Wireless Hunt: My Demons Are Chasing Me - Sony WF-1000XM3

I tried the WF-1000X earlier this year.  They live in my desk now, unused. Good sound signature and isolation wasn’t worth the connectivity and battery issues that plagued a very first-generation product. I lived happily for a few more months with the Pixel Buds, until Sony announced the WF-1000XM3. Better connectivity, better battery, better everything. They dropped out of my mind due to supply issues in Canada and just how easy my Pixel Buds were to use.

In October, Google announced the Pixel Buds 2. They look great. I have two issues though, the first being the lack of active noise cancelling, and the second being the Spring 2020 release date. So here we are in January with the WF-1000XM3.

Sony’s WF-1000XM3 with Spinfit CP100 Large.

The WF-1000XM3 are a true-wireless IEM with a 6+ hour battery life, 18 hours in the case, and capacitive touch controls on each individual bud. They feature industry leading active noise cancelling with “ambient aware” audio passthrough and adaptive sound control.

Initial impressions were great. The packaging was clean and easy. They look pretty good too. I would have preferred a fully blacked out case and a blue LED for charging indication, but I’ll give Sony a pass with the copper colored plastic accents. Pairing was simple with NFC in the case. The controls were simplistic, but usable. I would like to see some swipe controls like with the Pixel Buds for volume control, but touch controls have never really been a great Sony feature. I kept it with the default anyway, with the left bud controlling the noise cancelling features (Single taps to cycle through noise cancelling options, long press for instant-aware ambient passthrough), and the right bud controlling playback (A series of taps to play/pause, next or previous). I thought I’d miss volume controls but being noise cancelling and rather well isolating, they’re often kept at one volume.

How about the sound quality? After spending days looking for tips that work with my dumb ears, I’d say great. For tips I tried in large:

• Included and older Sony tips (Too small for a shallow fit)

• Monster SuperTips in foam and silicone (Too large to properly fit in the case, but nice in the ears)

• SpinFit CP100 and CP360 (Iffy fit on the CP100s, CP360 didn’t fit at all)

• Spinfit CP100 with a cut up Comply foam inside (great option but the foams kept tearing)

• Apple Dual Driver IEM tips with Comply foam inside (Same as above, but didn’t fit in the case)

• Symbio W from MandrinE (The very best option. Perfect fit, great isolation)

So, after receiving the Symbio Ws, I’m happy. They’re what I was trying to do with my Spinfits filled with foam, but they’re a commercial product designed like that. They fit well in my ears, and they fit in the case. The foam layer adds additional isolation which improves the noise cancelling. All in I’d say they’re musical, if a bit on the dark side of things, but hey, I’m comparing that to Etymotics.

So, what’s good about them?

• Sound quality and noise cancelling – Ideal for the city.

• Battery life – 6 hours with noise cancelling on a single charge of the buds, with more in the case. Awesome.

• Connectivity – Not perfect, but at this point I think it’s just poor Bluetooth in the Pixel devices. Very few connection issues.

• USB-C charging – This is pretty much to be expected at this point.

WF-1000XM3 case left, Google Pixel Buds case right.

The not so good?

• The case is massive. Although not awful, it’s making me want to try the Pixel Buds when they release.

• Touch controls could be better.

• How about including some even larger silicone tips for us freaks with huge ear holes?

Overall though, these are high quality buds even at $300 CAD. I’ll be giving the Pixel Buds a try for the smaller case, but if the fit and isolation isn’t as good, I can’t see myself moving away from the Sony’s.

Stuff I Like - Every Day Carry

It’s been a while since I’ve done any posts on my everyday carry. It’s something that evolves and changes constantly for me, and as a subject in general I find it fascinating to see what others have in their pockets. As for mine, I think I may have started thinking about it more consciously about what I carried on myself and what I used daily about 6 years ago. It’s always been some permutation of keys, wallet, and phone, however.

Phone:

Pixel 4 128Gb with Google fabric case. Feels like the Pixel 3 so I didn’t review it. I’ve been using a case on my Pixels since mid 2019 as I really like how the fabric case feels. Fast, and approximates my camera when that’s not around me. I wish the battery life was better, but that’s all phones.

Wallet:

Popov card case in royal blue. This is a discontinued color. I’ve had this for 5 years and I love it, just like all my other Popov products. Very well built. I’m considering switching it out for a brown one, but it’s not necessary.

Watch:

Citizen BM8180 with a Timex slip-thru leather strap. I stopped wearing this for a while but recently revisited it. The leather strap breathes a bit of new life into it. I love the watch but would love it even more without the date window. It’s fiddly to adjust.

Keys:

My house keys are in a Quiet Carry “The Shorty” with stonewashed titanium finish. This one has the multitool on it. It’s relatively new to me but it’s very well built and fun to fiddle with. The multitool opens bottles and packages. I wish it had a deeper carry clip, but otherwise great.

Other stuff:

The handkerchief is new – It doesn’t take up a lot of space and can be useful occasionally. Time will tell if I keep carrying one.

The titanium pocket tool from Big Idea Design is mostly a trinket. It’s nice having a second option for opening packages and bottles, and on top of that the blade in it is a standard utility bade that’s replaceable. It’s well built being 2 pieces of titanium and disappears in my coin pocket. They make a slide version as well, but I copped the standard one for half price, and really couldn’t stomach 80USD for the slide.

Finally, we have the Sony WF-1000XM3. These are the best wireless earbuds I’ve tried so far, hands down. It took a while to find tips that fit for me, but the Symbio W in large are perfect. There will be a review of these at some point. I’ll try the Pixel Buds when they release due to the case size, but I have a feeling the noise cancelling of the Sony’s will keep me in that camp.

GTX 1660 Super: The Story of Modern Warfare and Confusing Naming.

Alright, it’s been a little while since I’ve played a video game. The last one I played with any kind of seriousness would have been Battlefield 4. I jumped into stuff here or there like the Mass Effect titles, but ultimately, I was dormant when it came to PC gaming for a while. The GTX 970 was put to good use for accelerating Adobe products and whatnot, so not a total waste of course. Then the Call of Duty beta came out and I even though I played it very little, it felt very Call of Duty 4 – The one game that got me into the Call of Duty series and the game that really sparked the popularity of the series. So naturally I bought it.

EVGA GTX 1660 Super Ultra SC

Now, the GTX 970 isn’t a bad card still. It’s a very capable 1080p gaming card, even with more modern titles if you’re willing to take your settings down a few notches. That’s great and all, except I bought into 1440p monitors forever ago. So, Call of Duty ended up running at 75% resolution scaling, the equivalent of medium settings, with Nvidia’s sharpening filter applied. Now it didn’t look exactly potato, mind you, and I was consistently hitting my 60FPS target, but this game looks amazing at full graphics settings. So off I went looking for a video card upgrade. Which is where I discovered in my time away from hardware, that Nvidia must have started smoking something. I shortlisted the GTX 1660 Super, the GTX 1660 Ti, and the RTX 2060. These cards seemed like the best options in the price range I set.

