00:00          On today's show, we're going to take a look at this funky little pile of widgets to a potentially enhanced your iPhone cinematography.

00:15          Good morning and welcome to PhotoJoseph's Photo Moment first live three times a week show here at youtube.com/PhotoJoseph, every Monday, Wednesday, Friday 9:30 AM pacific time. Do you know the routine by now? How you guys doing today? We're talking about a fun little product. We'll see if this is something that, uh, that you all want to get your hands on. This is if you're doing iphone, cinematography by from well, from anything from selfie videos to live streaming from your phone too. I don't know, full on. Cinematics weren't going to get really good and make movies with my iphone and you generally want to add some kind of accessories to it, whether you're talking about a microphone. Good, good. First step, right? Because the microphone built into these phones is really not very good. Um, to uh, handle like this year. And this is not a Gimbal, it's not a stabilized handle, but being able to hold the camera with some kind of device other than just holding it like this can definitely be a benefit if you want to do things like a light onto it, have a little arm to mount a light thing onto it, that can be kind of cool.

01:11          And then to have the ability to have a, an actual remote control to start and stop shooting could be kind of handy to. And that's all of what this stuff is. So this is a product from a company called called ViewFlex. It's kind of a combination of things. It's a view flex – at least that's what it says on here – maybe that's the product name, it's this comma, comma, comma, comma, comma, COMICA. It's a COMICA. Oh, that's interesting. I'm getting some microphone feedback here. Interesting. We'll, we'll avoid that. Um, it's a COMICA microphone. Maybe it can make it. Makes the whole thing. The lights from coma ray, the handles called the VF-H6. We'd link to it down below. That's what really ultimately matters. And what this whole thing is, is it a. obviously at this, the handle, it's the bracket is the light, it's the microphone, but all that really matters is if it's any good at the end of the day, that's what matters.

01:54          So the light will start with the light. The light's pretty straightforward. It's a light, right? And it does have a little brighening dimming thingy on it. Let's go for… that is an interesting little static pull that I'm getting there, isn't it? Um, let's see here. Let's go for a closeup shot here so you can see the control. You can see the control in the back here you have, over the lighting, so I can make it a little bit brighter, a little bit darker. So you've got that on there if you need to do as such. That will also give you a. well, that static is. That is interesting. Where's that coming from? I wonder if it's somehow if I let go of it, it's not there. Some kind of feedback kind of feedback from the thing. I don't know what this is. We're at anyway.

02:30          It's a we'll just have to ignore the static. The static is some kind of interference from this, which in itself is very curious, isn't it? That's not something I would've expected, but it's. It's happening. It is definitely have anywhere, so you've got the bracket, you've got the the light on there. You have this little tiny microphone which we're going to find out quite soon, is actually pretty good for a tiny little mic that's on here plugged in. It's actually quite a good little mic. Now this kit comes with a case to carry it altogether. It comes with the cable that you need to plug into your smartphone, but not the adapter of course, to connect to your iphone and you know, unfortunately these days we don't have headphone jacks and pretty much anything that we buy. I think all the newest phones are all like seminar headphone Jack, so you're going to need an adapter.

03:08          They don't ship with the adapter, usually for every single possible device out there, so this will be compatible with basically anything you can plug a trs port into or adaptive, which would mean you're lightening port for your iphone and older iphones with lightening only came with the adapter. The newer ones apparently do not. Thanks Apple, uh, and the new android phones, apparently a USBC only as well. So you're gonna need an adapter for that. So one way or another you're going to need an adapter. We'll link to everything down below that you might possibly need. Um, we're going to see how good it sounds. That's going to be the final real test. Obviously that's what matters most, but there is one more thing I kind of want to go through with you on this and that's the assembly of this thing. So this is, I wish it was a little bit better going together, winning together a little bit better.

