Tag Archive for: review

Dell XPS 9570 first impressions

/1 Comment/in , /by

If I have to be honest, most of my work is done on my laptop.
Of course we have a blazingly fast machine in the studio, but most of the time I’m editing video or photos on my laptop, for the simple reason I have a station at home and although I love my studio I enjoy working from home just a bit more, plus when travelling I’m of course 100% depending on my laptop. So probably the most important machine for me as a workhorse is my laptop. So when a new CPU is launched I’m not immediately upgrading my desktop but as soon as a new laptop is released I’m on the look out if it’s a step up from my previous machine.

When I switched from Mac to PC, in all honesty there was only one machine that really caught my eye, the Dell XPS 9560.
I simply looked and felt the best compared to my MacBookPro. I sometimes even call it “what the macbook should have become”, a gorgeous 4K 100% Adobe RGB touch screen (shame it doesn’t include a digitizer), great keyboard, all the ports available and a heavy battery pack, plus a “cheap” external power solution and a great touchpad. But what makes it incredibly handy for me as a travelling photographer…. the 15.6 screen with very tiny bezels which makes this a 15.6″ laptop that will fit most bags without any problem where normally a 15.6″ would not, it’s really something that I love about the XPS series.

Add to this the on-site service, meaning you don’t have to bring it in, or send it somewhere and be without a laptop for 2-3 weeks. My MacBookPro suffered from “staingate” and although Apple replaced my screen for free, I did was without laptop for a week. Now if you’re just surfing the web or playing a game that doesn’t sound like long, but as mentioned before I almost life with my laptop so every day is one too many. I did need Dell twice and both times they arrived within 24 hours and within an hour I was up and running again.

Ok enough of the introduction.
The new XPS 9570 has arrived.

For your perspective
I ordered the i9 version with 32GB and 1TB SSD, 4K
I owned the top of the line i7 with 32GB and 1TB SSD, 4K

My XPS9560 was awesome, it’s very fast and editing 4K straight out of the Sony cameras worked like a charm on both Premiere as Davinci Resolve (although with Davinci resolve I did feel like I missed some performance). Premiere played back everything without any stutters on full res, and on 1/2 it showed all edits without any problem on full frame rate. Nothing to complain about. Also Capture One, Photoshop and Lightroom run like crazy, 60MP files are no problem.

So why upgrade to the i9 version?
Well I understand your question.
When travelling my workdays are pretty extreme, we wake up at around 8:00 and it’s hardly ever before 1:00-2:00AM that I’m in bed. Mostly because I try to edit all images and edit the vlog of that day before I go to bed. And this is a lot of work, plus it takes a hefty toll on the CPU and GPU so every single lit bit of speed increase I can get I welcome.

Some people complain about the new XPS 9570 not looking different from the old version… well thank you Dell. Now I can probably fit my old case and don’t have to buy a new one. The XPS series look awesome, I don’t see any need to change this, although I would love it if Dell would install a digitizer in the screen next time. In case you’re wondering what that is….. it makes it possible to use a wacom pen (or other) on the screen and pressure sensitivity.

So without wasting more of your time…here are the changes.

  1. The screen
    The new XPS 9570 has a slightly brighter screen. The XPS9560 had a nice output of 300 nits, the XPS9570 now clocks in at 400 nits. When shooting outside this can be just the difference, although I would love even more of course, we also have to be realistic with battery life vs brightness.
  2. USB-C/TB3
    The XPS 9570 now supports 4 lanes via TB3, which makes it ideal for using an external GPU, if needed
  3. GPU
    This is a big deal for most of the things I do, the XPS 9560 used a GTX1050, the XPS 9570 is outfitted with a “slightly underclocked” GTX 1050 Ti which is a much faster card.
  4. CPU
    Going from 4 cores to 6 cores can be a big deal IF the software supports it.

These are the changes that are most important for me, as a creator.
The nice thing is that Dell with the XPS really seems to think about people like me, the card reader is still there and is not a slow version but actually a very fast version of what you normally find in laptops. This means that if you have the cards that support the higher speeds, the Dell won’t disappoint you.

Of course the webcam is often up for debate, and yes…. it’s still in the bottom, creating a weird effect when talking to someone (up the nose) but in all honesty it doesn’t really bother me that much, I hardly use skype for business and my family… well they will have to get used to it, if you use skype a lot for interviews etc. I would advise to connect an external webcam.