I quickly ruled out the RTX 2060. The price bump with in the 100-140 dollar range, and although it has a general 20% boost over the other two cards, there was no way I was taking advantage of it’s ray tracing functionality at 1440p with both the card and the rest of my hardware. After looking at benchmarks and telling myself to get over scope-creep and think logically, I ended up with the GTX 1660 Super.

Nvidia released the GTX 1660 and the GTX 1660 Ti earlier this year. The 1660 has a slightly cut down core count and GDDR5 vs the GTX 1660 Ti’s higher core count and faster GDDR6 memory. I can only assume that during some board meeting at Nvidia they decided “Hey guys, you know what would be great? Let’s invalidate the existence of these two cards and release something in between the two price points but keep selling ALL THREE.” Seems like a good idea. So along came the GTX 1660 Super, a GTX 1660 with even faster GDDR6 memory. It’s MSRP is 10 dollars more than the GTX 1660, and about 50 dollars LESS than the GTX 1660 Ti. It’ generally performs around 10% faster than the GTX 1660, and 2-3% slower than the GTX 1660 Ti. Alright, I’ll take it.

This new card is tiny!

So how is it compared to the GTX 970? Well…

·         The GTX 1660 Super is somewhere between 70% and 100% faster than the GTX 970.

·         The GTX 1660 Super has a 20-watt lower TDP than the GTX 970.

·         The GTX 1660 Super tends to run cooler and quieter than the GTX 970 under load.

TL;DR – It’s better. Even considering this is an entry level product. Top that off with an Nvidia API supported auto overclocking feature, newer x264 hardware encoding for better quality screen capture, and a price point that’s $120 less than I paid for the GTX 970, I’m pretty pleased.  

I’m running into some bottleneck issues now of course with the rest of my aging hardware. This, however, is only relevant in games. It’s very rare I’d need to cut down on my filter times in Photoshop or my Lightroom processing, so it feels like the i5-4690k might be enough for the near future. The new Ryzen hardware is looking very attractive for the money, however.

Sony Released A 35MM F1.8 Full Frame Lens?

And I bought it. Goodbye 28mm F2, we hardly knew ye.

That sure looks AWFUL dandy.

I’m really not sure why I didn’t enjoy the 28mm F2 so much. My favorite lens on Sony’s APS-C platform was easily the 20mm F2.8, even though most people had complaints about it. The 28mm F2 was better built, faster, and had a slightly wider focal length.

This is an 800 dollar 35mm f1.8 lens. That’s not cheap. That’s more expensive than the 28mm f2, and more expensive than the 85mm f1.8. Why did I buy it? Well I had a two month love affair with the Fuji X-Pro2 and it’s wonderful 23mm F2 lens, and I’ll be honest, I had a TON of fun shooting in Toronto with it. It’s a great camera. I was very tempted to keep it - It hit all the check boxes. Decent frame rate, reasonably fast focus, dual card slots, weather sealing, and it was discreet. It looked like an old rangefinder. Nobody cared.

I took a trip back home late summer. I was asked to take photos of my sister and her boyfriend again. And I took the Sony. And I’ll be honest, doing a “professional” shoot with that again made me remember why I liked this camera so much. I don’t really need to think. Files are clean. The AF is flawless. It hits shot after shot. There’s SO much data in the files. Look at below!

So. Much. Detail.

So, after shooting this, I quickly realized that I didn’t want a new camera. I wanted the 35mm focal length. Thankfully, Sony came to my rescue, because the Zeiss 35mm f2.8 wasn’t cutting it, neither was the Rokinon 35mm f2.8. Let’s not even get started about the baby’s arm sized Sigma 35mm f1.4, or the extremely pricey Zeiss 35mm f1.4.

I haven’t shot a lot with it yet, but my initial impressions are below:

• Excellent build quality - Matches my 55mm Zeiss and 85mm Sony.

• Love the addition of the focus hold button and the AF/MF switch.

• Out of focus elements seem well rendered - Great, smooth bokeh.

• AF speed seems to exceed the already very fast Zeiss 55.

• Excellent close-focus capabilities.

• About the same size as the 55mm Zeiss - Not a pancake, but still discreet vs a DSLR.

I feel my kit is pretty rounded now. 35, 55, 85, all f1.8, and for landscape work I have the 16-35 F4. I’m still looking to add a 70-200 equivalent, but I’m unsure if I want to drop money on the first party options, or wait for Tamron to help me out here. All roads are currently pointing to them releasing an affordable telephoto zoom. There’s always adapting too… Decisions.

New Batteries

New batteries are cool.

I should probably put more effort into the lighting…

The smaller one is the Anker PowerCore 10000 PD. It does 18W power delivery and fits in my jacket pocket. It fast charges my phone. It recharges fast with the same cable and adapter I can use to charge my phone. The same cable that is used to charge it and my phone can charge my A7iii and Pixel Buds. That’s neat.

The bigger one is the Anker PowerCore+ 26800 PD. It does everything the above one does except it doesn’t fit in my pocket. But it’s really cool trick is it charges my Surface Pro. It lives in my backpack.

So to recap – All these batteries charge things and recharge themselves with Power Delivery. That means I only need one USB-C cable and one (30w) wall adapter to charge my batteries AND my devices. Add in a MicroUSB cable and we can cover the Kindle and the older headphones too. Goodnight, cable clutter. Hello, Power Delivery.

Wireless Hunt: The Return Of The Wireless Hunt – Google Pixel Buds

Hey, I live in Toronto now. That’s kind of cool. Toronto is loud. Public transit is loud. I spend almost an hour each day on public transit. The Sony WI-1000X in my last post have been absolutely amazing when it comes to eliminating the human and vehicle noises around me, but they’re big, at least when it comes to IEMs. Now this usually isn’t a big deal, but as I find myself in a city with things to do in a social setting, I’m finding myself travelling around without a bag to keep these things in. And, rather than walk around and advertise how nerdy I am by keeping the WI-1000X hanging around my neck, I casually pondered additional options. Not until this Friday was I so certain on what to do, however.

Queue Friday, heading downtown for… Social things. I wasn’t bringing a bag, just a jacket. I needed to travel quite light. The WI-1000X sat on the coffee table, but a quiet call from my desk drawer caught my attention. Wired pixel buds? Why not give them a go? I initially dismissed them as included garbage, but figured I’d be spending about an hour on a street car, I may as well have some form of entertainment. So, I plugged them in, and off I went. And I was surprised. Surprised enough to go out on Sunday and grab the wireless version.

I’ll be honest, these have been 50/50 on the reviews. I think it all comes down to usability and people’s expectations that these are going to compete with Apple’s Air Pods. And in a sense, they should. The price point is the same. They’re from a first party. They offer similar integration with their flagship device. But the Pixel Buds were generally slammed in reviews. The case was weird. The cable wasn’t ideal when the Air Pods were true wireless. The sound quality wasn’t there. Etc. I think though, as a first version, these things are great.

