Reviews on gear and software

LumeCube RGB Panel Go

/in , /by

It’s no secret I like the products LumeCube releases.
For me it started with the LumeCube, a small cube with a punch, I love using it on a selfie stick for some interesting lighting effects/angles, but it’s also very nice to add some light in positions where you need something really small, and they even released a full accessory pack for the light. Now why do I tell this.

A good manufacturer always thinks about what the creators/users need, and will adjust the products to the demands from the market, this in my opinion the reason that some brands grow really fast into a household name and for me LumeCube is one of those companies.

I still remember the times when we started our YouTube channel, when we wanted light on location I needed to spend a lot of money and most of those sets where far from portable. Now don’t get me wrong, a good light quality is often achieved with a larger light source, but there is also a certain limit to what’s easy to use or just slows you down. So we were over the moon when the affordable led panels hit the market, but still it was a lot of carrying around, you needed power etc.

Let’s fast forward to today.
LumeCube just released their new RGB Panel Go.
Now we’ve used the Panel Go before this and it works like a charm on location for video light. But as you know… I also love to shoot photos with led panels, especially during the lockdowns shooting action figures, guitars etc. with led panels/tubes was something that got me through most of the lack of photographing people. And to be honest that also changed my opinion on what to buy a lot.

Where in the past I saw the smaller led panels really as video lights on location and the most important thing for me was long battery life on full brightness and the possibility to set the color temperature (of vital importance), my wishes has now changed more towards the realisation that what we always saw as “just” a video light can also be used creatively when it could also change colours for example……

Enter the LumeCube RGB Panel Go
As mentioned before we loved the Panel Go, and LumeCube did a huge upgrade to this panel.
Compared to the Panel Go, the new RGB Panel has of course (as the name suggest) the option to change colours (later more), but they improved a lot more.

The Panel Go used 112 leds and the new RGB panel Go now uses 210 leds.
Lightoutput is still 1080 Lux at .5 mtrs
Also battery life has been improved from 1.3 hours on full power to 1.5 hours on full power and 2.3 hours on 50% to 2.5 hours on 50%.

I actually like that LumeCube gives usable numbers, you often see adds where led panels are advertised with for example an insane battery life of 13-15 hours, but when you look closely it’s on 1% output… and well I don’t think anyone will use it on 1% except maybe as a nightlight, but than there are much cheaper solutions.

Charging the panel is done via USB-c (I think this should be standard on all devices) and takes app 80 minutes for a full charge.

The LumeCube menu is easy to navigate and gives the user a lot more options that the Panel Go, creating the colours you want is very easy and fast, but in the menu you can also access the special effects options of the RGB Panel Go including a police, fire, lighting, loop effect.

CRI
You might have seen this CRI value before, but what is it?
The letters means Color Rendering Index, in essence this means how close to real life you will see the objects colors when it’s lit with the light source. The range goes from 0 to 100 ra where 100 is as close to real life as possible (Day light).

To get the final number 8 colors are used and an average of these are calculated giving the light source it’s rating.
For home lighting for example anything above 80 ra is more than ok. But when lighting a painting, or something that is important for color representation it’s highly advised to chose light sources that are above 90 ra.

You probably already guessed that for a led panel lighting a subject it’s important that we have a higher ra rating than 80 which is ok for house lighting. Well don’t worry, the LumeCube RGB panel Go actually has a CRI rating of 96 plus.

Who should get the LumeCube RGB Panel Go?
For me it’s a no brainer one should always carry at least one location lighting solution in your bag, you never know when you need some light somewhere. And with the RGB addition to the Panel go I think LumeCube opens a whole new market for this panel.

You can still use it on the cameras hotshoe but by being able to also change colours to almost any imaginable colour it also opens a lot of options for more creative uses. I would love to bring one of the panels for an urbex session when you can light the rooms with any color you want, and the panels are powerful enough to mix with a little bit of ambient light in a room and create wonderful surreal images.

But also with model photography you can use one of them as a main-light and one as an accent light with a nice color.

