China based Synco kindly sent me a copy of their product P1L, a wireless microphone to be used with the Apple iPhone. It comes in other variants than this one, but as I have an iPhone 12, this is the version that I asked to have sent for review.
The price on B&H is 89 USD (April 2022), but be aware that taxes and transport costs may apply if you buy online, so make sure to check this before you buy.
If you don’t know why you should be interested in a product like this when you are producing videos, the answer is simple: sound is super important if you want people to watch your videos. It may sound counter intuitive, but the sound is more important than the visuals. If you don’t believe me, try watching an interview on CNN or the like where they are interviewing someone far away with poor sound – I bet that you will have trouble maintaining focus on what is being said. Good sound is vital.
And another point – good sound is often equal to almost no distance between microphone and sound source. The more distance – the more difficult it is to produce great sound. And this is why it makes a lot of sense to have a wireless transmission from your microphone to the receiver, so you can get the microphone as close to your mouth (or the sound source) as possible.
Light and simple
The microphone comes in a small box wrapped in thin plastic, so you know you are the first one to touch the product since it left the factory.
In the box you will find a USB to USB-C cable, a small cable to hook up a headphone to the receiving side and a power bank that both holds and charges the sender and the receiver.
When you open the power bank, you will find the sender (tx) and the receiver (rx) sitting in the drawer.
When you take the transmitter (tx) out of the cradle, it will automatically start up. The receiver (rx, to the left above) switches on as soon as it is inserted into your iPhone. The two combined, i.e. as shown in the picture above, is only 17 grams in total! This must be the lightest sound option out there available!
Above the receiver is inserted to the bottom of the iPhone. It is very important that the connectors on the iPhone a free from dust and dirt, as the receiver obviously needs good connection to the iPhone to work properly. The sender and receiver are paired from the factory side, and will connect super fast and show that they are connected by switching on the LEDs on both tx and rx in a “rolling” manner. If there is no connection, the LEDs will switch on and off at the same time, so you get a blinking bar instead of a rolling one.
All this worked out of the box and I had not problems making this work. There is no need for installing an app on the iPhone or the like.
If it does not work and you need the tx and rx to re-connect, simply put both of them in the cradle, close it and hold the button at the end of the power bank in for 3 seconds and more, and the re-connection is made in a matter of seconds. You can see the button to push for 3 seconds above, along with the USB-C connection to charge the power bank.
Charging the tx and rx? Happens automatically when you put them in position in the power bank.
The microphone comes with a little spring laden clip that allow you to attach it easily to your clothing. In the image above I have attached it to my iPhone just to illustrate how it works. The microphone sits on top of the sender, i.e. to the rightmost above.
Above you see the transmitter with the hole into the microphone closest to the camera. The clip to attach it to clothing is now at the bottom of the image.
Once you have put the receiver into the iPhone and attached the sender to your clothing – you now have an operational wireless microphone! There is no option for adjusting the sound level, so you will have to do so in post processing if you desire, but I found that it does a good job selecting a good sound level, as long as there is around 15-20 centimeters between the microphone and your mouth.
The sound is really good and pleasing. You can hear very clearly what is being said and I like the result. I did however find that when on the beach or other windy places, I missed the option to mount a “dead cat” to reduce wind noise. Also, it would have been good if there had been a connector to allow me to use an alternative microphone, so I just used the sender/receiver setup, but maybe this is not a fair request for a product at this price point.
Synco promises up to 5 hours of operating time with the microphone on – I must admit that I have not tested this part, as it is much more than what I need. This also applies to the reach – Synco promises that the setup will work with 150 meters (!) between microphone and receiver if line of sight, and 50 meters otherwise. I have tested it and found that it delivers to promise. Just like with the battery, this is MUCH more than I will ever need.
There is an option to listen in to your own recording while recording and that is what the small adapter is for. However, it gives a cabled connection to the receiving side, and hence the whole point with the wireless setup is lost. I think this option is only relevant for studio usage.
Finally I have not tested the voice effect. I think it is a bit of a gimmick for a serious product, so I have simply ignored this feature. I prefer to do my post processing of sound in Premiere Pro and the like, and hence have no need for this feature.
Conclusion
Below my list of pros and cons. I really like this product for its ease of use, being super light, producing great sound and not breaking the bank. If you use your iPhone for video recording, this product could lift the quality of your sound to a new level. And for such use case, I can recommend this product.
