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Review Apple Pencil and video with Astropad

November 18, 2015/8 Comments/in blog/by Frank Doorhof

Today again a review on an Apple product, this time the Apple Pencil.
Let me start out by saying that when Apple released the iPad Pro I was not impressed, yeah it’s a bigger iPad and yeah it’s cool but what can I do with it…. who is Apple targeting, up until the point I saw the Apple pencil… at that point I was like “hmmmmm ok interesting for graphic designers, but not for me”

Long story short, I started thinking about how the iPad pro would be beneficial for me and fit in my workflow and (like with most new products) it became clear to me that it could really change the way I work, but most of all the things I would be able to do extra, and…. the Apple pencil was the main reason. So I was unpleasantly surprised I could just walk into a store and pick up an iPad Pro 128GB LTE but not the Pencil… they told me it would be weeks. Now my strategy proved to be successful, that morning I also ordered a whole kit online and that Pencil had a delivery time of 5-7 working days. In the end I ended up cancelling my online iPad Pro order but kept the Pencil, and much to my surprise and joy the Pencil already arrived after 5 days, and the next two days were spend playing with it and giving me the material for this review.

How does it look and feel
Well I can be short…. it’s a pencil.
And this is a good thing, it really looks nice and it’s cool it will always roll over with the logo on top, but overal it’s… well again it’s just a pencil. It feels really nice in my hand and actually when I go back to my trusted Wacom tablet I have to say the stylus feels weird. I never had that before with a product but you really get used fast to the Apple pencil.

One of the things that Apple does awesome is design and the Pencil is no exception, but it’s not without flaws, instead I’m afraid of how long I will be able to not loose parts. The top part disconnects to make it possible to charge the Pencil on your iPad and it claims to be ready for 30 minutes of use after 15 seconds of charging (awesome)

Up till so far, no problem, you can probably keep track of this tip without too much trouble, however there is another tip. This tip makes it possible to charge your Pencil via a lighting cable and I’m in all honesty afraid a lot of people will or loose that tip or the magnetic tip so let’s hope Apple has these as spares for not too much money. It would have been nice to include a sort of carrying box or sleeve, especially seeing the price of 109.00 euro.

It’s expensive
You hear this a lot, but I have to disagree in this case.
When you look at other styluses you also pay a lot of money for the more high-end products, but none of them will interact as well with the iPad pro as the Apple Pencil of course, so I think it’s very hard to say it’s too expensive, let me put it this way…. you do pay a premium price for a premium product. And I don’t think that’s bad. Also seeing all the techniques inside the Pencil I think it’s actually not that expensive.

How does it work
This is of course what you want to know, right?
Let me start of by saying that I never worked behind a Wacom Cintiq longer than a few minutes, I never owned a Companion (but worked with it a few times) and I haven’t drawn or painted in over 25 years…. so am I the reviewer you should trust…..? well I think so and if you read further I think you understand why I say this, and also gave you the heads up 😀

Drawing and painting
When I was young I LOVED to draw, especially cartoon characters. I read books on how to draw and was mesmerized by the styles of Disney and similar styles. When I grew up I simply didn’t have time anymore and fell in love more and more with video and photography and slowly drawing disappeared but my mom still has books filled with drawings I made during my youth. I was always used to first sketching my work and later using a liner to make the lines thicker and finally coloring them, so when I would go somewhere with my parents it was always a lot of stuff to carry with them, maybe that’s also why I just gave up when growing older.

The love for real “hand made” graphic art always stayed, I love the photorealistic work from friends like Bert Monroy and Aaron Blaze which always blew my mind, but I’m also always amazed by the ease that Pete Collins seem to have when drawing his work, amazing artists and I’m not even close to what they probably do with their eyes closed, but…. do you have to, to have fun?

We live in a world that goes faster and faster and sometimes I also feel the urge to do something useful, do something that people can buy, look at, enjoy etc. and sometimes you just forget there are also other things in life, I think that’s also why those books “Coloring for adults” are so popular, just relax, take a deep breath, sit down and get lost in coloring……. yeah I know it sounds weird but according to a lot of people it really works relaxing. With the iPad pro we now have a device that gives us a lot of extra options, we can use Adobe Sketch, Notes or the amazing ProCreate to create simple drawings, paintings or ultra realistic pieces of photorealistic pieces. But most of all…. create something from nothing and without the need to bring all your pencils, coloring pens etc.

The drawing experience is awesome, I really don’t have another word for it.
You REALLY just have to pick up and iPad pro and Apple Pencil to experience it, when you sketch it really feels like your working with a drawing tool instead of a digital stylus, the Pencil is incredibly sensitive and shading is an experience that will give you a real sense of working with the real deal (just tilt the Pencil), the (positive) weird thing is that as soon as you change for example from pens to paint you also feel like your painting, it’s hard to explain but it’s just something you probably have to experience.