And of course it still does what it was originally designed for, function as a very nice video light.

With the RGB Panel Go LumeCube offers an awesome lighting solution that is compact, affordable, outputs enough light, can create any colour you need on location, has a good battery life and is small enough to fit your hotshoe. I can’t wait to start using the RGB Panel Go in my work and will post some images in a later review video. But for now I wanted to share the test/review experiences.

For a limited time we have a special discount code for you guys.
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Samsung s22 ultra video

/in , , /by

One of the things that I found very interesting during the Samsung presentation about video at low light. And indeed their video looked awesome but lets be honest that was professionally lit 😉

For me it’s important that in real life situations i end up with usable video for behind the scenes videos. Those videos don’t have to be the best quality ever but it must be possible to see what’s going on.

Now one could say “why not use a Sony a7riv or a7s and a fast lens?” And you are absolutely right. Those cameras will blow the Samsung away in every situation but when we film material for the vlog we love to work with something really small and lightweight and preferably with a good microphone so I can quickly turn it on, press record and done…

For me the vlog should be a bit more raw and “real life” than tutorials (for which we do use the Sony cameras)

At the moment we’ve been using an osmo pocket which is…ok. Image quality is acceptable during the studio (low light) scenes and great outside, also the audio is ok. But I dont like the fact it’s fragile so we always have to carry it around in a case and take it out when using. Or leave it around your neck. And also the monitor on the back is ok for aiming but it’s not really accurate.

If it would be possible to replace the osmo pocket with a phone that would be great. So I decided to test the Samsung ultra out during the workshop smoke and gels with our model Felisa.

I have to be honest this was a worst case scenario. Using smoke mostly messes up the focus and using saturated gels are always killing video quality. Plus we didn’t use any extra lighting so all the lights you see are the modelling lights and because we mixed strobes with leds they were on the lower settings. This is also why the red leds are totally blowing out the video 😉

If you look at the video inside the studio it isn’t pretty but I have to say that on the HDR setting there was a lot more detail in both shadows and highlights outside and a slight advantage inside. For YT I changed the output to REC709 4k which did limit the dynamic range slightly (only visible outside)

What surprised me about the Samsung was the image stabilisation. On the screen it already looked good but in the video it really became clear that we are getting to a point that this becomes a real alternative to a gimble.

The slight vertical movement can easily be removed in your video editing software. But what you see in the video is all without any adjustments. What I did correct was the awful red color which looked more magenta than red. Luckily this only happened in the darker scenes and outside the reds were a lot better as you can see in the video. Although the overall look is not 100% accurate and oversaturated but it’s all correctable.

Also the audio is interesting. In pro mode you can select omni, front, back for the phone itself. But also external mics and even a mix option. Now that’s impressive.

The audio quality itself is ok. Good enough for a quick vlog type video but I think it’s too thin for anything longer or music. I’ll be testing using the Galaxy buds pro with the next vlog to see how that works but in essence audio should be absolutely no problem with all these options. (and you can always use an external recorder)

Conclusion

I see video in two categories for us. The tutorials we film in the studio under proper lighting and with different angles etc.

But also the vlog style videos where it would be best to work with as little gear as possible. You have to drag it around all day. Take chargers with you etc. This quickly takes away the fun and spontaneous effect.

With the ultra 22 samsung delivers a phone with a great camera system for social media but also with the video I think they hit a home run. Yes the video is far from perfect in low light BUT you can see what’s going on and the image stabilisation is awesome making videos easier to watch 😉

I think we are going to sell the osmo pocket soon 😉

You can watch the vlog here : https://youtu.be/ONVRELH3qbU

Samsung s22 ultra camera review part II

/in , /by

Before reading this part make sure you read the previous post
You can find that one here.

Ok so now that you are up to date let’s continue.

a new day a new try
As mentioned in the previous part loads of manufacturers claim to have killed the pro camera many times over and every generation it’s that time….. yeah just like this is our best phone ever…. Imagine someone going on stage and saying “yeah, we had to release something so we decided to make it less fast, take away some ports and it’s also slower…. Oh and one more thing… it’s more expensive “ no one would ever buy that one right?

so always take such claims with a huge mountain of salt because it’s never true in my experience. This is also how I approach the review of the camera system of the ultra 22.