The Pixel Buds are an open ear bud solution with a 5-ish hour battery life, 24 hours-worth of charge in the case, and capacitive controls on the right ear bud. They feature quick pairing functionality and live translation functionality with Google Pixel phones.

Initial impressions were good! I was listening to the USB-C wired Pixel Buds on the trip to get these, and the wireless version actually sounds fuller. The packaging is as expected from Google – Clean and easy to get into. The package includes the headphones, the case, and a USB-A to USB-C charging cable. Being non-in-ear headphones, the fit is easy. Just adjust the nylon braided loops for fit, and the things don’t fall out. The pairing process was dead-simple. After a quick charge, I opened the case next to my Pixel 3 and was greeted with a prompt to pair the Pixel Buds. No fussing in menus, no pairing codes, nothing. Just tap “connect” on the dropdown. A couple customization screens, and it was off to the races. The capacitive controls work pretty well. Swipe left or right for volume controls, tap to play/pause, double-tap to skip to the next track, and hold the earbud to activate Assistant. No need to wait, just hold it and ask away, and you get an Assistant reply in your ear. So far so good.

How about sound quality? Not amazing. Not bad though. Coming from the Sony’s and Ety’s, I was shocked for an open, non-IEM design. They don’t have a lot of sub-bass, but the mids and highs are nice (This is coming from someone who used Ety’s and AKG 701s… That’s got to have SOME weight). They can get drowned out by louder noises, but the top volume is plenty for most usage. It’s almost like going from a sword in the Sony’s to a club in the Pixel Buds, but I kind of like it.

So, in the end, what do they do good for a tech-nerd like me? How about a list:

• Compact! Great size for throwing in a jacket pocket.

• Battery life is amazing for the size. 5 hours on the headset and 24 hours on the case sets me up for about 2 weeks or more of transit and day-to-day use.

• Intuitive and minimalist controls make navigating the headset easy.

• Pairing process was no-nonsense.

• Bluetooth 4.2 with multi-point connect. Sony, why don’t you have this? You’d be so much better with multi-point connect.

• USB-C charging. I didn’t mention it. But almost everything I own for mobile now charges USB-C. I have the Surface USB-C adapter for the Surface, the Pixel 3, my Sony A7iii, and now the Pixel Buds. In a worst-case scenario, I can connect my Pixel Buds case to the Pixel 3 for a quick top-up, and it’s one less cable I need to tote around, although I carry Micro USB for my Kindle.

• Open is nice for an office environment – I can listen at low volumes, but still be aware of those calling my name around me.

How about my wish list?

• Better isolation. Seriously, the open design is nice that I can hear announcements and cars that might possibly hit me, but sometimes you want to drown out the surroundings.

• Active noise cancelling. See above. I believe Google’s AI tech could be leveraged to improve Sony’s ambient aware tech. Think about storing announcements for later listening, or hearing what’s only relevant to your transit situation all while drowning out the crowd.

Overall, not bad for a first attempt, Google. These slim down my carry and still let me have decent quality music when I’m travelling to and from places. I’m cautiously awaiting the version two, and hoping you make something even cooler. No need for true wireless, just make things more awesome.

Streamlining Storage

2018 came and went, and my reliance on cloud-based services increased. It’s not at all a bad thing. Services like Adobe’s Creative Cloud, Amazon Prime’s unlimited photo backup, One Drive, and Google Drive have changed the way I work. Streaming services like Google Play Music, Google Play Movies, and Netflix mean I don’t care much for locally stored media anymore. Hell, with data portability, it doesn’t even matter much what computer I’m working on. My primary computing device for the past month has been a Surface Pro 2017 – The exact same Surface Pro that got me through 5 weeks split between Ontario and Iceland last year. Yes, I missed the extra processing grunt, storage space, and RAM, but I didn’t miss my software environment – I had that with me, for the most part.

The only thing I’m feeling that I’m struggling with is portability of the only media I like to keep locally – My RAW files. I detailed my process for keeping local backups of my RAWs in my previous blog post, and I’m going to need to keep doing that. I do however want to eliminate the file server from the equation. With no other locally stored media, and all my RAW files already backed up to Amazon Photos, drive redundancy is just a nice thing to have. Sitting on a network share means I’m really not getting much performance increase out of having a RAID10 equivalence setup. It feels pretty poor having a setup that can hit almost 800mbps read and 400mbps write at max but be speed limited to a single gigabit ethernet connection. I could setup NIC teaming, but I really want to cut down on space taken up physically as well.

I’m looking at a few options, some being a bit more expensive than others. We’ll start with the cheapest and go from there.

Option 1: The cheapest

8TB external hard drives are surprisingly a lot cheaper than bare drives. I now understand after looking at prices why people buy these and shuck them instead of just buying bare drives. Makes sense from a cost perspective. An 8TB Seagate Backup Plus Hub offers a 2 USB3.0 port hub on the front of it, and a USB3.0 connection to the computer. Read and write performance per reviews is close to a bare drive connected internally. The one disadvantage here is it’s another device (although much smaller than the file server) that takes up space on a desk. The other disadvantage is expansion. The only real option is to get a larger drive and migrate the data or plug in a second drive. 8TB is a lot of photos however, with my current crop estimated at under 600GB.

Option 2: The middle ground

I could spend a bit extra and grab an 8TB internal drive. I’ve got a lot more selection available to me – Different drive speeds and warranty options most importantly. Expansion is possible by adding additional drives. It’s more streamlined as it’s internal, but it also reduces airflow in my already airflow optimized machine as I’d have to add the drive cages back in. There’s also the noise thing. My computer is also noise optimized – As detailed in previous posts on the build, it’s essentially silent. All fans either don’t spin or default at the very minimum rotation speeds, and all storage is currently solid state. Even quiet hard drives make some noise, though I doubt I’d be able to hear them over the mild buzz my monitors make.

Option 3: Gucci

This one is a bit over the top, but with the falling prices of flash memory it feels like it makes a bit of sense to grab a 2TB M.2 SSD and use that as my photos drive. It’s CONSIDERABLY faster than any hard drive with reads and writes in the vicinity of 500mbps, access times are instantaneous, and it’s dead silent. I also don’t need to add drive cages back in. The only issue is it’s only 2TB of space. With my current usage, and the possibilities of me shooting more, it’s likely I could exceed that within a year or so. Expanding is still fine as I can add more internal drives, but drive cages would have to go in, etc. Not exactly the best situation.

Weighing the options

As of now I’m leaning toward the cheapest option. It’s very unlikely I’m going to exceed 8TB of storage space in a few years, and by the time I’m looking to expand beyond that it’s very likely the storage environment would have changed considerably. As is now it should also offer better performance than my networked solution. If the single drive fails, I just warranty or replace it, and download the lost data from Amazon. I won’t lose any work either thanks to my workflow in Creative Cloud – I’m hoping to keep 6 months to a year worth of work on Adobe’s cloud storage, so would only struggle if I needed to go back past that.