Lag is almost not visible, there will always be some lag of course but somehow Apple really did their best to limit it to an absolute minimum, let me put it this way I’ve worked on several “older” cintiqs that lagged a LOT more. Also the palm rejection work flawless (so far as I can see now).

Drawing on glas?
This is also something I thought about, the iPads are incredibly smooth so how does this translate when paining or drawing, don’t you feel like trying to stay in balance on an ice-skate…. well I can say that also here Apple really did their homework, the pen doesn’t feel like to be going over glass, it also doesn’t feel like art paper, but it feels very very nice.

So drawing is nice, but do you want to spend 1200.00 on that alone?
For me it was not, if you read my review on the iPad pro you will get a bit more insight in why I bought the iPad pro, but in essence it really depends on what you do, I think for people that spend hours and hours painting/drawing on an iPad will be in heaven when they try this combination. But also people that now travel with large Cintiqs will probably love it for the simple fact that there is an app for that…..

Astropad, will it change your life… it very well might
When I knew I would order the iPad pro I also knew I would be using it with Astropad, in fact a big part of the reason I bought the iPad pro was Astropad. So what is this “super” app.
Astropad is an app that works on your iPhone, iPad and iPad pro and in essence mirrors your monitor (actually part of your monitor) with some nice added tricks. With Astropad you could say you can run the full versions of Photoshop and Lightroom on your iPad (pro) as long as you take into account that you always need a host computer. Now I hear you say.. “what’s the difference between this and a screen sharing program”, well that’s simple. Astropads supports your Pencil or stylus fully in Photoshop/Lightroom so you could say it adds some Cintiq magic to your iPad Pro.
For me it really adds to my workflow, I’ve retouched on Wacom tablets for years and absolutely love them, but I also always looked at the Wacom Companion which looked like a dream machine for me, if it would run MacOsX but it doesn’t, and the battery life is a bit short for long trips but the idea of carrying a sketch book with Photoshop with me all the time just feels like a cool and handy option. And zooming in on the face of model very quickly and seeing what I do straight from the screen I’m retouching on also has a great appeal to me, but to buy a Companion just for that…. well I’m not a graphic designer or painter so for me I just couldn’t justify the costs vs the benefits, when traveling I would still carry my laptop and iPad with me so it would be another expensive piece of gear I had to bring and insure and keep track off. The iPad pro however really combines a lot of these options. Of course Astropad doesn’t work on the plane (unless you also open your MBP, but when you don’t fly business that will be impossible) but on the plane you can draw/sketch/paint, watch some movies, play some games etc. on the iPad Pro, add the keyboard and type some blogposts or documents, and when you arrive on location you can switch the iPad (pro) to the main hub to shoot tethered to (wireless), and back in the hotel you open up your laptop, connect the iPad pro and just lay on the bed and browse through your images and retouch them via Astropad, or Lightroom mobile.

It’s the feeling of having one device for literally everything that has that great appeal for me, and the combination of the Apple Pencil and Astropad makes the iPad pro for me a tool that is worth every single cent. But words are always nice but a video does more, so check out this episode of Quite Frankly where I show you the retouching process with Astropad.

It’s just a stylus
Every time I see this remark I have to laugh a little bit.
When Steve Jobs said he would never want a stylus he was absolutely right. My first “organizer” used a stylus and it was terrible, I never lost one, but as soon as I got my first iPhone it was a WOW moment, this was the way to operate a smart phone.
When the Pencil was released I immediately saw it for what it was, not a stylus to operate your iPad pro but a graphic tool to boost the uses for the iPad pro to a WHOLE new level, the level where a lot of creatives were already using it but always with limitations, with the release of the Pencil, Apple did not release a simple stylus, not even an advanced stylus… no they released a tool for creatives.

Ok let me explain myself.
There are a lot of tablets out there now a days that claim the same. Some use Wacom techniques, some use other techniques. I also own a Windows Sony tablet/laptop with a stylus and it works perfectly for taking notes, drawing some shapes etc. but as soon as I try to really draw I found out I just “sucked” at drawing and I gave up. Same happened with the Surface Pro, my level of drawing is just not good enough I always thought, and seeing that many people make incredibly art with these tools I always believed that was the problem. When I however started drawing on the iPad pro I saw myself doing stuff I never ever was able to pull off on the other tablets, the difference might be small but it was just enough to keep me up till 1:00AM last night drawing away on my iPad Pro and immensely enjoying it.

