was badly needed in Final Cut Pro 7, which is why PluralEyes was so great when it came out. So why would anyone ever need PluralEyes for Final Cut Pro X?? Final Cut Pro X does not seem to be able to figure out how to sync multiple video clips with a single audio track. This is very frustrating, because often I will have one track for audio from an interview, and multiple video clips from the interview. This is because DSLR cameras like the Canon 5D mark II cannot film for longer than 12 minutes or so. You have to briefly stop and start the camera. I’m very much looking forward to testing out this new version of PluralEyes for Final Cut Pro X.
See below for the official press release:
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PLURALEYES FOR FINAL CUT PRO X NOW AVAILABLE
New release lets Final Cut Pro X editors better manage dual-system audio and multi-camera productions; sophisticated automation technology accurately syncs video and audio
Vancouver, British Columbia, January 25, 2012 — Singular Software™, a developer of workflow automation applications for video production, is pleased to announce the availability of PluralEyes® for Apple® Final Cut Pro® X (FCP X). The multi-award winning PluralEyes technology works alongside FCP X to quickly and accurately sync video and audio clips for dual-system audio and multi-camera productions, saving hours of tedious manual syncing during post-production.
“The auto sync function that is built into Final Cut Pro X is a start, but most professional editors will want more. They want to be able to sync many clips at once, see the results right away, and be confident that the sync will work across a broad range of real-world video projects,” says Bruce Sharpe, CEO, Singular Software. “PluralEyes for FCP X is built on the same technology that is used countless times every day to sync weddings, corporate videos, documentaries and a host of other video production types. With a time-tested, proven technology powering the automation, FCP X editors can confidently offload their entire sync task to PluralEyes and be hands off until the sync is complete, regardless of the type of project they are working on.”
PluralEyes for FCP X went through an extensive public beta before its release with thousands of editors putting the software through its paces. Photography Bay reviewed the PluralEyes for FCP X beta release, commenting on its ability to better handle real-world sync projects, “…syncing multiple takes to a single audio clip is a challenge in FCP X, but is something that the new PluralEyes beta shreds through easily.” The full Photography Bay review can be viewed at http://www.photographybay.com/2011/12/15/plural-eyes-now-available-for-fcp-x/
The Kodak Zi8 is a great little tool. Here is a quick Kodak Zi8 review to help you decide if you should buy it or not.
Pros:
The Kodak Zi8 shoots 1080p HD video.
Input for external microphone.
Uses SD memory cards, not built-in memory.
Great size. Small but not too small. Kodak Zi8 is about the size of an iPhone.
Cons:
Not all HD is the same. The Kodak Zi8 footage quality leaves something to be desired.
Battery life is short.
Still photographs are poor quality
The Kodak Zi8 makes for a decent secondary camera for b-roll, detail/secondary angles for interviews, and for time lapses. It’s also great for attaching to something like bicycle handlebars without having to worry about breaking an expensive camera. I wouldn’t write a Kodak Zi8 review without saying that the battery is crap and the still images it takes are pretty useless. But that’s fine – it’s still worth buying and it’s better than a Flip camera.
Why is it better than a Flip camera? What is better – Kodak Zi8 vs Flip? Well, the Flip doesn’t use SD cards so you are limited to what the Flip’s built-in memory can hold. Also, the Flip doesn’t work with external audio. And if you know anything about good multimedia and good film making, it’s that audio is everything. That said, the Flip shots slightly better footage than does the Kodak Zi8, but everything else about the Flip camera is worse. The Flip isn’t bad, it’s just worse in comparison to the Kodak Zi8. Review it differently if you disagree, and send me your review so I can read it!
So what about the Kodak Zi8 vs Flip vs GoPro? If you’re in the market for a pocket HD digital video camera, then you are probably looking at the Kodak Zi8, the Flip camera, and the GoPro. The benefit of the GoPro is that it’s rugged and the newest version of the GoPro shoots better quality footage than both the Flip camera and the Kodak Zi8. The GoPro is, however, more expensive. So it’s really in another category, but it is similar to the Flip camera and the Kodak Zi8. So in the context of a Kodak Zi8 review, I’ll have to say that the Zi8 is the best choice, and if you have extra money or want to send a list to Santa this year, then consider the GoPro as an upgrade. But keep in mind that the GoPro has the same audio drawbacks as the Flip camera, and in the audio arena the Kodak Zi8 is the winner.
I’ll finish this Kodak Zi8 review with a little endorsement for the iPhone 4S. If you don’t care about audio, then ditch the Kodak Zi8 and pickup an iPhone 4S. It will shoot as good as all three of the pocket digital video cameras mentioned above, but it’s the only one that makes calls and tells how to get home when you’re lost … ! Good luck shopping.