My Creative Cloud Workflow – Migrating to Lightroom CC, Sort Of.

The Creative Cloud ecosystem is powerful, and I’m confident I’ve finally wrapped my head around a way to keep things easy to ingest on any device, yet continuously backed up, with only a single import. To preface, I’ve been using Lightroom for a bit now, with my primary workhorse being Lightroom Classic. I still can’t get rid of classic as it offers a lot of features I still use that aren’t available in the CC app. The CC app continues to get better and better every month, I hope to one day move over entirely. Until then, here’s how it works.

“The Cloud" at work.

The ingest point – Lightroom CC

I have 1TB of creative cloud storage. This offers me a pretty massive working library at any time, and ingesting into Lightroom CC, whether it be on my phone, my Surface, or my desktop, means I get RAW files available on all other Lightroom CC installs. Easy, right? It doesn’t matter where I am or what device I have, I can always start uploading and editing as soon as I’m done shooting. Backups are safe (provided there’s an internet connection) so I have no need to worry about lost files. For mission critical stuff, there’s a lot of redundancy here – Dual SD cards in the camera, cloud backup with Lightroom Creative Cloud, my Western Digital My Passport Pro Wireless, etc. The only issue here is there’s limited space with the 1TB that Adobe offers at the 20 dollar a month price point, and once you delete a photo from the CC app, it’s gone from the cloud and all other devices. How do I work around this?

Lightroom Classic – The backup

Lightroom Classic is still used! I keep my Classic library running and set it to sync with Lightroom Creative Cloud. My data lives on my NAS, and I keep the subfolder format set to how I had my library prior to using the cloud functionality – It’s pretty seamless.  Any files uploaded to Creative Cloud are downloaded into my Classic library, show up in my normal folder structure, and reflect any changes made to the images across devices. The neat part is, that whenever an image is deleted on a Creative Cloud app, it doesn’t delete the local copy from Classic!

Bringing it all together

Think of Creative Cloud storage as a scratch drive of sorts. Anything you’re currently working with is stored there. Once you’re done with a project and everything is showing up on your backup (Lightroom Classic), delete it in a Creative Cloud app. This frees up your cloud storage and local device space while also providing you with a backup. Here’s an example of how things work: I finish a shoot somewhere. Immediately I start ingesting photos on my Surface Pro into Lightroom CC, and flagging/rating photos. As these photos are uploading, they’re downloading to my running Lightroom Classic on my desktop at home, along with any changes/flags/ratings made to the images. Since I have a large working space with the 1TB of Creative Cloud storage, I can just run off that for a bit. When I get home and verify backups of all files are done, I can remove all but my working picks from Lightroom CC on any of my devices, which deletes them from the cloud. They’ll all remain backed up on Classic though, just in case! From here, I just keep editing on whatever device I’m on – be it my Surface Pro, Pixel 3, or desktop, with all changes syncing between seamlessly.

The future

I love the idea of being “digitally nomadic” and not really tied to any specific device. Creative Cloud enables that for me, but the issue is still the offline backups and ensuring my data is retained. I’m tied into Classic right now for that, and honestly, it’s working alright. Classic is still required for several things – For instance it does HDR and panoramas which don’t exist in Lightroom CC yet, and the print and export modules are very robust which I think is a necessity when you’re ordering prints or ensuring best quality for web exports. Until those are in Lightroom CC Classic will continue to be a thing.

Moving to SquareSpace!

Oh, and I guess I migrated the domain to Google Domains as well. Not too shabby for an afternoon!

For the past year or more I was on Adobe’s MyPortfolio. It’s nice, but limited. There was no blogging platform, so to keep it free, I tied in a blogspot blog, but even with that the customization and features seemed a bit limited. After enough sitting with a split platform and seeing enough advertisements for SquareSpace, I figured I’d give it a try. It’s been just past the 14 days and I’ve decided to plop down the cash for a year.

The overall interface is very easy to use and configure, the blogging platform seems fairly full featured, and all of the integrations are great. The option alone to import everything from my blogspot site into SquareSpace without issue blew my mind. I may still give NameCheap’s new EasyWP a go, but I’m really after an all in one website/blogging platform that looks nice and is easy to put together. SquareSpace hits those marks.

Bonus points to their integration with Google Domains - I was able to setup the DNS entries without touching anything - A quick login to my Google account through SquareSpace’s interface was really all it took. I’ve yet to setup GSuite, but 5 dollars a month for a domain email account would be pretty swell. For now, I’ll deal with the forwarding options available to me through them.

Wireless Hunt: Probably Over – Sony WI-1000X

Well that sure didn’t take very long. As discussed previously in my HD1 Free post, the Pixel 3 is USB-C only. The headphone jack is dead, long live the headphone jack! I was battered and beaten by the Senn’s being absolute hot garbage, but I soldiered on. My hallmarks of (mostly) affordable audio quality – Etymotic – set a very high bar, and for me are an absolutely perfect sound signature. The only closest ‘phones I’ve found is in the full size AKG K701s and oddly enough the Apple dual driver IEMs (Long live you, you affordable, glorious bastards), but then again I haven’t looked extremely hard. I love clarity, I love a prominent midrange, I love what most would call “anemic” bass. For me, detail is king. I want to be wowed by accuracy, speed, and finesse, not by bass so hard it loosens my molars and obliterates the mids and highs. But, then there’s the Sony WI-1000X, and maybe, just maybe, I can find a middle ground.

WI-1000X

The WI-1000X are a neckband style Bluetooth IEM with a very premium build of metal and rubber covered plastic with a padded leather neckband weighing in at a featherlight 70-ish grams. They feature a 10-hour battery life and active noise cancellation on the pair of hybrid drivers. High tech!

Initial impressions were good! I got mine used (Only about a week, practically new!) at less than half retail cost, and they arrived without any retail packaging, but did sport the charging cable, headphone cable, carrying case, and full arsenal of both silicone and triple comfort tips. Out of the bag, I got a pretty much perfect fit with just the included large tips. Isolation was mediocre as expected with a shallow fit canal phone, but I knew this going in. I immediately threw on noise cancellation, and outside of a faint buzzing noise, outside noise was cut to the point of about my Etymotics.

Accessories! Travel bag, MicroUSB to headphone, airplane adapter, microUSB cable, and a full arsenal of tips.

Sound quality wise, I will say they’re not Etymotic, but they’re good. Streaming Sony’s LDAC codec off my Pixel 3 gave me what I could call a pretty full, enthusiastic, yet smooth sound. I do still find the low end just a bit sloppy, but then again, I’m not used to having a dynamic driver in my ear. The hybrid design leads to a pretty wicked experience though, with all the boom of a dynamic driver and the articulation and speed of a balanced armature. A-Ha’s “Take on me” has the synth perfectly placed and articulated over the bass line, with the vocals not getting lost in the mix. Kygo’s “Here for you” sees Ella’s vocals smooth as ever, and nothing ever really gets lost or jumbled in the mids of “Mr Brightside” by The Killers. They trade the Etymotic’s intimacy for an improved soundstage, as seen in Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines”, which I find plays well on soundstage in general. They’re warmer, smoother, and less precise than Etymotic, but they’re enjoyable!