I’m convinced that if you give a real artist a Surface pro he/she will draw art, heck I’ve seen Bert Monroy do stuff with his fingers instead of a stylus that blew my mind, but imaging that if the iPad pro and Pencil already boosted my abilities what will happen when real artists start using this…. I’m very much convinced that this might be one of the best and most revolutionary releases from Apple for the graphic industry. Apple is often blamed for forgetting the graphic artists, the group that actually made Apple and in the past was the main focus for Apple (well at least that’s how I experience it) but with the release of the Apple Pencil I think Apple has proven that they love to motivate and inspire people but most of all give them the tools they need to create stunning art.

Conclusion
I have my Pencil for 2 days now and already spend a few hours just playing around in Adobe Sketch and ProCreate and I’m hooked, every free minute I’m now trying to get my skills up and I love the creative process, driving Annewiek mad by constantly showing her stuff I make and new ways that brushes work, for me painting and drawing will stay a hobby but the combination with Astropad makes the iPad pro a serious contender in replacing my trusted Wacom tablet for retouching and thats where I do earn my money and I’m always looking for ways to get a better and faster workflow.
If you’re a graphics artist, or just love to draw and paint without a doubt check out the Apple pencil and the iPad pro I think you will be more than impressed.

Sony A7RII review video

August 21, 2015/2 Comments/in blog, Visions and technique/by Frank Doorhof

When I switched from Canon to Sony at the release of the A99 I did a small prediction…. “In 10 years Sony could be the new number 1, if they keep doing what they are doing”, little did I know about what would happen in only 2 years.
At the moment you must be living under a rock to not take Sony serious.
In Medium format they are the “unknown” number 1, meaning every manufacturer is now using their sensor from Hasselblad, Phase One, Mamiya/Leaf to Pentax and to be honest, I tested the Credo50 just before release and it was breathtaking what the Sony sensor does. But also Nikon uses a lot of their sensors. The reason is very simple, their sensors are just the best in dynamic range, color and noise performance, I actually hoped that also Canon would switch to Sony sensors (I still love Canon).

Sony A7RII review Part III

August 7, 2015/2 Comments/in blog, Reviews/by Frank Doorhof

In todays part of the review series on the Sony A7RII the simple question….
Do we still need HDR?

The answer you may give yourself, but let me first tell you my opinion.
When I shot with Canon I often shot HDR in difficult situations (lighting wise), always 2,1,0,1,2 and I edited those with mostly NIK, when I switched to Sony I found that I actually didn’t need the HDR shots anymore, there is so much detail recoverable in the files that I found myself more and more shooting non HDR and “fixing” it in DxO optics or Capture One (or even Lightroom).

Now with the A7R shooting HDR was not perfect, the camera was not as fast as the Canon and I decided to just forget about it. With the A7RII we have a new chance, shooting 5 frames a second and this combined with the new Lightroom HDR merge option you can actually work very fast (and very good) with HDRs so I decided to test this out, but ….. I needed a scene were it would make sense, and we indeed ended up in such a location today. Muir woods.

Let me start by showing the HDRs.
All were shot handheld in the order 2,1,0,1,2
Editing was done in Lightroom and tinting in DxO Filmpack 5
I tried to stay away from doing HDR like Highly Destructive Retouching, but I do like some detail 😀

Now these were the HDRs, now let’s look at some images I shot under the same circumstances but now used Lightroom (DxO doesn’t support the files yet and I wanted to keep everything in Lightroom) to get some HDR like looks.

Now a lot will be taste of course, but I have to be honest…. I think the Sony A7RII does pretty well without shooting HDR. The HDRs look smoother without a doubt, and it’s very fast to do with the new HDR option in Lightroom, and it will in the end give you slightly better files, but it will also take up 5x as much space on your harddrive.

For me it’s a matter of that I will shoot it more than with the A7R for the simple reason it’s so much faster and as mentioned before with Lightroom you put the HDRs together in seconds, but if we really need it….. I think the dynamic range is pretty “sick” 😀

Sony A7RII a first look Part II

August 6, 2015/in blog, Reviews/by Frank Doorhof

Today part II in my review on the new Sony A7RII.

The first time I really pushed the Sony A7RII was actually the first day we were in San Francisco. During that day we visited several areas that are perfect for street photography. For me street photography is something I really love to do but also demands a lot from the camera I use, so let me tell you how the A7RII performed during the day.

I will divide the review in topics and tell you my personal opinion, in the end you will see a rather expansive album from that day with the images shot with the A7RII. All images are tinted like I normally do.

Colors
Colors are like I’m used from Sony, the AWB (Auto White Balance) works very good and the colors are very nice, no surprises here.

Battery life
I get a lot of questions about this.
I’m using a grip with 2 batteries (the camera is delivered with 2 batteries), the reason I use the grip is mostly due to the size, I like a bit more “beef” on my camera. During the day I used the camera a lot and also did some reviews, left the camera on during walking etc. still I got app 650 images out of the 2 batteries and ended with 20% in the last one (after which I switched both batteries), if you like to walk around a lot and shoot a lot I would advise 2 extra batteries, I can’t imagine someone needing more for photography. Normally I would never shoot 650 images during a day, but in this case we tested a lot and there was a LOT to shoot actually.