Ok so is it faster, come on Frank….
Ok, ok.
here we go.

Yes. It’s a LOT faster.
Let’s take a look at some results.

First up Cinebench which I always use for testing.
XPS 9560—–CPU 603 / OpenGL 76.90
XPS 9570—–CPU 1177 / OpenGL 121.66

Next up is Haven, a benchmark that is really heavy on performance of GPU (and CPU) and is a good overview of how a system performance under heavy stress for video and rendering. I used the EXTREME setting.

XPS 9560—–Fps 30.5 / 769
6.9/71.8 (min/max)

XPS 9570—–fps 43.4 / 1094
7.9 / 99.5 (min/max)

As you can see the difference is pretty much clear, and I’m pretty surprised to be honest. Normally you will see some progress between laptops, but this is pretty extreme. Especially because there was some talk about Dell using a slightly underclocked GTX1050ti.

In Dell’s defence (and it shows here) I think they pretty much solved the “how to make a laptop run fast” puzzle. I remember seeing a comparision video between several laptops with higher specs than the XPS9560 but they were all beaten by the XPS9560 when rendering more complex video streams or scenes. The conclusion was (and it’s pretty obvious if you know a little bit about how a CPU and GPU works) that Dell has a much better control over the throttling of the CPU and GPU. This happens when a machine gets too hot and in essence it just clocks the speed down to let the machine cool down. This means that in theory you can put a GTX 1080 in a laptop but it will probably not outperform a lower card that has better cooling and runs cooler from it’s own. There are certain limitations you have to work with when you put components in a small housing like a laptop case. And it seems Dell really knows how to do this.

There are some discussions about giving the XPS9570 a slightly less voltage to run even faster and cooler but I haven’t (and am not going to) try this. It’s something that can make a machine unstable and I don’t want to shave off 1 minute working time with the risk of crashing premiere or photoshop 🙂

 

Conclusion
Dell has done it again.
I already loved the XPS 9560 (and still do, it’s a major laptop), but the XPS 9570 is much faster and now supports 4 lanes over TB3 and has a slightly brighter screen. If you’re a creator and demand the highest from your laptop… you really can’t go wrong, especially because Dell offers onsite service in case of emergency.

 

Problems
I did experience some weird behavior on the XPS 9570.
I normally always uninstall everything that doesn’t belong on a laptop and use the software Driver Easy to update all the drivers, often the drivers from a manufacturer are older, I did the same on the XPS 9570 and it resulted in a very slow working machine, I called it even a 286 at some point, I almost send it back because I thought it was defective. Even after a clean install it kept stuttering, showing the circle on the desktop etc. not unworkable but again it mimicked a 286 (ok maybe 486), only after downloading the chipset drivers from the Dell website and installing these instead of the newer from Intels site….. the machine sprang back to life in full speed mode…. I’ll be doing some testing on this later by manually installing driver by driver to see which one is the problematic one. But just beware when you are like me that in this case it’s better to keep the original drivers for now.

 

I paid full retail for my XPS 9570.
Dell doesn’t support me, and probably doesn’t even know me 🙂
I’m just a very enthusiastic Dell user (for laptops)

 

 

This is the link to the gaming XPS9570 https://amzn.to/2HV9FSE . I use the one with the I9 CPU

 

Huawei P20 pro on the street in Amsterdam almost final conclusion

/in , /by

I never ever spend so much time on reviewing a smartphone, but I think the P20Pro is often not reviewed the way that photographers use it in other reviews, or features are not mentioned that I think are very important. Now don’t worry this will NEVER become a smartphone blog, it is and will always stay a photography blog.

Than why spend so much time on a fricking phone?
Well first of all because you guys keep asking me about it, and secondly and probably the most important reason is that this phone is just a real step forward in usability for pro shooters, one could say that it’s the first major break through in years in this segment, and in all honesty I don’t really regard this as a smartphone review, I REALLY and honestly see this as a PURE photography review, yes it’s that good.

So after the last review you guys asked me how it would perform on the street, just a few shots were not enough to give an impression and “as always” I agree, so today we went out on the streets of Amsterdam for about 30 minutes to shoot some images. Now before I start lets make a few things clear…..