There’re a few things I’m a bit annoyed by, but they’re minor at most and not at all make or break for these things.   

• The stock tips fit great, but don’t isolate well. I was able to work around this a bit by placing some comply foam between the tube and hood on the large hybrid tips, which both improved comfort and fit, and increased isolation. 
• The IEMs also take well to EQ, however the Sony app on Android limits you to the SBC codec when using the EQ in the app – Too bad. 
• When powering the IEMs on, they default to noise cancelling as well. I notice a bit of a change in sound with noise cancelling, and it’s only two taps on the right neck button to change it, but it would be nice if it remembered your last setting. 
• The charge port on them is MicroUSB and you can’t charge and listen at the same time. 
• They’re on Bluetooth 4.1 with no multipoint connection. It’d be nice to be able to switch quickly between say, my Surface Pro and my Pixel 3, but you need to manually disconnect from the last device before connecting to another.

Overall these are a tech nerd’s dream Bluetooth IEMs and I’m pretty darn happy with them. They’re packed with sweet features like ambient passthrough, they noise cancel, they sound great, have better battery life than true wireless, and they’re built well. I’m happy with these, and if I had a wish list for Sony’s next version, it’d include a couple cool things like Bluetooth 5.0 with multipoint connection, USB-C with fast charge, improved battery life, and  settings memory when powering off!

Wireless Hunt: Sennheiser HD1 Free

(Update: This is being posted post-humorously; I've already returned the HD1 Free IEMs as they were god awful. How do these things sell at 270 dollars!? I didn't even bother to take photos of these as they went back to quickly!)

The Pixel 3 is USB-C only. Goodbye headphone jack! Not exactly cool, my dudes, but it’s a sign of the times, I guess. I don’t really feel much like prematurely wearing out the USB-C port, and a good USB-C DAC on a dongle is something like 45 CAD normally, so I’m going to try retiring my Etymotics in favor of a Bluetooth option. I honestly don’t feel I’ll be able to tell the difference between LDAC or AptX and a wired connection at this point, so I may as well jump on a few. Can we find something as perfect as Etymotic’s offerings? Let’s find out.

First up! The Momentum HD1 Free. Fairly light weight Bluetooth neckbuds, mostly plastic construction. The cable is long and awkward, and the 6 hour battery life is mostly uninspiring for a 170 dollar (on sale!) pair of Bluetooth IEMs.

Initial impressions: I couldn’t get a fit with the stock tips. Even the large size didn’t fit my right canal properly. This is kind of expected as I’ve got big and weirdly shaped canals, so I normally gravitate toward a deeper fitting IEM. I threw on a pair of “medium” gel filled silicone Monster Super Tips and the fit was extremely good. The Super Tips in medium were a fair bit larger than the large from Sennheiser… Weird. Once fitted they were barely noticeable thanks to the weight of about 40 grams.

Sound quality wise… These are most likely getting returned. I’m streaming AptX from my Pixel 3 with high quality Google Play music source, and they’re muddy, sloppy, and veiled. They lack the clarity, speed, articulation, and intimacy of the Etymotics I’m used to, favoring a more inflated low end and recessed mids and highs. There’s also some weird sibilance on certain consonants, depending on the artist that’s likely to get fatiguing. Sound improves slightly with EQ, but it still kind of sounds like you’re smothering the music with a pillow. There are tracks they do well with, for instance Kygo’s “Here for You” comes across fantastically, and Ella’s voice is well articulated and smooth, but something like Fall Out Boy’s “The Phoenix” is an absolute mess with the midrange details a complete jumble – You can’t pick anything out.

There were very few cutouts with the Bluetooth connection, being 4.2. I expect a few as I believe the antenna is on the opposite side of where I keep my phone, and I got some barely noticeable drops, but overall solid connectivity.

In conclusion, these are great for some genres like electronic and hip hop, but not great for others like rock. I’ll likely give them a few more days but will be sending them back. I have a few more goodies on the way, so the hunt continues… Up next is the Sony WI-1000X which seem really promising with a dual driver setup (Single dynamic and single balanced armature, which I’m hoping will offer a more neutral, detailed sound), and a bunch of cool tech like ANC and a better battery life. I also snap-bought the Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless, which look like the first good pair of true wireless buds to me. Initial reviews seem to be positive, slightly v-shaped but not lacking in clarity. We’ll see what they’re like when they get here.

Stuff I Like: Sony UHS-II Card Reader and Seksonic L358

Couple simple things and they make all the difference! First, a Sony USB 3.0 card reader.

 Yes, it’s expensive. Yes, it’s just a card reader. But it’s well built, and maxes out current UHS-ii class cards, including Sony’s 300MB/s monsters. I have paltry Lexar 1000x UHS-ii cards with a max read of about 150MB/s, but even then, offloading images to Lightroom is considerably quicker than connecting directly to camera. It’s well worth the few dollars spent for a good reader!


 Secondly, the Seksonic L358 light meter.

This is amazing for nailing your flash exposure without messing around with settings. Set your flash output, put your ISO and shutter speed into the reader, and pop a test flash with it under your subject’s chin, or close to the main focal point on whatever static object you’re shooting. Instant aperture reading, instant perfect exposure. It does a whole host of other things too like ambient exposure reading in both aperture and shutter priority and integration with pocket wizard wireless to wirelessly trigger flashes to test. I grabbed mine from a friend at a pretty steep discount, and it’s been immediately useful in these blog photos. Check out that exposure, perfect, and that was first shot! I’m excited to try to get the averaging function to work – The meter will store up to 9 exposures in memory, and can average them to give you a good exposure when working with multiple flashes!

Good Things Come In Threes

I’m generally very good about babying my electronic devices, especially phones. I don’t ever use cases, and I very rarely if ever drop my devices. The broken phone record came to an end in Iceland this past month when my OnePlus met an Icelandic road near Hofn. Compared to most damage you see when people drop phones mine was mild – The top right corner cracked, and it was missing a bit of glass from impact. Nothing affected the functionality of the screen, and none of the glass covering the display was damaged.

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

 …But it bothered me. So, I bought a Pixel 3.

As usual I had a few criteria for my purchase. I wanted a fast Android experience close to stock, good battery life, timely updates, and a good camera. The shortlist ended up being… Well, OnePlus again, or the Pixel 3. With the OnePlus phones just getting bigger and bigger and a great deal through Telus with my employee preferred pricing, I determined it was about time to jump back to the Google camp.

Hello darling.