For a huge chunk of money you get an awesome and fast phone (although the iPhone is faster) with a gorgeous screen and the s-pen. When I ordered I also got the Samsung galaxy buds pro which have become my favorite buds in just a few days. So the total package is very expensive but for a device I work on every day it’s worth it for me, but if you don’t use it like a sort of offline office it’s horrendously expensive.

Now in my case I always upgrade for one reason only… the camera system
Although I know it will never replace a real camera I do use the cameras a lot, during MTB rides, walking the dog, or simply when I don’t want to bring a normal camera, so my demands for the camera system are pretty high,  but I do know where to put my expectations 🙂 and that’s important for the next part.

108MP is rubbish
One of the main attractions is of course the 108MP sensor, insane details, crop till you drop etc. I’ve read all these claims, now let’s be clear if you zoom in on your phone the 108MP censor looks pretty good, you can see some problems but it’s more than decent. When looking at a properly calibrated monitor it’s really really bad. Now I have to be honest that I am not holding back when testing a camera, so also today I chose a situation with loads of small details, and man the Samsung really falls flat down on its face there with the 108MP sensor. It doesn’t matter if you use detail enhancer (seems to be a sort of slight HDR) or not the images look great without zooming in but as soon as you zoom in to 100% images can look pretty good when the subject is close by like a shot of my bike but as soon as the focus falls off the image changes from ok sharp to almost a painting and in detail mode anything that just moves a little bit in the wind gets a very obvious ghosting effect.

I’ll try some more 108MP shots in the coming weeks but for now I think the label “only in certain situations” is a good one, or just don’t use it if you’re in doubt.

12/10MP a different story
Now when we look at the binned options and other sensors the story does change A LOT

when you disarm the 108MP option the story really clears up to the positive side. Now don’t expect results anywhere near a modern or few years old budget SRL but that being said for a phone…. Wow I’m really impressed.

detail is clear, colors are not completely off the board (can be corrected with a colorchecker passport for example) and dynamic range is adéquate for most situations. And indeed lens flare on the main sensor is a lot less than on other cameras. I can actually say with confidence that from what I have worked with the Samsung does set a new standard in quality for the photos.

I still prefer the whole layout from my sony camera with the UI and shutterbutton but on 12MP it’s clear that as soon the light gets a bit more difficult the ultra 22 does win pretty easily. But…. It does come at a cost. The sony files are pretty clean and I would label them as RAW. Somehow I feel that the Samsung files are still processed. There is some ringing in small details and sometimes paintery areas can be found.  But hey it’s a phone.

This time I included a gallery with processed images like I normally post them on social media and I think it’s pretty clear that for social media the ultra 22 is just insane, four usable censors and I love the 3 and 10x zoom.

Also the software Samsung delivers is impressive with loads of extra options in portrait mode, Resampler etc. It’s not a replacement for Lightroom but it’s very clear Samsung is covering all the bases for social media posters. Add to this the impressive video performance and options to use a generous amount of external microphones and audio level meters and Samsung (like sony) knows what we need to create everything from text, photos to 8K video all on one device.

conclusion
I strongly feel Samsung hit the nail on the head for influencers and social media enthousiasts and delivered an all in package that is very hard to beat. It’s a far cry from professional results but for what it is I never saw something that comes close. (Do remember I’m incredibly picky with images and shoot with both medium format as the a7riv from sony so my reference level is pretty extreme)

for walk around this is an amazing camera that can also make phone calls and more, the addition of the s-pen is genius and is used here almost daily to sign documents, assist with photo reviews and of course editing images quickly.

