Camera Nikon Z6II

Mirrorless, light-weight, durable, perfect for both photo and video. We love Nikons user interface and picture quality. The best system we ever owned.

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Lens Nikkor Z 24-70mm f2.8

Our video-workhorse: Compatible with the gimbal, great low light performance, silent. Also great for photo documentaries. Our favorite always-on lens.

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Lens Nikkor Z 24-200mm f4-6.3

Our favorite always-on lens for our second camera. Allthough too heavy for the gimbal, great range for shooting nearly everything.

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Lens Nikkor Z 20mm f1.8

Shooting interior or the milky way in a slovenian night sky? This is your lens.

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DJI Mavic 2 Pro

Best picture quality when it comes to aerial shooting. Tried a lot of other drones before but this is best of class. Maybe the Mavic 3 is better.

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DJI Action 2

Works on the hood of the car, can be attached to a kite, can be carried around on a descend into a cave. Doesn’t break, where the loss of the big camera would hurt your wallet. In our opinion the best companion in battery life, image quality and usability.

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Rollei OLED Remote Shutter

Shooting interior or the milky way in a slovenian night sky? This is your lens.

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Rollei Compact Traveller No. 1 Carbon Tripod

Ultra light-weight, small dimensions, ideal for limited space in planes or cars. ARCA-compatible head plate.

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3Legged thing Ellie PD L-bracket

With this bracket, we can fast insert the camera to our tripod, gimbal or carrying-system without changing anything. A bracket for lazy people.

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Peak Design Capture Clip v2

ARCA compatible camera carrying system.

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DJI RSC 2 Gimbal

Makes your videos smooth. But sometimes you leave it at home, because it is too heavy to carry around on a 6 hour hike.

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Arca compatible quick release plate for DJI RSC 2 Gimbal

Makes the DJI RSC 2 gimbal compatible with the Peak Design ARCA-clip on the Ellie PD bracket.

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Rode Video Mic

Makes your videos smooth. Sometimes you leave it at home, because it is too heavy to carry around on a 6 hour hike.

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Zoom H2n Recorder

Capture dialogues and ambient noises with this handy stand alone recorder. You can even mount it on the camera hot shoe as an external microphone.

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TP-Link M7200 mobile network router

This little friend helps us to keep our connection to the internet everywhere in the world. We just insert a SIM-card, enter the cards pin and our M7200 spans its WiFi for all our devices, providing us with internetconnection even in the most remote albanian mountain areas.

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Luminar Neo Photo Editor

Most of our photos are edited with Luminar Products. Intelligent, fast and subscription free creativity for everyone.

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Aurora HDR Software

When shooting and editing HDR photos, Luminar Aurora HDR is the way to go.

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Der Beitrag Our video and photo gear erschien zuerst auf Pixelfriedhof.

Workmanship and operation

The Rollei Lumen light bar * is shipped with a high quality soft case with Rollei imprint.
The soft case contains batteries, chargers, power supply unit, light bar and screw-on 1/4 inch handle. A high-gloss local language instruction manual is also included.
The batteries come 80% pre-charged and can be used directly.

The light bar can also be placed in this soft case with batteries inserted.

In addition, a fabric cover is included, which can be put over the lamp including the batteries. I like to call this cover “the condom”. The condom is super practical if you don’t want to take the whole bag and the included accessories with you, but only the light incl. handle and batteries prepared for use.

The scope of delivery and the well thought-out transport options alone make it clear: this is not a cheap product. It claims to be a thoroughly thought-out solution, whether in the studio or on the road. This is also evident in the mounting options:

The light bar has two 1/4 inch threads with which the light can be connected to the supplied handle or a tripod: One for mounting the lamp horizontally, one for vertical orientation. Depending on the orientation in which the lamp is mounted, the light cast and the resulting shadows can thus be influenced. More about this later.

The light is pleasantly heavy. It has a high quality plastic housing. The lamp feels good in the hand, but not too heavy, when held by the handle. However, after a longer time of handling the handle, it can happen that it jerks loose in the 1/4 inch connection. You then have to tighten the handle again. Personally, I can live with that.

However, the lamp is too heavy to attach it directly to the camera on a hot shoe adapter. For such cases, the lamp should be attached to a suitable camera cage.