Spec rundown:

·         Snapdragon 845 CPU w/ Adreno 630 GPU

·         4GB RAM

·         64 GB Storage

·         5.5” P-OLED display (2160x1080)

·         12.2MP f/1.8 OIS rear camera, 8MP f/1.8 (28mm) and 8MP f/2.2 (19mm) front cameras

·         2915mAh battery

·         148g weight

Design, performance, battery life:

The Pixel 3 comes in about a half centimeter shorter on both height and width compared to the OnePlus 3T, and about the same thickness. The front contains the very full sounding front firing stereo speakers, the dual cameras, and the gorgeous 18:9 P-OLED display which has fairly accurate colors in natural mode. Along the squeeze-sensitive aluminum sides, the only spot you’ll find buttons is the right side which holds a pretty tactile power button and volume rocker. There is nothing to really note on the top and left sides, and the bottom contains only the USB-C port and SIM tray, but no headphone jack. The back is all glass, partially textured for grip, and contains the Pixel imprint fingerprint reader and the single 12MP camera. Next to the camera is the LED flash and the flicker sensor. The phone feels premium with a good weight for it’s size, and the 5.5” model leads to great one-handed operation. The fingerprint sensor is well placed in the back and is quick to unlock the phone in my experience.

My two physical issues are the lack of headphone jack and the glass back. The included dongle does not sound as good as the DAC in my OnePlus 3T, but there are other options to explore such as a Bluetooth DAC like the Fiio BTR3 or higher quality USB-C dongles such as the Sonata II from Hidizs. The lack of headphone jack does afford the phone IP68 water resistance however, which is a jump over the 3T. The other issue I have is the glass back – Although it allows for wireless charging and Google’s implementation seems nicely textured, I’m on the fence on durability. I feel if this drops it’s pretty much game over.

#DongleLife

Performance is as expected pretty darn snappy – This is Google’s software on Google’s hardware after all, and they have tuned it to the extreme. Although the Snapdragon 845 is slightly underclocked compared to other models, and the 4GB of RAM seems to be miniscule in a field of 6GB and 8GB monsters, I don’t feel I’ve had any performance issues so far. Whether it be the awfully optimized Snapchat, or RAW editing in Lightroom, I’ve no issues with the phone. Android 9 further refines on the Android 8 experience, and the gesture-based navigation feels smooth and natural. Everything feels like Android.

#Basic

Battery feels good, and although it’s still settling down, I feel like I’ll be looking at about double the screen on time compared to the OnePlus 3T. Yesterday was about 5 hours of mixed screen usage before I plugged it in at around 15%. I could have coaxed a bit more out of it, but at that point it was bedtime. Google’s preferred quick charging option here is Power Delivery 2.0, capable of providing 18w to the phone through the USB-C port. My previous OnePlus dash charger lived in my backpack, so the Power Delivery charger will take its place. I generally find regular charge speeds off my Aukey multi-port or the 2A charger at my desk at work provide a fast enough regular charge otherwise, but it’s good to have a fast charger in case of emergency. Google is also allowing wireless charging now, but you only get the full 10w experience out of their Pixel stand – a $110 purchase which I’m still on the fence about.

Camera, software features, and other stuff:

The Pixel 3 likely offers the best camera performance in a smartphone on the market, and it does it with a single 12.2MP snapper. This is all due to Google’s software prowess, and the Pixel Visual Core co-processor. They’ve been tuning the HDR+ technology since Nexus phones, and it shows. The process is interesting – As soon as you open the camera app, it starts buffering photos into a “circular buffer”, discarding data after a few moments. As soon as you tap the shutter button, the software pulls the last nine to fifteen frames, and the phone gets to work quickly breaking the images into a grid of thousands of tiny images, and stacks and processes each section to reduce noise, increase dynamic range, and improve sharpness. This allows for zero shutter lag, and images that are consistently well exposed and sharp, even with weird lighting or movement in frame. For a single 12.2MP sensor, it does good work!

Front facing disheveled bathroom portrait selfie. Not bad separation!

Other fun features are an unrivaled portrait mode which utilizes AI learning and the dual pixel autofocus on the camera to intelligently depth-map and blur objects – Definitely not as good as a fast prime on my A7iii, but usable in a lot of situations. Super-res zoom uses the natural movement of your hand to take a larger image to crop into, increasing sharpness and detail compared to standard digital zooming. The object tracking is crazy – I don’t think I’ve seen better on a phone so far. Tap an object in frame to follow it and expose for it. It won’t let go unless the object goes out of frame or you tap the focus point again to release it. Google has also updated the camera software to allow computational RAW images to be saved, letting me post-process through Lightroom or another RAW editor. Finally, I’d like to touch on NightSight, which emulates long exposures and leans on AI to color correct images in conditions down to .3 lux. It’s intelligent enough to detect if it’s in hand or on a tripod, if there’s motion in scene, etc, and adjust the number of exposures and the exposure lengths depending.

Left: Standard HDR+ processing. Right: NightSight, handheld.

There are two front facing cameras on the Pixel 3, which is a first and feels a bit like a concession on Google’s part, but I’m happy with the performance. Like the rear camera, the front cameras are practically unrivaled in selfie performance, generally providing sharp and well exposed images regardless of lighting conditions. The inclusion of the ultrawide selfie lens is welcome and leads to much better group photos and environmental selfies.

Left: Standard front facing disheveled bathroom selfie. Right: Wide angle front facing disheveled bathroom selfie.

I won’t say the camera is the very best in every situation, but the experience is consistently good which is exactly what I’m looking for in a phone. I don’t need crazy high resolutions or zoom lenses, I just need something that nails exposure and gives me sharp images regardless of my lighting conditions. All the extra features are just icing on the cake!

Now Playing in action. Horrible music taste history included.

The Pixel has a few fun software features I like including ambient display with tap/lift to wake, and “now playing” with a history. It actively listens for music and flawlessly identifies tracks, displayed on your lock screen and in your notification bar. You can go back and check on what you’ve recently heard was well, which is great. Squeeze for assistant is cool, but I wish you could remap it to another function on the phone. Digital Wellbeing isn’t something I think I’ll use but seems like a neat concept. Really gives you an idea as to how much you use your smartphone in a day, and it’s scary how many unlocks I do in a day. I’ve yet to see how adaptive battery runs, but apparently it acts a bit like battery saver but only for less-used apps, delaying their access to data and other resources considerably.

Couple other things to note:

Unlimited full resolution video and picture storage on Google Photos until 2022. There is NO notification LED, which I’m not overly fond of. One of my favorite features on my old phones was the notification LED. The Pixel imprint fingerprint reader is quick, but the drag down to pull down the notifications feature seems a bit touch and go right now – Maybe I’m just not used to it. The included USB-C PixelBuds are not horrible, all considered. There’s no isolation, but the sound is reasonable. This phone will also get security updates out to 2021 as per Google’s policy – That means it’s relevant for quite some time to come! I also seem to miss the notification slider on the OnePlus 3T more than I thought I would. Who would have known?

Accessories included in box: USB-C Power Delivery 2.0 adapter, USB-C cable, USB-A to USB-C adapter, USB-C to 3.5mm dongle, USB-C Pixel Buds.