I do want to add some things
First of all its a bit of a let down that none of our chargers supports ultra fast charging on the ultra22. Even when connecting a MacBookpro powersupply the phone charges at fast which takes a long time, even my older phones always switched to max charging when using the more powerful chargers. Meaning my phone takes 2 hours to go from 15% to 100%. Also battery life is promised to be a full day but for me that means that at around 15:00 I’m already ready for the first top up. Which does last me the rest of the day. We did order the 45W Samsung charger and that one (as expected) does immediately switch on the super fast charging, we did order this charger because I wanted to make sure the phone wasn’t defective seeing we tried every charger in our house hold and none activated the max charging speed.

Also I’m seeing stripes when using the fingerprint sensor when starting the phone on all resolutions, luckily it’s only there so I hope it will be solved soon.

And finally
I love high resolution shots but prefer a good shot to a messy one. This is also why I was eager to test the 108mp censor. I do most editing on a 4K screen and 10/12 mp doesn’t really give you enough data to zoom in to see details. I would love to have 20-24MP on next generations (raw). Also not including the option for an extra SD card is a mistake I think. The cameras are capable of a lot but also eat up room. I opted for the 256GB version while I only need 128GB and use Lightroom all the time for storage. So I can imagine going away a week it will probably run into serious storage issues. I did see Samsung created some small USBc memory sticks but I don’t have one of those to test. But I think they would be a nice fit.

If you like to play with the originals you can download them here. 

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra first camera test

/in , /by

It’s not secret that companies promise you the world when they want you to buy their products.
I remember one for the first smartphones I bought and the response from the seller was “you’ll never need another camera anymore, yes it’s that good, I don’t use my DSLR anymore”

Now this was many years ago when the quality of the photos always made me wonder if it was night all the time or if there was some weird snow or rain falling in the shots, in other words, muddy shots with loads and loads and repeat loads of noise.

Ok, when you shoot under perfect conditions there…. no I’m not even going to try they just plain sucked.
And in all fairness not a lot has changed, look at the presentations from Apple, Samsung etc. and they all promise you the perfect camera experience and better performance than before (yeah it would be weird if they said, it’s worse than last year)

I love gadgets and smartphones so most of the times I will upgrade almost every year when the latest and greatest is released and in all honesty I’m mostly highly disappointed. Up until I got my first Huawei phone… wow now that was a difference, it was far from perfect but for the first time I owned a phone that I would label as a hobbyist camera. In other words if I walk around without a real camera I’m more than happy with the smartphone images. But the UI and operation of the camera was… well it’s a smartphone you probably know what I mean right? It just doesn’t feel like a camera.

This changed when I got my Sony Xperia 1 II
Now when we talk about a real camera experience I must say Sony hit the nail on the head and hammered it all the way in. Yes it’s that good. If you ever used one of their amazing Alpha cameras it immediately feels familiar. They do use two apps but when you use the Pro version there is really hardly anyway to go back to the original camera. Also the dedicated shutter button is absolutely genius and works like a charm, the camera is super snappy and switching between the three lenses is fast and easy, even with gloves. The whole experience is a big 10+, The output is also very good in RAW, especially under ok lighting, as soon as it gets to dark the Sony really dives down in quality, and this is something I did miss dearly on the Sony, the Nightmode I got so used to on the Huawei series. But as a photographer I’m honestly more interested in RAW output without any tinkering than a nightmode… but still….

Well if you saw the Samsung presentation one might get the impression that they finally solved all the problems, this is the camera that can also make calls…..Because I did need a new smartphone I decided to take the jump and ordered the Samsung Galaxy S22Ultra 256GB. So lets make clear that I paid full price for my phone and I’m not at all associated with Samsung in anyway.

I’m totally going to skip the Android part, the only thing I can say is that I’m always pretty easy in switching OS and get used to things very easily, but some things I do want to point out.

Most people are active on social media and this is also where a lot of our images end up (when is the last time you printed your images?) so the sharing menu for me is incredibly important that it’s fully customisable and easy/fast to use. This is something that a lot of phones can improve and Samsung did do it right here by making it possible to have a lot of destinations in custom order meaning I can just follow the same order every time I post something I can’t express how important that is.