03:50          Let me show you how it all comes apart to begin with. And then we're going to put it back together and I'm going to show you my one kind of complaint, just not a big huge deal, but it's one of those, you know, it's a little bit annoying. So it all comes apart. And incidentally you could put the light on top of this if you want them to input the Mike over here, you know that's up to you. You can also take this arm off if you don't want that on there. So let's just disassemble the whole thing. Take off the microphone, loosen this. This handled by the way gets quite big. So if you've got a really big phone or a smaller phone, this will tighten and loosen to accommodate that. As we take all the pieces of part in here, you'll see that. Just get rid of this bracket on here.

04:24          You will see that bump up the. It's got a very long thread on there. It's not going to just suddenly fall off. Just take a little while to put together. This comes off so you don't have to have this part on here. You can just attach this. So if you just want the iphone with the handle on here, the culture on here, rather to attach a light microphone, whatever to you can do that. This is an optional piece you can add onto it. So this year, the cool thing about the way this is designed is you can take this off and if you wanted to, here we go. Let's get that in there all the way downstairs. Again, everything's got a very long thread. You could position this in the middle here so then it can be a sliding rail so you can position it kind of however you want and they, which is nice.

05:03          So you do have some flexibility on that. But here's, here's the problem. So we put this back into here and knowing going to have to thread this thing back in. Get this guy and it's going to take a little while, but apparently it takes a little while. If you get it in the right thread to start with, it's a good start. This just the fun of live stuff, like if it's going to go wrong, that could go wrong. It's going to happen live. Okay. So that's in place. This is now ready to go. I put this onto here, I attach this to here and I get that on. They're not going to have to thread this down for life long, skinny threat. Hey, while I'm doing this, I'm just remember folks, if you are watching live, the Qa will happen at the end. If you're not watching live and you would like to watch the q and a at the end of this video, there will be the link to the live q and a.

05:44          So if you're into the q and a part of it, I know that she was not listed anymore. It's a whole analytics reason we're doing that. But you get to the end of this show, there's been a link to the q and a. So that's where it is. Okay. So I've got this now in place, right? Except that it's not tight. Let's just tighten it right? So tighten that as much as you can, but it's still is going to move. And so the really the only good tightening thing you can do is you got to grab this handle and give it a good twist. Okay, that's great. Now it's tight, but now it is severely not straightened out. Let me go a little bit wider on this and you can really kind of see here that is obviously not aligned. So this is, this is the challenge and this is my real only real complaint.

06:23          This part here is just one screw. Once you've got to really tighten that in. And of course as soon as that gets knocked the other way, the whole thing is loose. This part here, you can only tightened so much with the thumb screw and it's just no, you're not really going to get that tight so you really have to grab this and give it a good bull, which is fine. But then if you want things to actually be lined up, you got to be really kind of strategic about where you position it before, before you give it a good Yank. So like I found if I give it maybe kind of a 45 degree angle, we'll get that one pretty straight onto there, tighten that down, take this and like, nope, that's not enough, so I'm going to tighten that down more and then get that into their kind of.

07:09          There we go and it's still off center. So it's. It's a challenge. It's an annoying challenge because you really want to just put it together and be done, but you do have to be quite meticulous about getting it lined up right. Assuming you care, the only real reason it matters other than having the light and the camera being at the same angle is the handle with the button on the back. If you're not gonna, use the button on the back of really doesn't matter and obviously you can easily just move your thumb around to the side to hit is not the end of the world, but it's nice for it all to be lined up in centered. Incidentally, this little button right here, cute little thing is a bluetooth connected device, just just Bluetooth Paris to your phone and all this is doing, when you push the button is it's pushing the up volume on your phone which starts and stops recording.

07:51          So that's Kinda cool, right? I'm neat. And it's removable so you can just take this way. He goes somewhere else. If you wanted to set this on a tripod somewhere, backup headstart, start recording. You could do that. So that's kind of cool. Now when I did get this, it came with a Doa one. This one was dead, but the company did replace it is shipped from China. It took a few weeks to get here, but they did send out a replacement part for it. So when you get yours, if you decide to buy one of the things when you get yours, if the remote doesn't work and basically I'd, you know, trying to turn it on. It just never came on. I just swapped the battery. It wasn't a battery. If you're has never works, contact the company. Tell them that photo Joseph said, hey, mine didn't work either.