Overall I’m happy so far with this upgrade. Much like with the OnePlus 3T and the A7iii, good things do come in threes.

Lens Game Strong - Full Frame Edition

Of course, with a full frame camera comes full frame lenses... I chose the above three based on my usage on my A6500.

Sony SEL28F20

One of my favorite lenses on the A6500 was the SEL20F28 - The 20mm pancake. Although this isn't a pancake lense by any means, it's the smallest and lightest of the 3 full frame lenses I've chosen, and with crop factor closely matches the pancake with a 1 stop faster advantage. I loved the pancake for it's minuscule size and it's perfect seat between 24mm and 35mm. The 28mm seems to fill those shoes great, while offering even better low light performance. Initial tests seem promising, but time will tell.

Sony SEL55F18Z

The spiritual replacement to my Sigma 30mm. This lens manufactured in partnership with Zeiss is one of the best options for the Sony family, and isn't too much longer than my 45mm equivalent Sigma. Despite being 10mm longer than my previously most used lens, I've instantly gravitated to this as my default choice. It focuses fast and accurately, and in combination with the A7iii, it's perfectly balanced. I've been very impressed with both the sharpness it's produced and the auto focus performance, and will no doubt continue to enjoy this lens.

Sony SEL85F18

The portrait option. This was my first full frame lens and I owned it before moving to the A7iii. I was very impressed with it on the A6500 (the 127.5mm equivalent gave it a bit more reach) even though it was a bit limiting. I shot soccer with it on the A6500 which went great, offering fantastic auto-focus performance and killer sharpness. Not exactly it's intended use, but it did a killer job over 1100 frames on a single battery. Don't be fooled by the lack of G or G Master designation - This thing is a heavyweight and easily throws punches with the best of the Sony 85s for a bargain price. 

The future likely holds G Master lenses (24-70GM and 70-200GM I'm looking at you!), but as of right now I'm pretty happy with my prime lineup. The 28 should make for a great landscape and street lens (I was shooting most of my landscapes on my pancake anyway), the 55 will make for a killer daily shooter, and the 85 should blow away any portrait needs for the time being. 

My next travel destination is likely Iceland, which will probably necessitate lens rentals. I'm thinking of packing the 16-35 G Master along with my current kit, and my friend I'll be travelling with will be packing some full frame goodies as well. I'm fairly confident between us we'll be packing enough gear to cover everything!

More to come!

A7iii

A7iii. 1/160, F16, 100ISO

And my second camera purchase of 2018 is an A7iii... I won't go into a lot of detail, but this bad boy was spotted open box at Best Buy with about 3000 clicks on it at a pretty steep discount. Considering these things are looking like a scarce commodity, I took the opportunity to snatch it up. Above was taken with my A6500 with the SEL50F18 (Oh yeah that was the first camera purchase of 2018... We sure do move along at quite the clip) and an off camera speedlight equipped with Rogue Photographic Design large Flashbender soft box kit.

I'm currently up in the air as to if I want to sell off the A6500 or keep it as a backup body. I've put over 6k shots on it in 4 months or so, and I've been really happy with how it performs compared to my A6000. Features like IBIS, faster/more extensive auto-focus features, larger buffer, improved metering modes, silent shutter, and a slightly improved sensor really helped me out, and in a sense it's like a mini A7iii. I would definitely miss it's size if anything. I'll be selling my APS-C glass for sure, but might hang onto the A6500 a bit longer.

I'm still in the early days of the A7iii, but expect at least some basic insight into the camera in the near future. I'm pretty happy with it so far!

Sony Wireless RAW Transfer

Yes! It actually works! Sort of. This was done on a OnePlus 3T with Android 8.0, PlayMemories version 6.2.2, and an A6500.

• Ensure your Smart Remote Control app is up to date on the CAMERA. You need to use this instead of the default "send to smartphone" functionality within the camera/PlayMemories app.

• Start Smart Remote Control (Application tab, Application List, Smart Remote Control) and connect to the camera using NFC or PlayMemories. You should be presented with the remote control view.

• Tap the menu option, then tap "See In-Camera Images".

• Tap the menu in the top right corner, and tap "Copy Img Quality". Here you can select JPEG Priority, RAW Priority, or JPEG & RAW Priority. Select RAW priority and tap Close.

• Copy your images. Look at that, you have RAW transfer via wireless.

This definitely opens up a bit more usability even if it takes a bit longer to move files. I find the RAW files have a lot more latitude for editing and I tend to be able to coax a bit more out of tricky exposures with a RAW file, even on mobile.

A note, I believe this is only available on Sony cameras that have the PlayMemories app functionality. I tested this with a friend's A7Riii and was unable to view the camera images with the smart remote app.

Peak Design: Fueling The Addiction

I've got a heck of a case of GAS - Gear Acquisition Syndrome! Peak Design fuels my needs. I've owned a few of their straps (The leash and the cuff) for a few months now, and can openly say I'm very happy with the anchor link system and the overall fit and finish of the straps themselves. They ooze quality. When I first saw the Everyday Backpack, I knew I'd have one at some point, and well, here we are!

I grabbed the 20L charcoal colored variant, which fits my straps pretty well with the red stitching and black Hypalon accents. It's considerably smaller than my 5.11 Tactical Rush 12 (24L) at 12L, but it has a number of advantages over it. First, it's shell is pretty much weatherproof. I can't tell you the number of times I've been stuck out with the Rush 12 in rain, only to have it get damp inside. I've never lost anything to water, but having some of your backpack goods get damp after a walk to work isn't super fun. The Everyday Backpack on the other hand has stood up to snowstorm walks without breaking a sweat! It's also structured well! The inside has a few modular folding panels that Peak Design called Flex-Fold - These provide some extra structure to the bag, and extra organization for carrying cameras, lenses, external hard drives, shoes, lunch, or whatever else you want to use the bag for.

These Flex-Fold dividers allow for another great feature the Everyday Backpack has over the Rush 12 - Side access. With the Rush 12, everything was basically dumped into the bag, and it would have to be fully unzipped to take stuff out of the bottom, the Everyday Backpack can be unzipped on either side to quickly access things. To assist with that, the straps also have a quick release, allowing you to easily swing the bag around in front of you, open it up, and grab what you desire on the go.

Now, the 12 liter storage capacity isn't a lot, but it's very flexible and expandable up to 20 liters if necessary. The one handed mag latch to open the top facilitates that. I've taken the bag configured for 2 shoots so far, and it held everything I needed plus more. Heck, if I needed more I could just strap it to the outside with the hidden outer straps.

The one spot I found it lacking though was organization. Now, the side flaps do have a fair number of pockets which are very stretchy and high quality, however I think the Rush 12 has a much more organized admin pouch on the front. The Everyday Backpack makes up for this with a couple hidden areas and a tablet section in the laptop sleeve, but I've made up for the rest by getting one of the charcoal field pouches for extra organization. I can just throw it in the main compartment which I don't use for a huge amount anyway.