So up to the cameras
Specs are impressive for a smartphone with a 108MB (binned) main sensor, a 12MP Ultra Wide and 2 10MP tele lenses (3x and 10x).
When looking at the main camera app almost everything is there that you would want (and again fully customisable) we have standard modes for video and photography, a pro mode for both, panoramic mode in wide and ultra wide (nice), nightmode and some more cool things including a ONE SHOT.. (which takes one shot in all the modes you select, now that’s cool).

The standard camera app supports RAW (which is a surprise and awesome) and saves both RAW and JPG files (like most), only on the mainsensor you can opt for the binned output of 12MP or the full 108MP output.

If have to be honest the files coming out of the main camera app are pretty decent and have a lot of play room.
Samsung also has an Expert RAW app which you have to download separately (why not just include it), this app is pure aimed at the pro (they say) and has some real magic going on behind the scenes, 16bits RAW files are already impressive but they also work some internal magic with combining several shots to get some really sharp images that will rival pro cameras.

So is this all true?
Let me start that on the screen of the Phone the images just made my jaw drop on the floor and bounce back a few times. I’m not easily impressed but wow this is something else. But after loading them into Lightroom and looking at them on my 12.9″ iPad Pro there are already some issues, but still they look more than decent, I would even say impressive).

Where it all just gets a lot worse is when you open the images on a desktop.
Where the Sony RAW files exhibit plenty of detail and enough dynamic range to do some proper editing the Samsung files in expert RAW do have the same or slightly better dynamic range (especially from the main sensor) but it does cost you dearly.

When zooming in on a proper calibrated BenQ monitor it’s clear that Samsung needs to go back to the drawing board and do some fine tweaking for people like me.

I’m not saying the images are bad, oh far from.
But they suffer from an insane amount of sharpening that should NEVER EVER happen in a RAW file, in Lightroom I have to lower the sharpness all the way to zero to get some of the ringing out of the shots but it’s never totally gone. Now I have to be honest I did not held back in my test images, which you can see at the bottom of the review. Loads of small cables from the boats and of course a high contrast backlit sky. So in most normal situations this will be a non issue or not noticeable but hey we are doing a proper review not a consumer point and shoot review 😀

Where it gets worse is in the combination of images. Somehow you can see that the AI messes up considerably by adding the images together, again I chose some pretty difficult things to shoot, but not that difficult. Some areas of the images are very nice and detailed but a bordering detail can be very painterly or not even sharp, it’s a weird combination of sharp areas and painterly blotches.

Today I intentionally only used the 108MP sensor in the normal camera app and the other images were all shot in Expert RAW, I’ll repeat the test very soon by using only the main camera app in RAW to see if that “stacked” problem is less obvious there.

JPG vs RAW
Where I do have to give a lot of credit to Samsung is the quality of the JPGs.
As you can imagine I’ve seen a lot of different cameras and smartphones but man when looking at the pure JPGs coming from the Samsung one REALLY starts to wonder if shooting RAW is actually worth it. In the gallery I did add some images that are both JPG and RAW, where I have to be honest I do like my RAW processing more because I feel the Samsung is overdoing it a bit/a lot BUT that being said for most users I think they will prefer the JPGs, and on social media I honestly feel the JPGs do a tremendous job and I would not advise using RAW for that kind of usage. Of course if you want a bit more… RAW is the only way I think.

But let’s just for fun already compare two shots.

After my text it’s easy to spot the JPG (second one) but you can also see something else when you take the original files.
Samsung does a lot more than just play with shadows and highlights. I tried to get the exact same look in Lightroom and I just couldn’t without using some kind of masking so for a smartphone this is I think very impressive. The question is do you like it…..?

For who is this phone/camera?
And is it like the Sony a camera that can do other things, or is the Samsung a Phone that can take images?
Well it most definitely doesn’t come close to the UI and dedicated shutter button of the Sony, you can start the camera/expert RAW by double clicking the power button and use the volume buttons as shutter but this is very unnatural, the volume buttons are on the left top side of the phone and ALL cameras (as far as I know) have their shutter buttons on the right side. Meaning I’m always covering my screen when taking a shot, or I have to force myself to use my left hand, which for me feels incredibly unnatural.