Pros:
Price / value
Good sound
Light solution (17 grams)
Long reach (150 meters LOS, 50 meters NLOS)
Easy to use – starts and connects easily
Charging case included
USB-C for charging
Monitoring option (although only for studio use)
Cons:
No option for mounting noise reduction / dead cat
No option for using own microphone
Connection to iPhone seems fragile if dropped accidentally
Viltrox is a Shenzhen based company in the People’s Republic of China. They have produced lenses since 2019. The company was founded back in 2009 and also does many other photography related products like adapters, lights and monitors.
Despite its young age in the lens line of business, Viltrox produces APS-C lenses for both Sony, Canon and Fujifilm. The lens in review here is the Viltrox 33 mm 1.4 prime for the Nikon Z mount. The Z mount is used by Nikon in their mirrorless series of camera bodies (say Z50 or Z6ii), and hence this lens cannot be used with Nikon DSLRs that use the older F-mount.
Introduction to this lens
You can get a 23mm and a 56mm lens for the Z-mount as well, but I chose to take a closer look at the 33 mm. You can read more about the alternatives here.
Viltrox kindly sent me a copy for review.
The Viltrox lens mounted on the Nikon Z50 camera body
You probably already know that due to the crop factor, a 33mm APS-C lens is a 33×1.5=49.4 mm full frame equivalent. In other words, it is a nifty fifty 50mm, one of the most versatile general purpose focal lengths. Primes are more simple constructions than zooms, and hence often both cheaper, lighter and sharper than zooms, but I will stay clear of the pros and cons of primes vs zooms in this review and just assume that you are in the market for a 50 mm FF equivalent APS-C prime lens for the Nikon Z-mount.
You can use this lens on a full frame body like the Nikon Z6, but as it is intended for APS-C, you will either only use a fraction of the sensor of the FF camera (DX crop) or you will experience heavy vignetting where the corners are very dark. So in this review I have only tested the Viltrox lens on my Nikon Z50 – a little APS-C camera that I use a lot.
First look
The first thing I noticed was the weight of the package with the lens – around 300 grams! That may not sound like much, but relative to other APS-C lenses it is quite some! I like heavy lenses as it signals lots of glass and metal, and this lens is exactly like that – all metal and glass; even the lens hood is made of metal – no plastic here! Wonderful!
The aperture ring is here set to “A” and that means the aperture is controlled from the camera. As soon as you turn the ring, the lens takes over the aperture control.
The solid build quality continues with the manual focus ring which is wide and easy to grip, and dampened just enough to give a bit of resistance without making the ring difficult to turn.
You can select the aperture on the lens by turning a click less ring close to the camera. If you turn it all the way to the right, so the mark is aligned with the red A, the lens allows you to select the aperture on the front command dial as you are used to, but as soon as you start turning the ring, the lens takes over control. I find that this works really well, and many Fuji shooters will love this feature. It will take me some time to get used to the lack of clicks on the ring.
The lens has a 52mm filter thread and there are no external parts that move due to the Internal focusing mechanism, making the use of filters easy. For the price point around 280 USD I did not expect to find autofocus (AF), but my expectations were surpassed, and the AF is both fast and silent.
Demanding videographers with microphones close to the camera may pick up a bit of noise from the motor, but the rest of us will be very happy with both the speed and the silence of the AF system in this lens. Perhaps needless to say, the lens comes with no stabilization – not that I would find it necessary in a lens this fast.
You can see the aperture blades at the center of the lens – here closed down.
On the rear of the lens I found no rubber gaskets to give weather sealing and instead I found a little USB-C connector for future software updates. It is of course super useful when Viltrox is to push out new versions of the lens software either as improvements or to keep up with whatever changes Nikon may do. But it does certainly not give the impression of a lens that will withstand heavy rain or the elements on a stormy day at the beach. So I will not grab this lens for heavy weather conditions, unless wrapped in a plastic bag or similar to give protection from the elements. In all fairness, the Nikon Z50 is not weather sealed either, but I just think it would have been nice if Viltrox had gone to some length to protect the interface between the lens and camera from dust and moisture.
Use
The lens clicks onto the Nikon Z50 body like any other Nikon Z-mount lens. And from there on it just works. The AF is fast and silent and works in tandem with the Nikon camera body and I cannot tell the difference between a Nikon lens and a Viltrox lens in this regard.