Overall, it feels good, looks good, holds well, and catches eyes. This is a fantastic everyday bag and has performed well beyond my expectations. I wouldn't use it as a main bag for a 2 week trip abroad like with the Rush 12, but it would make a fantastic day/tech bag, and is perfectly capable for overnight trips.

Now, the only thing to catch more eyes and raise more questions than the bag itself would be the Capture Clip v3, oddly enough. This little quick release plate secures easily to a backpack strap and holds my camera very steady. It's made sure it's very easily accessible when needed, and doesn't jostle around a lot when moving. I'm still up in the air on this vs a strap, but I can see this being a lot more useful when travelling/hiking. Another fun note on the plate that secures to the bottom of your camera is fully compatible with Arca Swiss style tripod heads. I have a Zomei Q666, and it fits on the head without issue.

The Best Android Tablet I've Ever Used?

The iPad Mini 4. This is my 2018 tablet purchase. And so far, it's the best Android tablet I've ever used.

The Shield is long in the tooth. Although beefy, it suffers what most other Nvidia chipset based tablets do - It's slowed down a LOT. It's too bad too, because otherwise it was almost a perfect Android tablet! 1920x1200 screen, plenty of horsepower for any apps, stylus support, and front facing speakers! Multitasking started suffering though. As did battery life. It shouldn't take 30 seconds to wake the tablet up. Or open an app. Just occasionally though! Just enough to be annoying. And 4 hours of screen on time? Yeah, not overly impressive. Plus the idle battery drain. I love the Android platform, but I think it's really suited for phones more so than tablets.

Of course, I did my due diligence looking into available devices. I wanted something fairly quick, running mostly stock, good screen, small and light form factor, good battery life. It's gonna be used a lot for Lightroom, browsing, reading, and media after all. It's primary purpose should be to get out of the way and let me do those things.

A couple of Android tablets piqued my interest, but ultimately had some issues. Samsung's Tab S3 was plagued with Touchwiz and threatened with lack of updates. The Asus Zenpad S3 ran a Mediatek chipset and was skinned pretty heavily. The Huawei mediapad M3 looked almost perfect, but ultimately lacked some key connectivity features, and once again with the skins. Bah, the last GOOD Android tablet was the Nexus 7 2013.

My final decision was to try out an iPad. The Mini 4 128GB came in at under 500 dollars, features an 8" 2048x1536 laminated display, a good feel in hand, and a very good battery life. Heck, the thing doesn't really drain when not in use, what else could you ask for? Most importantly, it fully supports all of my Google apps. For all intents and purposes, this is an Android tablet to me.

A couple of issues I have with it, and they're only small, and not really the iPad's fault. One - Some apps don't have tablet versions released as of yet, and likely never will. Namely, Instagram. Not a huge deal, but more of an annoyance. It's either use it through the browser, or used a scaled phone version of the app which looks awful. Android handles app scaling a lot better. And two - Lastpass autofill isn't good to go for all apps like it is for Android. I understand app developers need to build autofill in, but it's still annoying that it's not built into the platform.

A small nagging feeling behind me says that software updates might not be so long lived for the product as well. Considering it's initial release in 2015, iOS11 might be the last thing I see for updates on this. Regardless, I'm not tied into Apple's platform, so if I see a good Android tablet released in the next year or two, I may move back over. As for right now, the iPad does everything it needs to do right - It gets out of the way and lets me consume media.

Best. Thrift. Ever.

What a thrift! Nikon FE with a 50mm F1.8 in absolutely gorgeous condition! I've been wanting to rock some film for a while, but I've never had the chance to pick up an affordably priced SLR. Film has picked up a lot again in the past few years, so previously the Pentax K1000s, Canon AE-1s, and Nikon F3s sitting at 20-40 dollars are now well into the 100 plus range. When a co-worker said they noticed a "Nikon FE something or other that reminds me of the 80s" at the thrift shop, I had to make my way down. Low and behold, 20 dollars later, and I'm now the happy owner of a Nikon FE! It also came with the leather 2 part case and a Black's strap, but I'll probably just drop some Peak Design anchors on it.

The only issue with the thing was a stuck film advance lever, but 3 screws removed the bottom panel and a bit of fiddling left me with a fully functional camera. Even the batteries were still good! I've got 4 rolls of Tri-X 400 in the mail, and I can't wait to get out with this thing.

Lens Game Strong! - Part 2

And we're back with round two of my preferred lenses! These two are a bit longer, so without further ado...

Sigma 30mm F1.4 DC DN

This is hands down my favorite lens to shoot on. I'd say about 80% of my shooting is done with this bad boy strapped to my camera, and I don't know if I could be happier. The Sigma is fast, sharp, well built, and at an equivalent full frame focal length of 45mm, is pretty darn close to the nifty fifty, just a bit wider. It's fast aperture, good auto focus performance, and roughly human eye depth of field make it an excellent jack of all trades. I chose this over the SEL35F18 that it's so commonly compared to for it's slightly faster aperture and better sharpness. OSS isn't a huge issue for me as I don't shoot video, and the slightly wider angle makes it more versatile in my eyes. Only thing you need to watch on it is some severe chromatic aberrations when wide open.

Sigma 30mm f1.4 DC DN, F/1.4, 1/60, 2000ISO

Sigma 30mm F1.4 DC DN, f/1.4, 1/200, 100ISO - TT685S off camera, gelled orange

Sigma 30mm F1.4 DC DN, f/1.4, 1/1000, 100ISO

Sigma 30mm F1/4 DC DN, f/8, 1/500, 100ISO

Sony SEL50F18

This is my newest lens, as I was missing a medium/short telephoto other than the slow-ish kit lenses which I generally don't use. The 50mm focal length is equal to approximately 75mm on APS-C, so it makes it pretty ideally suited to portraiture - Faces don't have any sort of bubble distortion to them. I take a lot of shots on my Sigma, but I'm slowly transitioning to this for use with people. I can't really say much more than it's pretty darn fast, optically very good in the distortion department, and focuses very quickly. The ability to crank the aperture all the way to f/1.8 really adds a lot of depth, and gives a pretty attractive bokeh to the background.

SEL50F18, f/1.8, 1/80, 3200ISO

SEL50F18, f/2.8, 1/125, 100ISO - TT685 w/ Rogue Flashbender Large softbox in front, TT685 w/ Follies Pink gel behind

SEL50F18, f/4, 1/80, 1000ISO

There you have it. The lenses I currently own, use, and cherish. I plan on probably adding one or two more lenses, maybe something a bit longer like the SEL85F18, and likely the new Sigma 16mm F1.4 DC DN. Rumor has it we might be seeing a 16-55 F2.8 for APS-C sensors, which would likely be an instant buy due to it's versatility. 

For the time being I'm still stuck on APS-C, but I don't think it's limiting me creatively. If anything, I may end up upgrading to the A6500 if Sony doesn't announce anything newer at CES this year. The larger buffer, better auto focus, IBIS, more buttons, spot metering on focus point, highlight metering, and better EVF are really pulling me that way!