RSS FeedThe Tricky Flash Sync
What is the Flash Sync? How do I use it? And how do I achieve a high-speed sync?
These are a few questions you ponder about after getting your first ever external flash. First let’s clarify the meaning of “Sync”. Sync is actually a shortcut of synchronization, and synchronization is the way two objects function, move, execute at the same time in it’s simplest sense.
Now Flash Sync is all to do about the Flash Shutter. The Shutter is like your eyelids. It closes and opens much like your eyelids does. However for the Flash Shutter, the wider it is open and the longer it stays open, the more light is captured by the camera sensor. Basically, the camera sensor only sees light, that is why photography in it’s simplest description is a means of capturing light. If the shutter is blinking fast, which is a fast shutter, the sharper the image and the quicker your camera sensor captures the image while sacrificing the amount of light it captures as well.
Therefore, slow-shutter speeds are good for low-light conditions, making fast moving objects blurred, making running water from streams and waterfalls appear silky-smooth and taking night photographs and especially useful on time-lapse photography.
Fast-shutter speeds is good for fast targets to make them appear like you stopped time, or freeze the moment. Good for pictures of sports, racing, active kids and the like. However, you need ample amounts of light to get proper exposure at fast-shutter speeds. You can hand-hold your camera and take sharper images. For slow-shutters, a tripod is absolutely needed.
This answers your questions about high-speed sync and flash sync. It is the relation of your camera shutter with your your camera flash.
The shutter of your camera has its own rating for maximum speed which you can use the flash. Thus your camera also has a limit as to how fast the shutter curtains (eyelids) can be made to move. At higher speeds, a second shutter curtain which is rarely noticed also move to increase the speed capacity of the camera.
The secondary shutter is released before the first curtain has finished moving. This will appear like your camera sensor is shooting through moving strips.
Thus the higher the shutter speed, the thinner the strip is. This affects your flash reliability to properly expose or light up your subject. If the flash fires while the curtains are about to close, the the proper flash exposure is not taken. Thus the timing between the flash and the shutter, which is your sync speed, is essential. They must thus work in harmony.
Fast Sync, notice how the action and the crowd is captured
Slow Sync, notice that the crowd is now blurred by panning the shot.
The maximum shutter speed where the camera sensor is properly exposed when it is wide open is called the “Flash Sync” or “X-Sync” speed. It usually ranges at about 1/200 - 1/500sec. However this varies depending on the SLR/Camera.
Your external flash needs to cope with this value. That is why your reliable on-camera flash fails at higher sync speeds or your camera won’t allow you to shoot at higher sync speeds at all. Most external flash has a “High-Speed Sync” mode, allowing your camera to use any shutter speed. Notice that without your external flash attached to your camera, the camera shutter speed option is limited. Your external flash does this nifty little trick to synchronize with your camera shutter. Your naked eyes cannot see this, but to achieve high-speed sync flash, your dedicated external flash fires a series of several flashes as opposed to what your eyes can see which is a single fire of your flash. This is timed to match the period where your camera sensor is exposed. This multiple fire at high-speed sync reduces the intensity of your flash considerably, so most high-speed sync shots is done best for fill-flash at close range.
Whats with the Grey?
Getting the right color temperature, white balance and the true feel of a photograph is difficult to achieve even for seasoned photographers. Auto White Balance is a hit and miss affair, any PRO photographer you ask will tell you to set your white balance (WB) manually yourself. There are many ways to do this, and one effective method is to use a Photographic Grey card.
A Grey Card is used as a baseline of the level of White Balance the camera should apply. It balances the color of your photos much better. It is letting your camera choose a better exposure level to match the current lighting situation.
One of the best Grey Card is the “Douglas Card”, I am trying to look for the newer version, but there is none available in my area. The Douglas Card is from Douglas Photographic. The Latest version is called the Douglas Mark II. It offers better color balance in many kinds of lighting conditions. At around 20USD, the Douglas Mark II or Mark 2 contains no artificial brighteners which could distort your dSLR’s’ exposure readings.
Douglas grey card
Alcatel is back!
Remember this mobile phone brand? Their most memorable unit was given a moniker “The Safeguard Phone” or “The Soap Bar Phone” since it’s shape reminded the owner of a soap bar. One strong selling point of the Alcatel brand is the price. Now they have come back with better-designed phones, still at the most competitive prices.
