We got our iPhone 4S via UPS this morning. Our in house Apple fanboy tracked the package from China, where it was less than 24 hours ago. We are using it to test some of the gear we sell and for another secret project.
Back in late August I discovered a new Kickstarter project that was a set of wheels for the Gorillapod Focus tripod. With a Ballhead X this setup becomes a portable DSLR dolly. I was intrigued and convinced my boss to support the project by buying one of the first 100 Cineskates kit contributors. As a matter of fact we were the first to contribute $325 for a full kit.
Our staff videographer Mark was totally stoked on the product too after seeing the video on Kickstarter. Since then I have been communicating with Justin at Cinetics on the Cineskates status. We are located in Canada and even though Justin shipped them on September 16th we finally got them in today.
Here is our Cineskates unboxing and first overview. Here is a short demo we did with the Cineskates. Come back later for upcoming video review and more demos.
In the meantime enjoy the unboxing and detailed shots of this neat dslr dolly setup.
Finally! After Canada Post finished dicking around and bogged down our shipment in customs the box arrives.
Since we were the first ones to buy the full kit, I bugged Justin to put something special on the box. As you can see it’s marked 1 of 100, flames on the side.
Thank you note from the company and instructions.
The Cineskates come with a bag with pockets and drawstring cinch with a lenscloth in a pouch.
Gorillapod and Joby Ballhead X dslr camera head.
The Cineskates look solid and well built with hard plastic and metal all around.
I asked Justin to mark our set with something special since we bought the first one, so the skate wheels have 1/100 marked on each wheel. Thanks Justin for getting back quickly on all our questions and doing the special markings.
We mounted the Cineskates to our Canon T2i. We rushed it so I’m not sure if we mounted everything properly and lined up the wheels right.
Here are some more closeups of the Cineskates from various sides. The wheels are really solid and smooth with some nice flame like designs on the sides. The wheel cups slip onto the bottom of the Gorillapod Focus. The Gorillapod can hold up to 11 pounds, enough to handle a large DSLR and a heavy lens.
Mark and I took this out in the hallway for a quick spin. We hope to post even more videos made with the Cineskates in action soon. Check back here soon for a more thorough review.
So the new iPhone 4S was announced today and crashed Apple’s site. While the new Siri voice recognition system is very interesting and seems useful if it means oversharing your life somewhat (sexting just got a whole lot more public), what we are really interested in is the camera.
We are still waiting to get our hands on one for full on testing but here is the gist of what was said about the iPhone 4S camera from today’s announcement.
They sound like incremental upgrades but the faster shutter speed is much welcomed so we will be doing a side by side comparison to the iPhone 4 shortly.
Along with the hardware specs, the iPhone4S running iOS5 will add some long requested features. iOS5 will have a new camera app that puts a camera icon on the lock screen so you can get to your camera that much quicker without signing in first. This is something Android phones have had for some time and it’s good to see Apple finally catching up. Oh, let’s all cheer for the long awaited hardware buttons as shutter release feature! Now the volume up button can be used as a shutter release.
Other goodies include grid lines, pinch-to-zoom gestures, and what seems to be single-tap for focus and exposure locks. Crop and rotate, auto enhance and red eye removal are all part of the native camera app, features that 3rd party apps such as Camera+ used to do. Hopefully the native app is good enough to get rid of at least one third party app.
Overall, nothing earth shatter but evolutionary upgrades that keep the iPhone’s camera at the top of the burgeoning camera photography field.
© 2013 Iceberg Commerce. All Rights Reserved.