The manual focus ring is big and wide and easy to use – I like the way it is dampened a bit but not too much and the focus peaking highlights makes manual override a pleasure. The only thing to get used to is the lack of clicks on the aperture ring, but I simply put the lens in mode “A” and control the aperture from the camera body.
This is a lens you will get used to in a matter of minutes.
Sharpness
Without bothering you with the more technical testing presented in a MTF chart, I can reveal that the sharpness of this lens is quite impressive, especially center sharpness. As with any lens that opens up as wide as f/1.4, you would expect some softness wide open and the lens to get sharper when stopping down.
Center sharpness – look at the branch top right and don’t be confused by the shallow DOF at f/1.4 to the left. The center sharpness is impressive in both cases.Corner sharpness at 1.4 left and 5.6 right. It is clear that stopped down the corner sharpness is much better.
But this lens has impressive center sharpness also when fully open, whereas the corner sharpness leaves something to be desired. As soon as you stop down, then also the corners become very sharp.
Bokeh
There are 9 slightly rounded aperture blades. I prefer straight blades as I like sunstars when shooting stopped down into the sun, but on the other hand the rounded blades help produce rounded bokeh, so I guess you can’t have both. Aperture ranges from super fast f/1.4 down to f/16.
Focusing at the lights in the foreground and shooting fully open at f/1.4, the fireplace in the background is rendered out of focus beautifully.
With a lens this fast, I guess that many want to use it for rendering beautiful blurred backgrounds. I find the bokeh absolutely beautiful and the 9 rounded blades certainly deliver according to my expectation. I know that bokeh experts will look for both cat’s eyes and onion rings, but I am not that advanced or demanding, and I simply find that the bokeh this lens produces when wide open is all I need.
Chromatic aberration
We all have different preferences and different things that are important to us. And when it comes to CA, I am one of the more demanding photographers. The reason being that I often shoot into the sun or in high contrast situations, and fixing CA in post processing is simply a nuisance. And on top of that, LR often does not remove the CA and I have to use an eyedropper tool and manual setting to get an acceptable result.
The classic book page shot with noticeable CA to the right fully open at f/1.4 – to the right at f/5.6, it is completely gone.A piece of wrinkled tinfoil shot close up in stark light. The CA is noticeable in two different colors.
Unfortunately this lens suffers from CA and it is quite significant. The CA shows both as coloring of the letters when doing the classic “book” shot and also as clear lines of coloring when I do my party trick number one: shooting curly tinfoil in stark light. I know it is a brutal test, but my use of lenses when it comes to contrast is also brutal.
Minimum focus distance
The minimum focus distance for this lens is around 40cm according to the spec sheet, although I managed to get down to around 38cm in my own testing, measuring from the position of the sensor to the subject matter.
The little shell on a big stone. Would be nice to move closer to the subject in this caseI managed to focus around 38cms as the closest minimum focus distance.
If you, like me, like to fill the frame with your subject, then a minimum focus distance of 38-40 cm is a lot, and you will find it annoying that you cannot get closer to the subject. In the picture with the little shell on the big black stone, you can see an example where it would have been nice to move closer to the subject. I had hoped for more, but if you shoot landscapes or portraits entirely, then the minimum focus distance may not be important to you at all.
Color rendition
I am very cautious when it comes to an assessment of color rendition, simply because it is super subjective and subject very much to personal preference and what color cast you are used to. If you have ever tried working with post processing of an image where you e.g. change the color temperature a lot, then take a 10 minute break and go for a cup of coffee and then come back to study your own work, only to find that the color rendition has been tweaked so badly that you immediately think “why did I not see this – it looks horrible?”. But the answer is that you slowly got used to it as you worked with the picture.
Beautiful sunset with the silhouette of a boat.
Long story short, then I think you will like the color rendition of this lens. I will give you some links to Flick towards the end of the review, so you can see some landscape images. The good image quality of Flickr can hopefully help you assess what you think of the color rendition.
Distortion
Back in the day when there was film in the camera, distortion was a big thing to avoid, as it would sit on your film after the shot was taken and there was very little you could do about it. With a digital image, lens profiles and smart post processing software, the removal of distortion is but a click away. And that is why I think that lens producers in their work to design the best lenses, simply let go of the ambition to contain or diminish distortion – there are other design criteria to give priority.
In that vein, I have not tested the lens for distortion. And even if I could not remove the problem with a few clicks in LR, I think that you will find that distortion – irrespective of barrel or pincushion – seldom is visible, unless you are a demanding architecture or real estate photographer that needs a straight line to be straight.