At the age of the colored, multi-media, multi-tasking mobile phones, a lot of brands are competing for a piece of the mobile phone market. Alcatel has once again innovated a series of phones that are not too shabby, feature-rich and competitively priced. Their newest model has even forayed to the touch-screen mobile phone competition. The price, as you guessed is a quarter of the other touch-screen brands. Alcatel’s design for their mobile phones now are not bad either, they have even revamped their logo to match the new style of their phones. The lowest model looks even better than the highest model of the other brands, and where can you get a mobile phone at under 5USD.
To reposition itself and reintroduce the Alcatel brand, they partnered with Playboy, yes playboy the mens men brand to release the first ever playboy phone. I just hope they don’t put Hef as the phones default wallpaper.
The actual model name for the Acatel Playboy phone is the Alcatel V770. The phone comes in standard piano black and white models, but the special edition playboy series V770’s come in a plethora of styles and colors. They even plastered the Logo bunny all over the phone. I like the gold version which looks really blinged out, but there is the chrome/silver and pink version as well. Some more other models come in custom colors. All Special Edition Alcatel Playboy phone comes preloaded with the Playboy Playmates images, wallpapers, screen savers and videos.
Alcatel V770
One retailer gave Gee Please a unit for review and testing. I got the white model with the silver trims. It looks expensive. The finish is sleek and glossy. Size is thin and wide, and the first time I held it, I dropped it and dented the corner. Amazingly, the dent is so small for a 3ft. drop. It also didn’t even dazed the phone. The display is quite vivid and bright, it is quite large and the color is crisp and everything is detailed even to the navigation icons.
Navigation is a breeze; it uses the standard icon grid system. The v770 is posed as a music phone, so it comes with a nice-looking ear phone which is not ugly-sounding either. However, the cans use a mini-usb to attach to the phone, I hope Alcatel opted for the standard 3.5mm jack. It also has a microSD slot for more music and videos. For a basic phone it is really great.
Alcatel v770 Playboy Phone
My qualms with the Alcatel v770 however is that the camera is not too great. No front camera for video calls and no dedicated controls for music playing aside from the keypad. It does not have a standard 3-column keypad layout as users are accustomed to with the other phones. Rather it has four which is hard to text on. The 4-Column keypad is not even qwerty. Another annoying thing is that your messages can’t be saved on the external card, rather on the built-in memory which limits your number of saved messages. Once the message memory is full, you cannot receive further messages until you clear out it’s message memory.
Stronger points of the Playboy phone is it’s display which is vibrant even under direct sunlight. Sound for Alerts and Music is quite loud which won’t allow you to even miss a text message or a phone call with it’s loudness. Navigation is quick and responsive. The phone signal is also quite strong wherever I am as compared to my other mobile phones. The built in mobile web browser is quite fast and renders mobile sites very well. Like accessing Yahoo Mobile is so quick and accessing your mail is like accessing it on the standard Yahoo Mail on your Computer. Not to mention the battery life that juices up for five to seven days on standby on actual test. Overall for quality versus price, you won’t lose on the Alcatel v770 or the limited edition Playboy versions. Don’t expect to be like Hugh Hefner though, he is “The Man”, you only have “The Phone”.
Alcatel v770 Playboy Phone
Alcatel v770 Playboy Phone
Best Sounding PMP Tall Claim
As I was researching for the “Best-sounding” Portable Music Player which I will also categorize with PMP (Portable Media Player), since the top two with my extensive testing and research are all PMP’s anyway.
Prior to this review, I already mentioned the second best which is the Cowon I-audio D2, basically all Cowon prior to the D2 will fall on the top 5 of the SQ (Sound Quality) scale on Gee Please. Generally though, across the line of Cowon branded music players, the SQ of the higher model Cowons is comparatively similar or a little better. If I base this average to other music player brands like I-River, you wouldn’t be disappointed with either those two.
Before I mention what The Best* is based on GP reviews SQ scale, let me just say that if you are looking for a music player brand that sounds superb whichever model you choose, go for either a Sony, I-River and Creative in that order after the top two I already mentioned.
If you are on the nit-picky side but do not have the deep-pockets, go for the Cowon branded music players.
* I put an asterisk to The Best because my opinion as with GP reviews is not to generalize which one is actually the best. This is only based on my personal taste and my measuring methods. Let your ears judge if my review is to the point.