  1. Oversharpening
    PLEASE Huawei, PLEASE lower the sharpening in the JPGs, I don’t want to go as far as that they are unusable, but when you shoot something with fine detail it’s literally unusable, it might look fine on instagram but I would never shoot something like that for even the slightest important shot, it’s really hit and miss. Some shots look nice and detailed but most with fine detail are just a mess. And this is a shame for the very simple reason…. it can easily be fixed in a firmware update.
  2. Nightmode
    Absolutely magic, I don’t know what’s going on but even when there is motion in the shot it’s a perfect shot without any motion, you really have to see it to believe it, but also there PLEASE back down the sharpness a LOT, again it’s hit and miss, some shots are amazing, some are just horrendous

Ok, so JPG pretty much is hit and miss… but who cares about JPG ?
Well if you want to use the amazing night mode you have to work with JPG, so I really hope they will address this in firmware, again it should be incredibly easy to do.

Ok let’s go to the goodies…..RAW
40MP pure raw files…. mmmmm
Now we are talking, this is night and day compared to the JPG files, the RAW files I didn’t expect a lot from when I bought the phone (to be clear I’m NOT associated with Huawei, in fact I did try to contact the Netherlands and got a standard reply that they are not interested in working with Photographers… well ok, and I paid full retail for my phone). The moment I got the phone and saw the RAW files I did like them a lot, but after today it did convince me about one simple thing….

The P20Pro could be the best street/travel cam out there today in the compact range.
Yes you heard that correctly. But I also added could be.
In essence.
If you are ok with shooting on the 40MP RAW setting, and not using all the special features like HDR, Lightpainting, portrait etc. and can work with the wide angle lens this is in fact a full replacement for a compact camera. Yeah the compact camera will be better in some cases, but let’s be honest your phone is always with you and the compact camera you have to drag with you. In essence I would say that the resolution of the sensor is really good, without doing the scientific stuff I would say it renders detail just as good as 30mp sensor in a DSLR, there is some fringing in some areas due to the bayer filter they used which is inherent to the pixel binding but for a smartphone…. man this baby can shoot.

Ok let’s take a look at some images.

First up dynamic range
All these files are straight out of the camera with Lightroom adjustments, now this might not be your taste, but I tried to show how much you can get back from the files, and it’s pretty impressive. Again… remember this is a smartphone… or let’s say a really really compact camera.

Next up some more shots with difficult lighting situations and some bright colors.
Now it has to be said that when you shoot with perfect light the noise levels are extremely low on the RAW setting. HOWEVER… as soon as you start to push files you might end up with some noise in the shadow areas where a DSLR will be as clean as a whistle. However do remember that this is a much smaller sensor with a huge amount of pixels, and…. also as with DSLRs with 40MP you should actually never ever judge noise on 1:1 on your monitor, for the very simple reason, that’s like looking at a billboard with a magnifying glass. I dare to say that the more noisy shots will hold up to prints as large as A3 and maybe even A2 without showing any problematic noise. Kick in a little bit of noise reduction in lightroom or your favorite plugin (I love Topaz denoise for this, use Doorhof99 as a coupon for a cool 10% off (and I don’t mean this as a commercial, just pointing it out for you guys to save some money)) and I’m sure you can print a lot larger.

Also do realize that a little but of noise is not a bad thing, just a few years ago almost every single DSLR had noise above ISO400, we’ve come a long way with that and every year also these cameras will get better, for now it’s already not a big deal, but I’m very anxious to see the future.

Ok next topic.
Black and white
I’m a bit in doubt with this one…
Why not just shoot color and make it Black and White right?
Well yes and no.
The main advantage of the BW sensor is of course the noise levels and dynamic range. Because it’s a dedicated monochrome sensor it handles noise and dynamic range a lot better than the main sensor, add to this that it’s also a very nice 20MP and shooting dedicated BW is in fact not a really bad thing. Call me old fashioned but I just LOVE shooting BW with a real dedicated setting, but only when it gives me an advantage over color. For example I never shoot BW on my Sony’s but I love shooting BW film in my Leica R or Mamiya RZ ProII, with the P20pro shooting BW is a dedicated sensor with advantages, so why not use it 🙂

Now one thing that I found really fun to work with is shoot in aperture mode and just lower the aperture all the way down. It’s a bit of hit and miss and some images came out pretty ugly but when it works…. man this is a LOT of fun.