Noise on high-ISO
VERY VERY impressive. Noise is very good under control, up to ISO6400 I would use now without any reservations, even up to 12800 is no problem at all for nice A4 prints, after that it starts to get a bit more noisy, but as soon as DxO optics supports the files and you can use their awesome PRIME noise settings I would not be surprised if you can use it all the way up to the maximum ISO. Do remember you’re looking at 42.5 MP on 1:1 on your screen and that is “ridiculous” to judge noise, you can make billboards with an iPhone6 (we see these a lot now in SF) and that’s only 8MP, so noise on a 42.5 MP image…… don’t worry too much just shoot and you will be surprised.

You can see difference on lighting of course, with tungsten or fluorescent you will get a bit more noise than outside but again overall I’m not afraid to push the A7RII all the way up and still have some images that can be printed on A4 size without a problem.

Speed of AF
AWESOME, the A7RII is snappy and fast, I hardly missed any shots, and of course you can make it “hunt” with the SLT mirror inside (I use a convertor with SLT mirror for my A glass) I’m still using the contrast AF setting but also that is faster than the A7RII, seeing the fact that most improvements can be expected in the Phase detection AF (convertor without SLT mirror) I can’t wait to test this out, but at the moment I’m already more than happy with the response of the A7RII with the SLT convertor.

On the street I would love a camera that focusses instantly, sometimes you literally only have less of a second to take your shot and with the A7R I have to be honest… I missed some shots because the AF was just a bit too slow, the A7RII was a champ today, it snapped into focus, never hunted on the street and the images are RAZOR sharp. Of course you can make it hunt… like any camera that is… just point towards something with HEAVY sun light straight into the lens or an object without any detail… but that are extreme circumstances and I don’t know any camera that will focus correctly under these circumstances, but where it SHOULD focus…. well dude it focussed VERY fast.

Look of the files
I still don’t know what it exactly is, but when I shoot with Medium format there is a certain “magic” to the files, call it depth, or microdetail but the images are simply put “rounder” more 3D, in my review of the A7r I already mentioned that the A7r did this very well and I’m very happy to say that the A7RII takes another step in that direction, below two images that really hit the spot for me in this “look”.

Panorama mode
Yes I use this quite often, I know it’s just a JPG but man it’s so easy and fast and the results are very good.
With the A7r you needed a very fast card to make this work flawless (especially on wide) so I was a bit worried for the A7RII but the speed on the sensor read out seems to work wonders here too, just sweep the camera and the panorama is done (nice). I do have to add I’m using a 64GB SD card type 3, so these are pretty fast cards.

Auto ISO
AWESOME, finally Sony implemented the minimum shutter speed and man that makes a HUGE difference, it was one of the things I really missed from the Canons and I never understood why Sony didn’t include it, but now we have it. I programmed one of the custom buttons to jump straight into the menu of the shutter speed so I can change it very quickly.

Overall speed
The camera not only feels faster but it is also faster, with 5 frames a second I got some images I couldn’t get with the A7R, and ok it’s not a speed monster with 12-14 frames per second but seeing the fact you’re shooting a 42.5 MP camera I’m more than impressed with it.

Dynamic Range
The camera is using a new type sensor (backlit) and this COULD of course have an influence on the dynamic range, but as we are used from Sony, the dynamic range is again “sick” I never ever owned a camera that could pull so much details out of a file like the Sony cameras (sensors). Some people actually comment on my files that they look to “HDR” “Dynamic” and that that would be a reason to not buy the camera…. do remember that you can ALWAYS limit your dynamic range, but you can’t add dynamic range to a camera (unless you shoot HDR), when the files come out of the camera they don’t look much different than what I got from my Canon cameras ( a bit more dynamic), but when you start pushing and pulling the files that’s when the “magic” happens.

We will have to wait for DxO labs when they test the camera, but it wouldn’t surprise me if this is one of the most dynamic cameras out there at the moment.

First “careful” conclusion
Absolutely happy, very impressed with the ISO and speed (both handling and AF) and I just LOVE something in the look of this camera. For our next outing I will couple some Leica R glass with the Sony and see how well it handles manual focus on the street.

Is it the best camera in the world?…. at the moment for me I’m afraid it actually is, the combination of speed, resolution and dynamic range is something I really love, add into the mix that you can mount every lens on it (ever build) and have in camera image stabilization, insane high ISO and the “new” body all adds to a pile of things I already liked about the A7r….

More soon.
For now enjoy the album, click on one of the files for the gallery view, and… sorry for the overload on images.