Now to lay it all on the line, the best-sounding music player based on my test is…
But first, let me explain why it is the best. My test included all the brands I previously mentioned albeit not all models for their respective brands. The choices I made include the select few I feel should be chosen as a baseline for their respective brands. I used measuring equipments for frequency monitoring, used some level meters, attached it a loudspeaker with an amplifier, basic head/ear phones, and the higher-end cans.
I also did a blind-test peer review, where the testers listened to the same music of different genres played on these different players all set to default with no sound-processing or modified EQ (equalizer) settings. They don’t know which particular brand is being used for playback so there is no bias. They then rank the SQ based on a 10 point scale on separate occasions.
Now enough of my rant, if you need the low-down, stop reading at this point and go get this music player brand… Kenwood Media Keg Series.
Kenwood Media Keg HD30GB9
Yes I know “Media Keg” sounds like the brand managers and marketing directors who named Kenwoods new portable player line are college jocks after a party or an alcoholic drinking binge, but don’t let the name fool you, the Kenwood Media Keg series hit’s a serious punch and let me boldly say the best-sounding PMP hands down, ‘nough said.
Ok if it wasn’t enough, I need to add that this brand previously produced amplifiers for automobiles, head-units, CD-Players, Car Stereo sets and the like. They have just currently entered the HDD(Hard Disk Drives) and solid state music player market. Kenwood is an Asian brand, it is thus hard to get a hold of their player overseas. You need to import it from Korea, Japan or Hongkong just to get one.
If you need to know more about the Kenwood Media Keg series of players, go search for it on Google or something, I don’t need to explain further about it. I just need to get some beer and go sound-trippin’ with my all new Kenny…
Kenwood Media Keg the cheaper model
* I borrowed an image on pocketables.net for the 1st photo. You can visit them for their particular review of the product above. Kenwood Media Keg HD30GB9 Review.
2nd Best Sounding PMP
You may have been wondering why there’s a void in the updates of my post. I have been having my scheduled check-up to the doctor regarding my previous medical incident. Anyway, most of my time was also taken by developing and designing several logos and brands and an organizations website which I will share with you all soon.
Now on to what this site is about, affordable yet quality items on review.
I spent the last few days looking for an mp3 player, being also an audiophile added to one of the list I am described about, like techie, geek, computer addict, blogger, gearhead (I like tinkering with engines too) and all other labels like freakishly handsome, lol!. So anyway, this week, my audiophile alter-ego kicked-in. I owned several mp3’s before even “ipod” ever became a word and a product. I thought it’s time for an update.
I already gave my ipod several generations ago to my niece, only went up to 2nd generation and I stopped even getting the popular white music player. Not that it is a bad gadget, it is a really well-designed, quality piece of electronic device. My qualms with it? The ipod hardly sounded good even amplified or with a professional set of ear/in-ear/head phones.
So my criteria was Best-Sounding mp3 player under USD200. To my surprise what I found is the best-sounding on any price range. However, remember my title? This is the 2nd best, so what is the best-sounding mp3 player? I can confirm it’s existence, but I am reserving it for a personal review. So the under USD200 criteria still stands on this review.
Cowon iAudio D2
The 2nd best mp3 player is priced at under USD200, as the best-sounding I found is above that price range but under 500USD. The 2nd best-sounding mp3 player i found, not only plays mp3’s but other formats as well. It is actually a PMP (Portable Media Player), Media meaning, music, pictures and videos. I won’t explain the technical details to this as I already found a blog that reviews this product as I would have reviewed it, so I’ll just share the link instead.
Now why do you say this mp3 player sounds best? Because I have a frequency meter, some amplifiers and testing equipment, I also had tested an archos, a creative and the ipod on my system, and prior to this one, only creative labs set of mp3 players sounded good to me. The fact is, what is currently attached to my car audio system is a creative branded head unit.
Not until I plugged this mp3 player I noticed that it sounded much better. This is the Cowon iaudio D2. Now go here to read a review of the Cowon iaudio D2 as I would have reviewed it. I’ll post what I found is the best mp3 player next time, as I haven’t had the chance to put my hands on to it. But why am I so confident it is the best-sounding mp3 player? At the moment, the specs says it all.
Now, if your a real audiophile, you would have noticed I said best mp3 player, because an audiophile would not use an mp3 as a file format, they would have used other lossless music formats. Now the best mp3 player I am still keeping a secret is also the best in playing lossless formats, so wait for it.
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