Talking about Depth of Field.
You’ve heard it before, the sensor is REALLY big for a smartphone and the aperture is really fast, meaning if you stand close to your subject and choose your focus point carefully you can get some awesome DOF effects, I think a lot of people could be fooled by this shot and might even think it was shot on a full frame DSLR.

The Bokeh is ok so it’s a bit of a give away that it’s not a Sigma Art 1.4 lens… but let’s be honest, this looks pretty sweet right?

Ok so how bad is that noise?
Well it’s ok.
This was shot in a pretty dark parking garage.

And let’s do a 100% crop of this one.
This is with a slight noise reduction in Lightroom (not the best noise reduction)
PLUS… I zoomed in on a problem area, focus was actually somewhere else but there was less shadow there, so just focus on the noise, not on sharpness.

And this is without any noise reduction.
Seeing it wasn’t the brightest situation I think it’s very usable, also remember this is a 40MP crop from a smartphone.

So how does 40MP look when you shoot it under good conditions?
Well like this.

I think that pretty much shows what you can expect.

 

“Final conclusion”
Overall I’m more than impressed with my new Phone.
I truely think that this is a major step up from ANY smartphone out there, and this camera system actually rivals many many compact cameras, will it beat a Sony RX series? well no duh, that’s a totally different camera, it has a zoom lens, it’s a dedicated camera and it has better noise handling, but… it’s also more expensive if you have to buy it next to your phone and the RX100 is one sick camera. Will it beat anything that is well… cheaper? I didn’t test all cameras out there of course but I almost dare to say that if you look at sub 500 euro compact cameras this will actually beat it with a margin.

Do remember… you have to be ok with shooting with a “prime lens” if you want to use the 40MP setting. Stay away from the JPGs until they fix it, which again I really hope they do because if they do, I dare to say this is a killer allround camera because the 3x tele lens is actually more than ok (stay away from the 5, just crop from the 40MP sensor or use it because you have to, it’s not bad but it’s far from good).

One thing I really have to mention as conclusion.
My phone is hardly used for making calls, I do my work on it, answer mails, update social media, watch videos etc. and I take a LOT of photos and video, and I mean A LOT, with the P20 pro for the first time I now have a camera/phone that makes me happy when I see the results, not because I see cool shots but most of all because I see the detail and dynamic range I normally missed.

Add to this the 4000Mah battery which lasts me all day, I don’t know how they do it but my Note 8 always needed at least one top up per day, and with the P20 Pro I end up with 15% left at night.

And finally… the most important thing that will make or break ANY camera phone or camera….
BOOT UP TIME…
This thing is FAST.
Just double tap the volume button and you’re ready to shoot, you can even set it up to shoot an image as soon as it boots.

 

Improvements…
1. Back down on the sharpening of JPG’s
2. Back down on the sharpening of JPG’s
(I mention this twice because it really destroys an otherwise awesome camera in JPG)

3. In the camera it would be nice to create a custom order, I would for example love to see, PRO, Night, BW, Video next to each other and the rest after these three. It shouldn’t be hard to do in software, but it would make working fast a lot easier.

Ok I think this concludes the very long review.
Again, I only did this because you guys kept asking me things to try out, and because I think this is a ground breaking product. And let’s be honest….. it is a camera 🙂
No go out and buy one…. tell them Frank send you.

Huawei real life photography situation

/in , /by

Everytime I upgrade my phone I try to write a small review about it, mainly focussed on the camera.
With the P20pro I have to be honest I’m so impressed but also pushed by the reactions and questions I get that it’s becoming a really long review, and we have some more coming.

Yesterday it was time for the workshop at “Buurtspoormuseum”, or in English… a railroad museum.
Before and during the workshop I squeezed in some images with the P20pro (including modelshoots which will be shown later), the idea was to test out how good the P20Pro now really is when you take it with you during a trip to a museum etc. And I can say…..

It’s very very good
Considering it’s a smartphone I have to add.

Of course you have to realize that to shoot on the 40MP RAW setting you’re stuck with the wideangle view which is app 27mm compared to a full frame. This does limit you somehow in where you can take the camera with you. When you can get close to your subjects, or when you love wider shots it’s really a full replacement for a compact camera with fixed lens, the 40MP files are a whopping 78-80MB and contain a load of detail and color. Also dynamic range really surprised me for a smartphone. Now do remember I won’t say it’s better than a fixed lens compact, I say you can leave it at home for a trip (Huge difference).