Rollei Lumen LED-Stableuchte I RGB Bi-Color Videoleuchte I App-Steuerung I LED Video-Licht geeignet für Portrait, Produkt &...*

• 🌈 360 einstellbare Farben: Kompaktes und leistungsstarkes RGB Bicolor LED-Licht mit einem CRI von über 95% für farbgetreue...
• 📱 Smartphone App: Die kostenlose Android & iOS App "Rollei Lumen" ermöglicht die gleichzeitige Fernsteuerung mehrerer LED...

135,28 EUR

Amazon

Controlling the lamp

On the back of the Rollei Lumen light bar * there is a settings display, two pressable control wheels and two selector switches for the modes “Off”, “Mains operation” and “Battery operation” and white light (CCT) and coloured light (RGB).

The display is illuminated and, together with the two clickable control wheels, looks extremely valuable. The feel gives good feedback and allows fine adjustments. Superbly done, Rollei!

In the white light mode, we can fine-tune the colour temperature in Kelvin. A symbol also shows us which light colour (artificial, sun, cloudy, candle, etc.) this setting comes closest to. Of course, the brightness can also be controlled.

In colour mode, the colour tone can be adjusted on the luminaire by means of a 360-degree selector. In addition, the saturation of the colour and the overall brightness can be adjusted. As an alternative to the 360-degree selector, predefined colours can be selected.

The selector switches, on the other hand, look and feel extremely cheap. It hangs loose and is made of light plastic. This switch does not fit in at all with the rest of the lamp’s otherwise high-quality appearance. The feel of this switch is terrible, it could have been done better. At both of my lamps the colour/white switch doesn‘t really attach in one position, there is no feedback at all. Terrible.

We have triple freedom of choice when it comes to controlling the lamp:

• Option 1: Control via the integrated controls and the display.
• Option 2: Control via Bluetooth using the Lumen app on the smartphone.
• Option 3: Control via DMX

Immediately after unpacking, I put the lamp into operation. I downloaded the Lumen app and started it. On my iPhone, the app asked me for Bluetooth access rights. I granted Bluetooth access and the lamp was connected immediately.

“How the hell did they do that?”, I asked myself. It went so smoothly, I didn’t expect it to. I would have thought I would have had to at least find and pair the lamp manually, but the app did that on its own. Great success. That is intuitive usability and excellent user experience. Nicely done.

When it comes to having the light bar permanently installed in the studio, it may also make sense to control the lamps via a DMX controller. No problem, because each lamp has a DMX input and DMX output in the form of an RJ45 socket. I don’t use this, but I tested it with a DMX controller lying around. It works perfectly, but I couldn’t get the colour temperature for white light right with DMX. But I only tried it out for 3 minutes out of curiosity.

Regardless of where the lamp is operated from, it remembers the last settings when it is switched off and on again. Even after a loss of voltage.

How does the Rollei Lumen portable light perform in photo shooting?

As described at the beginning of this article, the orientation of the Rollei Lumen light bar * can be freely selected. This applies equally to photo and video purposes:

The horizontal position of the light distributes the light over a larger target area. Shadows become softer. Ideal for portrait photography or the illumination of video recordings – but more about that later.

Vertically aligned, I can focus the light on a specific target strip. Ideal for artistic lighting designs, low-key and still life lighting.

The brightness of the lamp can be adjusted in one hundred 1% percent steps. This is granular enough for all lighting situations.

In June, I was commissioned by a client to photograph the new bus stops they had produced and installed in a municipality. Let’s face it, a bus stop is not exactly the most exciting subject. So I came up with the idea of taking the photos in the dark and colour lighting the modern bus stops with the Rollei Lumen light bars. The result is something to be proud of.

Rollei Lumen light bar as Video Illumination

The Rollei Lumen light bar * does not flicker when shooting in 30p, 25p, 60p, provided that the 360° rule is observed. Flickering is neither visible with battery operation nor with mains operation. That was my biggest concern.

For video recordings in my “YouTube studio” I used to use 4 Samtian TL-600AS studio lights distributed on two lamp tripods. They were often too bright.

Two horizontally mounted Rollei Lumen light sticks now take over this job. The brightness of the 4 lamps used before is not quite reached, but that was simply exaggerated and hurt my own eyes on full brightness.

My Rollei Lumen light bar * emitts perfect brightness, flickerfree and looks much better and stable, than my former light setup.

Conclusion and recommendation

The Rollei Lumen light bar * does what it is supposed to do. For around 120€, we get a versatile and largely high-quality product that is very well thought out, from the menu navigation to the carrying bag. The light quality is impeccable. Colours are mixed cleanly, the light is soft and cast shadows are not distracting. For such a compact device, the performance is super.

