John Brown
Member
- Joined
- Aug 13, 2009
- Messages
- 9
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- Location
- UK
- Website
- www.johnbrownimages.co.uk
I've just returned from a month in Senegal filming chimps for the BBC NHU. Alan Piper at Red Europe had leant us a demo version of the OLED EVF to test and I just thought I'd mention how fantastic it was, the best non-optical viewfinder I've ever used and a definite improvement on the original Bomb EVF. Really beautiful colours with deep blacks and an almost three dimensional quality to the image.
I should also mention that the camera was incredibly robust - temperatures were reaching in the mid 40's C in the shade and the camera body was often too hot to touch. It was sucking in dust, ash, and sweat bees and never missed a beat. The only issue was that on one occasion the fan stopped completely - I assumed that, after hours of running at 115%, it had finally packed up, but the cause turned out to be a breadcrumb sized pebble that had lodged in the air intake and jammed the fan. Easily removed and normal service restored.
I have read a couple of threads talking about new, quieter, fan designs that are possibly going to be part of the Dragon upgrade - does anyone have any further details on this? Fan noise is a major issue with wildlife.
Also, I see the new firmware (4.0.10) has added power save modes - does anyone know details of these? The time to power up is another major issue with wildlife filming as you are always trying to conserve power (as you have to carry the batteries) and animal behaviour can be over in a flash. Even years of experience doesn't always provide enough warning to be powered up in time to cover sudden behavioural events, and keeping the camera running all day isn't a viable option. It seems to me that something akin to the 'sleep' mode on a computer would be a really useful feature.
Finally I see the Dragon upgrade is now starting, am I right in thinking it's still going to be free to those of us who spent $50K+ on a kit?
I should also mention that the camera was incredibly robust - temperatures were reaching in the mid 40's C in the shade and the camera body was often too hot to touch. It was sucking in dust, ash, and sweat bees and never missed a beat. The only issue was that on one occasion the fan stopped completely - I assumed that, after hours of running at 115%, it had finally packed up, but the cause turned out to be a breadcrumb sized pebble that had lodged in the air intake and jammed the fan. Easily removed and normal service restored.
I have read a couple of threads talking about new, quieter, fan designs that are possibly going to be part of the Dragon upgrade - does anyone have any further details on this? Fan noise is a major issue with wildlife.
Also, I see the new firmware (4.0.10) has added power save modes - does anyone know details of these? The time to power up is another major issue with wildlife filming as you are always trying to conserve power (as you have to carry the batteries) and animal behaviour can be over in a flash. Even years of experience doesn't always provide enough warning to be powered up in time to cover sudden behavioural events, and keeping the camera running all day isn't a viable option. It seems to me that something akin to the 'sleep' mode on a computer would be a really useful feature.
Finally I see the Dragon upgrade is now starting, am I right in thinking it's still going to be free to those of us who spent $50K+ on a kit?