 

“So Frank, the 40MP is according to some only usable in good light, what’s your opinion”
Well of course it works best with good light, that’s obvious, still I took a lot of images with it inside the museum and it really shows that a larger sensor is hugely beneficial, I think also that that is where the clue is. Loads of those reviews were written before someone got the camera for a longer time, and I can imagine that when you shoot images under tungsten that it’s terrible (most cameras are very bad under tungsten), I shot some in the museum yesterday in pretty dark areas but with “daylight” and to be honest the images really are very good, you can see noise, but nothing a very simple push on the noisekiller will take away, use a plugin in like topaz denoise (use FrankDoorhof for a cool discount) and you will end up with superclean images that can be printed REALLY large.

 

“how fast does it start, is it annoying?”
One of the most important things.
On the Note8 the camera booted pretty fast, but the P20Pro beats that by a margin.
Just double tap the volume down button twice and you’re first image it shot and you’re ready for the next, or if you don’t like that… (like me)… just disable that option and you’re camera starts up in I believe 0.3 seconds and it doesn’t take the first shot. It’s faster than starting up my A7RIII actually.

 

“Does it start up in Pro?”
Yes, thank you Huawei, I’ve had several complaints from people that their phones always booted up in JPG mode and they had to change it to pro to be able to shoot RAW. With the P20pro it seems that as long as you don’t close/kill the camera it will always boot up in pro if you ended in pro after the last shot.

 

“How about that night mode… gimmick or really that awesome?”
Well yeah… really that awesome and I can add a AWESOME to that. It’s pure magic. Just hold the camera relatively steady and it does it work, now that alone is not the magic. But….. what I never expected was the intelligent system behind it. I shot several night mode shots with students moving around, our makeup artist at work etc. and to my surprise ALL those shots really look like they were one shot slight HDR exposures, I have no clue how the camera does it, but a 4 second exposure where a moving makeup artist is captured completely still….. maybe it’s haunted or something but it’s almost scary.

 

“how about zoom?”
I did tell you guys before that I would probably not use the zoom lens because I would rather just crop the 40MP image, and I still stand behind that remark, but I’m a photographer by trade. I’ve shot some images on 3x tele (app 80mm) yesterday and must say, it’s far from bad, in fact… if you only need the JPG… no reason to not use that zoom option and just use the image without cropping. The lens does render very nicely and is actually very sharp and contrasty enough.

 

“Can it trigger studio strobes?”
Eh… well…. that’s a cool one.
I tried to learn my Elinchroms the preflash of the strobe hoping it would trigger my Elinchroms, but I had no luck, it did work but it’s very very instable and not workable at all. I also got a Godox A1 at the moment in our studio and that product really looks interesting, we tried it this weekend with a Godox system and an iPhone and it’s absolutely awesome, you can trigger the A1 from the iPhone and it even does ETTL, cool (and the app supports RAW), but… according to Godox there would be an Android version before September 2017 and…. well….. there is nothing yet…. not even a beta I can try. This is REALLY bad I think from Godox, the product is awesome don’t get me wrong, but it’s almost May 2018 by now and there is not even a beta yet while they promised September 2017, absolutely ridiculous. When they fix this however you will have a great way to trigger your strobes. For me it will be fun to test it a few times, but it will of course not replace my A7RIII in the studio. However drop an A1 in your bag and you have a kick ass portable strobe solution just in case. It’s like having an off camera speedlight with you. Godox HURRY UP YOU HEAR ME…

 

There are a lot more questions, so maybe I’ll answer those in another post or video, just let me know in the comments below.
To close this one….
Here are some images I shot yesterday, just quick snaps but you can see how the camera held up in these situations, I tried to not make it too easy with very high contrast scenes, darker areas etc. I think it did really well. These are straight out of the camera, RAW, adjusted in lightroom CC classic without any presets, noise killing or plugins.

