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I just watched Evan Ranft 's latest video, which is one of his regular vlogs. The vlog itself was pretty normal, but what was really disturbing to see was his vlogging camera was often hunting for focus and back-focusing. He's using a Fuji X-H1 for his vlogs, and a Nikon D810 for his photography. Below is a short video highlighting the issues I mentioned. The Fuji back-focused 7 times within a little more than a minute! I knew Fuji's system has lots of flaws, but I did not expect the focusing to be so terrible, since Fuji is marketing this camera specifically for video. A big fail on Fuji's part, I have to say. Vlogger Evan Ranft experiencing terrible autofocus issues with his #Fuji X-H1 camera. This camera is not suitable for video, it’s at best an overpriced X-T2 with better ergonomics for #hipster JPEG shooters. pic.twitter.com/mFVi7MbCJw — TAIPEI GEEK (@TaipeiGeek) August 28, 2018 This is a horrible issue, and Fuji better work hard to fix this. What amazes me is...

It seems that more and more popular YouTubers are turning their channels into sales platforms, and making what appears to be their usual content only for the sake of hot-linking to sales promotions on e-commerce sites like B&H and Amazon. Not only is this disingenuous, it might also be against the law, because the consumer is clearly being deceived. Let me show you two recent examples of that which popped up in my subscription feed these days. Matt Granger suddenly recommending a great value portrait lens It’s not so much about why Matt Granger recommended a good value Nikon portrait lens (he’s famous for being one of the biggest Nikon lens reviewers on YouTube), but more as to why now? - I’ll tell you why. It’s only, because Nikon is running a 50 USD discount for this lens for a limited time. If you purchase it by clicking on one of his hot-links in the video description, he will be getting a commission. Yes, Matt is mentioning all of this buried deep down in his video descripti...

Jason Lanier is a photography gear Youtuber, who built up his career with the help of Sony and their Alpha series of mirrorless cameras. At the same time he greatly helped building up Sony's name in the online hobbyist photography community, and probably helped to sell an enormous amounts of their overly expensive Sony Alpha cameras. His click-baity videos coupled with his arrogant persona often went viral on YouTube and gave Sony immense exposure. Lanier and his antics against Canon and Nikon DSLRs became a known name in the photography gear review community, and was a few years ago one of the top channels. This all changed in 2018. Analysis of Jason Lanier's Youtube channel 8 of Lanier's most popular videos have "Sony" in the title ( source , enlarge image ), most of them have Sony mentioned in some way. If we go on Lanier's website to his "Who is Jason Lanier" page , the name Sony is mentioned 5 times. The most notable paragraph is this one (as o...

Despite Sony being praised as the greatest thing since sliced bread by some amateurs , there's still one aspect of photography where Sony falls massively short in comparison with Nikon: Weather sealing . Not only did Sony recently lose several tests related to weather sealing , there are also not many Sony lenses to choose from, if you're into extreme weather wildlife photography like Morten Hilmer , a Danish photographer and vlogger, who brought his Nikon D5 into the Danish forest in a blizzard (see photos and video below), and the camera held up very well. Sony's Alpha system is still incomplete and notorious for having bad build quality, and often fail when taken to some extreme weather conditions, either hot or cold (several photographers have shared that on Youtube). The Tamron SP 150-600mm f/5-6.3 completely covered in snow. You can't enjoy winter photography like that with a Sony. Morten Hilmer shows why Nikon is still leader in photography. Check his "Behin...

It's really interesting how vast and how complex the Youtube photography gear review community is . Every day I discover something new, and today I came across a new channel named Fenchel & Janisch , who is run by a German videographer. The quality of that channel is amazing, actually stunning. So are some of the videos they are producing with the gear they review (currently the Fuji X-H1). On the other hand there is Tony Northrup , a Youtuber who was brought to Las Vegas by Sony to "review" the new Sony A7III, an overpriced consumer camera, which he has touted as the camera that will "revolutionize wedding and portrait photography". He also claimed in a separate video, that Sony has double the image quality of the as well newly launched Fuji X-H1. Watch both "review" videos, and then judge for yourself who is a more credible source of buying decision. The difference is obvious: One is real, the other one sounds like an advertisement. Tony Northrup...

