fansfe82067d
Captain
Australia
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I've finally unpacked the filter from the large parcel it arrived in - of course the actual filter is fingernail size! - and here are my initial thoughts. Note that I've never tried a filter on the Pocket before, even though I have a set of four never taken out of the box.
It seems to me that changing filters is something to be avoided when out and about on one's own. Ideally you need some kind of clean, flat non-scratchy surface to undertake this task - somewhere you can have the box open and ready, the Pocket standing stable, and two free hands to hold the gimbal steady in one and the filter in the other. So, having one filter to take the place of several is a good idea. But, I noticed that the gimbal doesn't particularly like the forces involved in adjusting the filter by turning the ring. Maybe it's not actually risking damage, but I'd certainly try to be very careful when doing that. The ring isn't hard to turn but it doesn't spin freely - which is at it should be, because you wouldn't want it to turn on its own.
The instructions say to turn the Osmo on first, then mount the filter. This of course means that you'd have to take it off between each shot unless you keep the Pocket on all the time. SImply not practical. However the Osmo doesn't complain when turning it on with the filter attached.
I was only able to try the filter briefly - I will hope to put the footage on YouTube in a few hours. My first concern was to try to work out the best way to use it. My procedure was as follows -
1. In manual mode, set shutter speed to 180 degrees, which in my case was 100th for 50fps.
2. With the Pocket pointing at the brightest part of the scene, set ISO to 100, turn the filter until the EV display shows zero.
3. With the Pocket pointing at the darkest part of the scene, set ISO to whatever is required to make the EV display zero.
4. If the ISO set at (3) is above say 800, consider adjusting the filter so that a little more light is admitted, then check (2) again to see whether that part would be too overexposed.
5. End up with a compromise between ISO not getting too high in the dark parts of the shot, while the highlight parts of the shot are not blown out.
6. Set ISO to auto, so it can accommodate the change of illumination as you pan from light to dark and back, but from your test you know it will be kept between reasonable limits.
7. Record the shot.
Sounds like a load of hassle but if you are taking things seriously, that's what you need to do - not necessarily for every shot, so long as the general illumination and general characteristics of the scenes are broadly the same.
If anyone thinks I'm going about it wrong, please say!
In the footage I took, in the app display on my phone I couldn't see anything obviously wrong with picture quality, but I have yet to see it on the PC screen. My short sample will not be any kind of comparative test - that's already been done by 'Tide', thank you. Mine will just show some kind of picture quality going from highlights to lowlights in the scene I used. |
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