Now a very quick semi conclusion
Most images you shoot with your smartphone will end up online, 10MP is more than enough for that, and all the modes that work in that resolution are absolutely well thought out and handy. When you are more serious without a doubt don’t underestimate that huge (for a smartphone) 40MP sensor, it really really surprises me. This is the first major step forwards for photography in years in smartphones. If you’re up for renewal and you love photography I can’t think of any other smartphone out there that will even come close. (yes it’s that good)

Review Huawei P20 Pro part II

/in , , /by

All images in this blogpost are lowered in resolution to 1250 longest side. This is because our internet here is pretty bad. Full res images I can upload when we are back home and people want them.

As promised part II in the review of the Huawei P20 pro.
Today it’s all about the camera, of course one of the reasons most of you guys are probably interested in the phone.
And let’s not make this longer than needed and immediately tell it like it is…. this thing ROCKS.

Now don’t expect anything spectacular image wise, we are now on location for this weekends workshops and I just took some shots during a nice diner we had with our friends.

First images is a car that I found close to where we parked our RV.
First image is shot with the 40MP camera and the second in Night mode.

What you can see in the night mode is that it almost looks like a clean HDR shot, details are extra enhanced and there is a lot of detail in highlights and shadows, colortemp is different but could be corrected of course, for the blog post however I only lowered the resolution.

Next up was the restaurant.
These shots were all done in night mode.

In all honesty these shots blew me away, my friend had his iPhone with him and his images looked a lot more noisy 😀
All images look incredibly clean and are razor sharp, I’ve seen some samples online of oversharpenend images but in real life I think it’s ok in these shots, in fact I downloaded them on my laptop to judge because I don’t trust a phone screen (any phone), but the images looks REALLY nice.

Next up was outside.

Difficult high contrast scene, but look how the P20 pro handles this, on ANY other phone (heck probably camera) the outside would have been pitch black or the inside would be blown out. Remember this is all shot handheld with a 4 second shutter time…. it’s insane.

PITCH dark alley, with only the lights you see.

Outside of the restaurant.

A few crops
Because you of course also want to see some 100% crops, here we go.
click on the files for full versions.
First image is from the 40MP RAW with slight sharpening to take away the softness of a RAW file, I’m editing this on my laptop so I might have overdone it slightly. But you get the idea.

bsh

rbsh

First careful conclusion.
And remember this is VERY careful because these are literally the first shots I took with the camera.

40MP RAW files are gorgous, even without 100% perfect lighting there is more than enough “raw” (pun intended) detail, but the real jawdropper is the night mode, I never saw something like this before, and it’s actually very addictive. Just go to night mode, press the shutter and wait for 3-4 seconds and you see the magic happen on the screen, it is a 10MP file but boy does it look great. And lets be honest… I would rather have a great 10MP shot than a noisy 12-16MP shot that you can throw away.

Is there some processing going on?
Yep without any doubt, but I don’t think it takes away from the shot, I would have backed down slightly on the noise reduction but it’s not like I say “WOW, back down” it’s more like “I would fine tune this a bit more”, but do remember I look at these shots as a photographer and not a consumer, and those two are TOTALLY different in what they like.

The RAW files however are a VERY pleasant surprise and actually surpass what I hoped and expected. Do remember that this is not in any way a camera that will blow away or even come close to compact cameras that are designed for photography, but for a smart phone this is literally amazing and mind boggling.

As I mentioned in the previous preview/review normally smartphones make small steps in their evolution, 1MP more, a bit less noise, some cool extra features, etc. Let’s say that if you look at an iPhone from 3 years ago and the present one you will see a difference, but the difference is noticeable not mind blowing different. The P20 Pro in my personal opinion after these first shots does just that…. keep in mind it’s a smartphone… tell yourself to NOT compare it to even a budget DSLR/Mirrorless and what you have is actually unbelievable for a smartphone….

 

I’m very anxious to see where this leads…
Will this be a one off and are we back to 12MP next year, or is this THE trend that others will follow…. I hope that last one. I’m having LOADS of fun at the moment and I’m 100% sure that the night mode and 40MP RAW files are going to give me loads of good shots.

 

Ok
“Frank how are the zooms?”
I don’t care to be honest.
When I shoot 40MP RAW files I can always crop to 10MP and zoom that way. I will try it out without a doubt, but for now I think the 40MP RAW setting or nightmode will be the modes I’m using. When I want to use zoom I loose my RAW option and it’s back to 10MP, I will have to test if that’s worth it.

Leave comments below what you think about this phone with a camera… or should/dare I say the camera that can make phonecalls