That being said, I think the output is very impressive.
During day time the Sony wins hands down when using RAW and 12MP. The files are much cleaner and can be pushed more than enough. The Samsung however wins hands down with special modes like nightmode (which I love), one shot, more range with tele etc.

So… when walking around and shooting images for social media the Ultra 22 might actually be a total overkill camera, the quality is insanely good and it’s almost a shame to post the images on social media only, but that’s where the problem also arises, they are so nice on the smaller screens that you are almost disappointed when you look at them on the big screen, loads of painterly effects, way to much sharpening etc.

Conclusion for now
One could say this is more a review about the Expert RAW app which I absolutely love. Giving all the freedom to the photographer for shutter speed, ISO, focus (with peaking :D) etc. is essential if you want me to take product serious, but RAW for me is RAW meaning a total readout of the sensor without ANY interference that could be labeled as preference. Working with the Ultra S22 leaves me literally split in the middle.

For social media I think this is without a doubt the phone to beat, it crushes everything I saw so far in options, 10x tele might seem useless but the quality is so good it actually does make sense, HOWEVER I’ve seen several reviews that zoom in from the main app, this is not using the tele lens as I understand it (also explaining the very bad quality they show) you really have to switch between lenses, and than the tele lenses are very very good for a smartphone.

For professional use, I would love for Samsung to change some things in the expert RAW app, PLEASE turn down that bloody sharpening and noise reduction, it’s insane we can do that ourselves in Lightroom so if you label something expert don’t treat the users like dummies, we know what to do 😀 I think if Samsung would dial down on those settings you’ll get a lot more noise in the images but I’m 100% sure that Lightroom can do it a lot better than what I see now.

Still I have to be fair towards Samsung, this is one bloody good camera and maybe it’s totally unfair of me comparing it to a real SLR but hey if you claim it, you better make it so and although this is a really really good smartphone camera it’s nowhere near the quality you could get out of a $700 SLR. But putting that into perspective it’s now finally getting to the point where someone (like me) can say “it’s good enough”.

I would however love it when Samsung somehow made it possible to switch between the standard camera app and the expert raw possible within the apps itself. I find myself constantly switching and that means I can use one app without starting my phone and if I want to use a feature from the other one I have to close everything and open up the phone. It would be a huge deal if that wasn’t necessary and there would be a switch (like switching between selfie and front) that would just switch between the apps.

I do have to add one more thing.
In the Ultra22 Samsung did something that I think is really smart, they replaced the Note series. One can argue that the phone is too bulky or squared off and I agree, but a smaller phone doesn’t give me the options I need to edit the images easily, and my case will make it more rounded and easier to hold, so it’s a large phone…. we know. The thing I however feel would really draw creators in is the inclusion of the S-pen, now talk about something insanely handy and professional.

I could do a whole review on how to use the S-pen to take photos from a distance, or make it follow you with the camera, but most of the times I use it to retouch images on the screen, using the healing/clone tool in Lightroom with your fingers is terrible, on the iPad Pro it’s awesome with the Apple Pencil but the Samsung S22 ultra with the S-pen strikes it perfectly with the balance between the pen (not too small) and the screen size, retouching on the iPad Pro 12.9 is still a lot easier but for on the road the Samsung with S-pen will do just fine and will really be a part of the package that photographers/creators will fall in love with.

Here you can find some images in the gallery.
I also enclosed the original files for you guys to play with, it’s a hefty 500MB download so make sure you sit tight.
Download the file here.

I’ll do a follow up if necessary with the stock camera app and nightmode.
If there is anything you want me to test just ask.

Weird lines…

I do want to add one more remark. When starting the phone and using the fingerprint sensor I see some weird colored bars on the screen. Also it seems the proximity sensor doesn’t work as it should with taking screenshots. Let’s hope this will be solved by a firmware upgrade.