GoPro has released the Hero 9 Black and in many respects, it is the best camera they have ever made. It is a little larger to accommodate a slightly larger battery and screens and it offers a new 5k mode that is very filmic like with pretty good dynamic range. It has Hypersmooth 3 technology which does away with most gimbal situations and it can serve as a minute and reliable blog camera.
However, the GoPro Hero 9 Black is in some ways the end of an era for GoPro and the action camera market. It now heralds a new subscription model that aims to hook their market with a lower price for the camera if the subscription to GoPro.com is added at check out. Gone are the days of class-leading technology and in are the days of survival at all costs. Can we really blame GoPro for trying to make it?→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
Sony has been relatively quiet about phones since the Xperia 1 II roll out. However, rumors have been heating up on the Xperia 5 II, which is a lower-cost alternative to the flagship phone but very nearly as capable without the best screen or construction but not skimming on features. The latest rumor mentions a spec sheet that makes it a 4k 120fps recording phone which may show that handsets still are seen as innovators when it comes to cameras since very few consumer devices in the camera world can record at that frame rate.
We were not very happy that Sony basically killed the super slow motion mode on the Xperia 1 II phone which kind of showed that Sony was putting stills and regular video at the forefront without making compromises in sensors that needed to shoot at higher frame rates. Sony chose to do cleaner regular frame rate video and stills that were better than any Sony phone before at the cost of not having a do it all sensor. Slow motion from Sony was all but killed but the Xperia 5 II now makes us second guess that fate…→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
Samsung will start shipping to stores the Galaxy Note 20 and Galaxy Note 20 Ultra on August 21, 2020. This new phone is the latest and greatest on their line of ultra-performance devices that offer little compromise at a premium price. It has a 108MP sensor on an f1.8 lens on the Note 20 Ultra 5G version that can do crazy zoom and pixel averaging in low light. The more pixels you record even if they are small let you do more computational photography processing to average noise and artifacts out to end with a crisper lower resolution image that is pleasing and punches above it’s weight.
However, not all is good news since the video mode in Samsung devices when it comes to slow motion has been stalling in the last iterations to a max 960fps mode in HD 720p which is now on this phone an interpolated 480fps mode that is slowed 2x to 960p. This makes the Note 20 line an inferior slow-mo device to even the Galaxy S10 which offers real 960fps. The good thing here is a full second of recording at 480fps on the Note 20 line which translates to 16 seconds playback at 30fps and 32seconds with interpolation.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
Believable slow motion video samples on Youtube for phones and cameras are so confusing nowadays that you simply cannot rely on them unless it comes from a reputable source. The avalanche of fakes is so big that it makes it next to impossible to find the real ones out there. It also makes it extremely hard to choose a slow motion capable phone when the supposed videos you are looking at are faked from other devices or even professional slow motion cameras.
There is also the big problem of stealing real quality slow motion footage from other channels and using it in compilations that claim to be from a phone or camera in order to get clicks and views for quick revenue. The problem goes even deeper when these fakes overtake most other real videos due to the viral nature of their compilations as they usually look much better than anything these cheap devices they claim to represent can do. We examine a few cases that can educate you on how to spot these fakes!→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
Due to reader demand, we are posting new slow motion samples for the Galaxy S20 line. We see just slight improvements over the Galaxy S10 in terms of detail and color but since the phones are the new flagship for the defacto Android international brand, there is a lot of weight in what it can do when it comes to the video mode. There is no secret that Samsung has stagnated in slow motion since the Galaxy S8 and the S20 is an evolutionary step with better reproduction and more intelligent capture but not really groundbreaking.
There is no increase in frame rates above 960fps at 720p and the resolution is not even true 720p as it is jagged and stair-stepped in detailed shots. We kind of see it as a 480p mode upsized to 720p. We do gain a 1 full second record time instead of 0.4sec on the S10 which is a big improvement even when the resolution is still kind of identical. It would have been great if Samsung could have done a solid and created a true 960fps 1080p Full HD Mode. We will have to wait for another crack at it on a future phone.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
Sony has revealed the ZV-1 Vlogging camera which uses the tried and true technology of the RX100 series and simplifies the body controls plus allows the screen to be of the vari-angle kind to work essentially as a do it all solution for web Vlogs. The body is reminiscent of the latest RX100 VII and very close to the previous generations but with the added benefit of a real video-oriented 360-degree screen.
As an RX Camera it features our favorite slow motion mode of the compact camera world, the Motion Eye or HFR Sony mode which offers up to 1000fps on sub HD resolution at capture time and near 1080p at 240fps with excellent quality. We dive into the camera’s slow motion mode to see if anything has improved from the RX line and if this camera with it’s lower entry price makes more sense to own than the RX100 line.→ Continue Reading Full Post ←
