Category Archives: Video (misc)

1961 Ford F100 pickup

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One-minute walk-around of a vintage pickup. Waiting on official word and story (if any) from Paul. Here’s ChatGPT’s best guess:

The Ford F-100 pickup truck in your photo appears to be from the early 1960s, likely between 1961 and 1966. The distinctive styling, particularly the hood and grille design, matches the second-generation F-Series trucks produced during those years.

Pocket 3 Gimbal Settings

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The DJI Osmo Pocket 3 has three main gimbal modes – Follow, Tilt Locked, and FPV. Today I shot a few minutes of video with the gimbal in the tilt-lock mode. The tilt-lock gimbal setting is designed to maintain the camera’s horizontal orientation while allowing for panning movements. This mode is particularly useful for scenarios where you want to keep the horizon level, such as when filming landscapes or during activities that involve lateral movements.

It’s hard to miss the up-and-down motion caused by my walking. The solution to this –according to most of the videos I’ve watched– is the “ninja walk.” A  bent-knee, heel-to-toe walk that is supposed to keep the camera level. Don’t think I’m going to be doing that in public.

The follow mode is the default mode and suitable for most shooting scenarios like vlogs and selfies. The pan and tilt axes are unlocked, allowing the camera to follow your movements left/right and up/down. However, the rotation axis is locked, preventing the camera from rotating/twisting around its own axis.

The two minute video below was shot with the gimbal in follow mode but I’m not sure that was the best setting. There are several places where the video is jerky (when compared to what I get with the iPhone). This is very likely operator error.

Twenty years of cameras

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Playing with the Pocket 3 is bringing back fond memories of cameras I have owned. I do not think of myself as a photographer or videographer, I spent a lot of hours (and money) over the past 20 years and most of them got a post or two on this blog.

  • 5/1/2008 – iMage Webcam (CamTwist, Ustream)
  • 5/22/2008 – Flip Video Camera
  • 6/13/2009 – Ecamm BT-1 “World’s first Bluetooth webcam” (related: twitCam) –
  • 12/8/2018 – Sony Handycam DCR-TRV 74 (I’m sure I was shooting video with the Sony much earlier but getting that video off the camera and encoded on a computer was such a time-consumer nightmare, it’s not worth mentioning)

I’d have to say my favorite cameras during those early days were made by Casio:

In 2009 I bought my first iPhone and that was pretty much it for point-and-shoot cameras but I have purchased a couple of GoPro cameras in the last couple of years.

Perplexity says (using British accent) she has no voice

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As good as I’ve found ChatGPT to be, it appears Perplexity (another AI tool) might be even better. One of my favorite features of ChatGPT is ability to “converse” with one of several human-like voices. I posted an example of this a few months back. Others nitpick but I find the voice amazingly human-like. Now that I have a Perplexity account I wondered if it has the same feature.

Does not have a voice feature? Sooo, what are we listening to here. I’m sure there’s a logical explanation for this and I’ll update this post if and when. Perhaps it’s just a new feature (that it doesn’t know about?!)

What I was curious about –before this distraction– was why the ChatGPT voice is so natural sounding and the Perplexity voice is canned computer-speak.

Audigo Microphone

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I’ve been using the Audix USB 12 microphone to record the audio for videos for a long time. Ten years? Sounds good but keeps me tethered to my MacBook which hasn’t been an issue for most of my stuff. But, occasionally, I’ve thought it would be fun to put the video camera (laptop or iPhone) further away. But then the audio suffers.

The first video below is a demo of the Audigo Microphone and app. The short video below that is my attempt to show the difference audio quality. Eager to try this out with a new uke song.

UPDATE: Sample (:50) off video recorded from across the room with audio from the Audigo mic.