Vintage lens Helios 44-2 review

There is a sentiment to old lenses. Many say that modern one are too good, too sharp, too sterile. While vintage lenses thanks to all the imperfections and softness have soul. The cheapest of vintage lenses in Helios 44 from USSR! Let’s take a look at one of my Helios 44-2 58mm f/2 lenses and compare how it stands against modern Panasonic Leica DG 12-60 Vario Elmarit f/2.8-4.0. Let’s take a look at sharpness, color, contrast and bokeh. Oh, I know those Helios 44 very well! When I was growing up, they were basically only lenses one could afford. And you know what, we were not the biggest fans of them.

How to change Timeline framerate in DaVinci Resolve

When I started my adventure with DaVinci Resolve, one of the biggest limitations I discovered what that it’s not possible to change the framerate of a Timeline. If you created a 30fps timeline, it would remain 30fps timeline. Once you start editing, you even can not change the project framerate! Luckily, there is a trick that allows, to some extend, change the framerate of the timeline. It’s not the most obvious one, but it does the trick and in no time you will be able to change the framerate in DaVinci Resolve!

ArteryTek AT32 Flight Controller - NeutronRC F435

OK, I’m kind of hyped with this! What you see on the image looks like an any other flight controller, right? Looks again! It’s not STM32 but ArteryTek AT32! And F435 as a bonus 😉 With the continuing chip shortage supply of STM32 is limited and prices high. Maybe have an alternative source of MCUs will help. What you see is a NeutronRC F435 with AT32! For now, it runs a special fork of Betaflight.

How to normailize audio for YouTube with DaVinci Resolve

Audio mastering/normalization is very important. If your audio levels are too low, viewers will not hear well. If they are too high, clipping and distortions will lower the quality. On top of that, platforms like YouTube expects you to upload materials with certain loudness. If your loudness is too high, YouTube will lower your videos volume. But if it’s too low, it will not bring the volume up. Setting correct audio level by ear is not the best idea. Luckily, loudness can be measured with LUFS and we can modify audio tracks to reach desired loudness. In this tutorial I will show you how to do it with DaVinci Resolve for YouTube.

Our goal will be to reach -14LUFS with BS.1770-4 loudness and around -1.5dB True Peaks with DaVinci Resolve 18 and Fairlight module. I will show you how to measure loudness and how to use audio compressor to reach desired levels. Because just setting up the gain if often to enough.

Spring HDMI cable for a field monitor

I had no idea that connecting a field monitor to a camera can be that hard! Yes, mount or a small head is important, but the biggest problem is a HDMI cable. It turned out that my Panasonic Lumix GH5 mark 2 needs around 30cm long HDMI cable to connect to Feelworld F6 PLUS field monitor. And when I added a SmallRig swivel mount, it was even worse. All the short cables from companies like SmallRig or just generic short HDMI cables were just too short! Believe it or not, but I was not able to find anything on Amazon! Only after a long search on AliExpress I’ve found a spring, extensible and angled HDMI cables that fit perfectly! What a waste they are so hard to find in Europe!

Spring HDMI cable is a angled HDMI cable with a springy coil inside. The cable is designed to be used with field monitors, but it can be used with any HDMI device. The springy coil allows you to easily extend and retract the cable. It is also very flexible and can be bent in any direction. The cable is also exceptionally durable and can be used in any weather condition. It is a great cable for field monitors, but it can be used with any HDMI device.

Ulanzi VL110 RGB tube light review

Ulanzi VL110 are small but pretty powerful RGB tube lights. Each tube light has 3 modes (white, pulsing, RGB), USB-C charging, an OLED display, and 1/4” tripod mount. On top of that, Ulanzi VL110 can be stacked together to make bigger and longer light. Pretty cool!

How to exit VIM? 4 simple ways

VIM is one of the best pieces of software ever created. But the way you are supposed to exit it can be a major PITA. Of course, only if you don’t know how to do it. Here are four ways of exiting VIM with and without saving your work.

Wide zoom Olympus 9-18mm 1:4.0-5.6 ED review

Good lenses are usually expensive. Turns out, there is a reason for that. I wanted an ultra-wide lens for my YouTube studio. I have a small room and wanted to have more breathing room in the shots. The Olympus Digital 9-18mm 1:4.0-5.6 ED was the cheapest ultra-wide zoom lens for Micro Four Thirds mount and I got it. Cheap.

Guess what, I now kind of regret the decision. I mean, it works, it’s wide but the lens has 2 major problems:

• Autofocus is extremely loud and slow
• Only the center of the frame is sharp (or sharpish). Everything else is blurry and out of focus. And yeah, like expected bokeh sucks as well

Authentication vs Authorization - What's the difference?

Authentication and Authorization are mixed together. Some developers even swap them randomly. But authentication and authorization are very different things and describe different processes.

I deleted my YouTube videos. Why?

I deleted my best-performing YouTube videos. Not here, on my second channel. And when I say they were my best videos I mean it. They were bringing me 30% of new subscribers and 20% of views. Why have I done that?

Because I believe, in the longer run, they were harmful to the channel performance. Why? Those videos were not even close to the main topic of the channel. Not only they were bringing viewers that were not interested in the new videos on the channel. They were also messing up with the YouTube algorithm. As a result, I was getting fewer views and fewer subscribers than I should have. Let’s see if I was right doing so…