08:27          Please send me a new one. Ended up, I think they'll take care of you because they took care of me. That's the idea. So that's kind of cool. All right, so let's just get it all together. I'm going to put that in there so you see it pops in this little button on there. Let's get the actual phone in place in here and plug it all back in and then I'm going to do it that way. Let's not do it backwards. It'd be silly. Um, and then we'll do a quick little recording and I'll play it back for you. So you're going to see a live recording and you'll get to hear the difference between this broadcast system. Static not withstanding with static should clue enough either and what the microphone on here actually sounds like. Instantly. While I'm doing this, let me just remind you too about the value for value proposition that we have on the show.

09:04          What this means is that if you feel that you have gained value from today's show, that we would most certainly appreciate it if you could put a little bit of value back in. The best way to do that is to head over to photo Joseph Dot com slash support. There's all the different methods, all the different ways you can help out all the different things you can do on there, including shopping at the affiliates are like, if you decided to buy this thing, um, you know, please use my link. But the biggest thing, the coolest thing is membership. If you're a member of [inaudible] dot com, you'll get access to all kinds of good stuff, including including the new private, very small facebook group where we can interact on a more intimate level and have any kind of conversation. And one where I will also go live on random times and moments.

09:42          Um, I just realized I kind of put this together backwards. I meant to flip this the other way, but it probably really doesn't matter. No, it totally matters. No, it doesn't matter. No, this is good. We're good. I was wondering if that was too close to the light. Probably is. I really meant to flip it the other way, but who cares? Okay. So here's what going to do. We're going to hit the record button, so let's go for the closest one to here. You can see as I hit the button on here that is going to start recording on there. So you just see that started recording and um, and now we're just going to. That's it. It's required. Probably should put the light on when some light on there too. Let's get some light on there and let's see how this thing looks. Cool.

10:12          I probably should put the light on it with some light on there to get some light on there. And let's see how this thing looks. So there we are. We are in full on selfie mode. Now here's one thing about the mic that's kind of cool. Is it as quite directional? So watch this, I'm talking talking. It can hear me, you can hear me, I'm talking talking. It can hear me, you can hear me, I do this. And you're going to hear when you hear the recording on the other side than it is actually quite a big audio difference in there. Is it as quite directional? So watch this, I'm talking talking. It can hear me, you can hear me, I do this and you're going to hear when you hear the recording on the other side than it is actually quite a big audio difference in there.

10:46          So that is, that is notable. It is very much a directional mic, which is good because that tells us stop recording there. That tells us that we are going to not pick up a whole lot of background, extraneous noise and all that good stuff. So there you go. So it's. It's pretty decent, right? I mean that sound was definitely not bad for this tiny little mic on there. It's not too shabby. Now the price of the whole thing. It is $125 for the whole rig so it's definitely not the cheapest thing you're going to find online but you could. You could spend a lot more. You could spend a lot less. And I think for the price of it, I think you're getting something of good quality of comparable quality, you know, you could obviously you can spend $100 on a microphone alone easily. Um, and spent a lot more than that.

11:26          A microphone alone. So for $125 for the handle, the light and the uh, and the microphone in there, I think it's not too shabby. So anyway, so there you go. That is my, my on occasion, on occasion. Uneducated, uninformed opinion of. No, I think it's Kinda cool. I think it's a nice little product if you're doing the kind of thing. Were you shooting with your phone? You want to have a little of stabilization? You want to have a mic and a place to put it. You want to have a light on there or not? Take the arm and the light off then not then you could certainly do worse. All right guys, that's it. That is, that is today's. Wow. That was a show and a half. Let's jump into the q and a and see if there's anything you guys want to make fun of me for because something tells me. It tells me that it's going to be right for that today. We'll see you over in the Q&A folks. Be Right back.