A reader forwarded me the link to Tony & Chelsea Northrup’s Youtube video titled Sony A7 III review! . It’s a 7:44 minutes long video, that talks about the newly launched full frame mirrorless camera by Sony. It struck me more as an advertisement than a review, so I decided to write this post about an issue that I'm increasingly concerned about. Now most camera gear manufacturers are working with photographers and photography gear influencers. The first are actual professional photographers that are often seen in promotional videos by various brands, while the latter are photography enthusiasts with large social media following (Tony Northrup, Jared Polin etc), or websites dedicated to photography (DP Review). While brands like Nikon, Canon and Fuji usually focus on photographers (so called brand ambassadors), Sony usually (in addition to that) creates carefully staged launch events for the top social media influencers and gear reviewers (see [the 2018 list here]) and pays all ...

Today I watched Tony's Northrup's "What's in my camera bag?" video , where he showed which gear he took on his recent trip to Morocco. These kind of videos are fairly common and popular recently, so I could've chosen some other channel as well, but since he's one of the top photography influencers on Youtube in 2018 , an area I am personally interested in, I decided to choose him to share some of my opinions about these kind of videos, and the state of photography influencers in general, as well as the problems I have with it. First let us see the video. These are my 4 conclusions after watching Tony's video: 1) It's promoting exorbitant consumerism I'm sure that the gear in Tony's and Chelsea's travel bags consists of items that the couple personally loves. Both Tony and Chelsea strike me as honest and down to earth, so please don't take my criticism as a personal attack. It's not that at all. It's a syndrome of a greater i...

I've finally decided that I'm going to get one of the new MacBook Pros after being very pleasantly surprised during my first hands-on experience . I will blog about my new notebook later when I receive it, right now my main concerns is connectivity, or the lack thereof. I have to find ways to adapt to having only 2 x USB Type-C connectors (no pun intended). What is USB-C anyway, you may ask? What is USB Type-C? USB Type-C is a type of connector that is used to transfer data between devices. It's not a USB version, which are given whenever transfer speeds are increased (notable versions were 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 3.0 and 3.1), it's actually just the plug, of which there are many types (Type-A, Type-B, Type-C, as well as Mini and Micro versions of the same). The most famous and most widely used on laptops so far is the standard Type-A (with versions 2.0 and 3.0), the standard Type-B is commonly used for connecting printers, while the Micro B version is very commonly used in smar...

Some say the Sony A7R ii is the best camera in the world. But is it really? A while ago I was almost buying a Sony mirrorless camera. The geek that I am, I was totally excited over the at that time new Sony A7Rii , a 42 megapixel full frame mirrorless camera, that offers features like internal 4k video, in-body AF, and 399 on-sensor Phase Detection points, but also comes with a staggering price tag 3200 USD (in Taiwan at that time 99,500 NTD, a tiny bit less). This was way above what I wanted to spend for a camera, and it did not even include a lens, but I was excited and would not let go of the idea. The hype online was huge, from international Youtube channels to Taiwanese tech reviews, this was the camera of the year for many people, who were at the same time proclaiming the death of DSLRs, as well as Nikon and Canon. If the A7Rii cost half of the price, I would probably buy it without putting much thought into it, but since Sony wanted me to pay over 100,000 NTD for a camera with ...

Image courtesy of Apple.com . So I'm planning to buy a new iPad, but I'm not sure whether I should choose the iPad Pro 12.9" or 9.7", or perhaps just get the iPad Air 2 , the price for the 64GB version is really attractive right now. However as a tech geek, I'm just magically drawn to the iPad Pro because of all the advanced features, and the very capable processor. But all that comes at a price at around 1000 USD, and that's definitely not cheap for a tablet, and makes me question whether I really need to pay that much for additional storage. Because right now I would probably choose the iPad Pro 9.7" with 256 GB, but before I press that preorder button, I want to analyse and see whether I'm really sure that this is the right way to go for me. Perhaps the analysis would be of use to you, too. The iPad use case Before you buy an iPad, it's good to ask yourself why do you actually need it? A lot of people ask me that, and to be honest, I usually d...