Focus breathing
Testing for focus breathing is really easy: Grab the manual focus ring and turn it back and forth and check in the viewfinder if the field of view changes, i.e. if it looks like the lens zooms in and out while you change focus point. If your lens has focus breathing, then you will see the field of view changing – your lens is “breathing” as it focuses near and far.
For videographers the absence of focus breathing is vital, as they often change focus in a scene where they need to shift focus from one actor to another. And exactly in those situations you don’t want the field of view to change. You want it to be rock steady.
I am happy to say that this lens has NO focus breathing, or at least so little that I cannot spot it. In combination with the fast and silent AF, the lack of focus breathing checks an important requirement for videographers.
Conclusion
I like a lens that delivers great value for money, and this lens checks that box in full. The Viltrox 33mm f/1.4 is a breath of fresh air to the Nikon Z-mount cameras, as you now can get a fast lens with great AF for a price well below the Nikon alternatives. And Viltrox did not spend all their focus on the inside of the lens – the build quality of the lens is great and the manual focus ring is a pleasure to use.
At this price point I did not expect to find AF, but it is there and works well, and further at this price point the expectation to find VR would be a bit unreasonable if you ask me – so I have put lack of VR as a point not assessed. I think at this price point it would be unfair to bring it up as a con.
Nobody’s perfect, and this lens has some weak points. One is corner sharpness that is less of an issue for me (and should be if you want to use this lens for say street photography or portraiture). Another is the strong CA in high contrast situations and the minimum focus distance that makes it hard to fill the frame with your subject. These are clear limitations for me that will influence what I will use this lens for.
So can I recommend this lens? Yes, if minimum focus distance and corner sharpness wide open is less of a concern for you, then this is a fast and well built value for money AF lens that can take up the 50mm FF equivalent spot in your APS-C prime lens collection for your Nikon Z-mount.
There can be many reasons why you want to control your exposure manually – the scene may contain a lot of bright or dark that confuses the automated metering system, you are shooting with flashes in manual mode or you just want to control the exposure because you like this way of working. Whatever the reason, there is a way to secure correct exposure using a grey card (18%) and the histogram in the camera.
Right in the middle
One of my flashes came with a grey card in credit card size. Actually it came with 3 cards, one white, one black and one grey. You only need the grey one, but just for the fun of it, I will use all 3 in the following.
The grey card to the left, the black card top and the white card right. The fact that the white card appears a bit grey would indicate that this image is slightly underexposed.
The grey card returns light in such a way that if your exposure is correct, then the grey card will produce a peak in the histogram right in the middle of the diagram. The histogram shows the distribution of light in the scene, with completely black areas to the left, completely white to the right and everything in between somewhere in the middle. The height of the graph shows the number of pixels in relation to the entire scene. So if you have a very dark scene, then the histogram is “lefty”, i.e. it looks like a mountain appears in the left side of the histogram whereas the right side is more flatland.
The simple idea is now that you take a test image of the scene, study the histogram and if it is off center, then you adjust the camera settings to make the grey card appear in the middle. If you are in Live View on your DSLR or have a mirrorless camera, you can actually see the histogram update real time as you adjust the camera settings, and hence no need to do a test shot unless you want to.
You adjust the camera settings meaning ISO, Aperture and Shutter speed. If shooting in manual mode is new to you, you can follow the link and see how it is done on a Nikon D750. The principles are much the same across different camera brands, and I think you can get the gist of it by reading the post in the link.
In the example above, you can see the 3 cards on a whit table and top right the histogram. Yes, it is a bit small, but you can see that there are 3 peaks – one the the very left originating from the black card, then the peak in the middle from the grey card and then the wider peak to the right, that is a combination of the white card AND the table behind the cards. This table is also white, but not as bright as the card. So the rightmost peak is also wider than the other two, as it is a combination of the table and the white card that span across a wider range.
In this example the grey card peak is not in the middle, but to slightly to the left, which is a sign of underexposure. Had it been to the right – then overexposure. So in this case the camera settings needs to be adjusted to let in more light, say leaving the shutter open for longer time or opening up the aperture. After the adjustment, a new test shot is needed to see if the desired effect has set in. If not, then redo until the grey peak is right in the middle.
So this is really all there is to it. Given that the ambient light does not change or the flash settings remain constant, you can now shoot a series of images without worrying about the exposure settings on your camera. I find this super useful for product shoots and indoor portrait shoots.