Ihre Daten werden erst beim Abspielen des Youtube-Videos an den Dienst übermittelt. Your data will only be transmitted to the service when you play the Youtube video.

Even if the workmanship and the material of the lamp are largely okay, the wobbly and not properly engaging selector switches are a horror. That is already the biggest minus. But you can live with that and the lighting result is not affected by it.

I particularly like the fact that it can be used for both video lighting and photography. In my eyes, this is the most solid, affordable and versatile solution at the moment.

All links marked with * in this post are Amazon affiliate links. This means that if you purchase through these links, we will receive a commission. Nevertheless, this review is real and not bought. I could recommend any other studio light to you, but I am really enthusiastic about the Rollei Lumen product series and don’t want to miss my lights for photo and video purposes anymore.

Der Beitrag Testing the Rollei Lumen LED Stick for photo and video erschien zuerst auf Pixelfriedhof.

For which purpose do I need an external remote release?

If you want to take long exposures with an exposure time of more than 30 seconds, you will soon notice that the camera has reached its limits. Most cameras limit the long-term exposure up to a maximum exposure time of 30 seconds. If you want to expose longer, you can use the so-called bulb mode of the camera. This bulb mode exposes the image as long as the shutter-release button is pressed. Now nobody really wants to keep the shutter button pressed for a minute while taking a picture, and the image would probably shake with the shaky hand. This is where the remote shutter release comes in. The above-mentioned long exposure times are used, for example, if you want to take long shots with ND filters in actually sufficient or even very bright lighting conditions. This allows you to achieve effects such as very soft waterfalls or clouds in the image. In addition, long-term recordings can also eliminate people running through the image in photos.

Longexposure shot of the Woudagemaal in Lemmer (NL). 1 minute 30 seconds exposure time. Clouds and water are extremely soft. Nikon D500, Sigma 18-35mm F1,8 DC HSM | Art

Original Nikon remote release vs. Rollei remote release – 150€ vs. 20€

Since I exclusively use Nikon cameras, I refer in my review to the comparison to the Nikon remote release MC-36A. The Rollei remote control is also available for Canon, Sony, Fuji, Olympus and Panasonic. The functions should also be the same for the cameras of these manufacturers and my review should therefore also apply to camera owners of the aforementioned manufacturers.

Compared to the Nikon MC-36A remote release, the Rollei remote release (Amazon Affiliate Link) is 130€ cheaper. To be honest, I was skeptical about this price difference. Can this still work?

Fact is, the functional range of both devices is approximately the same. Both devices allow the programming of start time, exposure time and intervals. In addition, both devices offer an acoustic signal function that can be switched off, a control light, multifunction selector, as well as a lock switch for completely manual triggering (recording as long as the trigger remains pressed). During purely manual release by pressing and holding the shutter release button, a timer automatically counts the past exposure time. If you compare the pure arrangement of the buttons and the layout of the display, you will see that both devices have approximately the same structure. For this reason alone, the functions cannot differ much. The digital timer and interval functions as well as the display illumination require the insertion of two AAA batteries in both devices. I use the rechargeable AAA batteries from Eneloop in almost all areas of application and have not yet had them emptied in the remote trigger after six months.

Rollei Kabelfernauslöser für Nikon – erlaubt die Fernauslösung, Langzeitbellichtungen, Serienbild und Zeitintervall Aufnahmen...*

• ✅ Der Rollei Kabelfernauslöser ermöglicht Programmierung von Startzeit, Belichtungsdauer und Intervalls bis zu 100 Stunden im...
• ✅ Manuelle Langzeitbelichtung mit Zeitanzeige. Die Belichtungskontrolle wird zusätzlich mit Signalton unterstützt. Bis zu 399...

Amazon

Nikon MC-36A Fernauslöserkabel mit Timer (0,9m)*

• Kabellänge: 85 cm
• 10-poliger Anschluss und Stecker

Amazon

Differences can only be found in the details

When using it, it is noticeable that the Rollei remote release (Amazon Affiliate Link) is not as ergonomic in the hand as the partially rubberized original from Nikon. The Nikon case feels more stable and valuable. Especially the cover of the battery compartment of the Rollei is a bit looser, but by no means so loose that the lid falls off, as some Amazon reviews describe it. For me, it’s bearable at this competitive price.

The biggest difference to the Nikon MC36A is the connection cable of the Rollei remote release. If the original Nikon remote release can only be connected to cameras with a 10-pin socket, the Rollei remote release can also be connected to cameras with a connection for the Nikon MC-DC2 remote release.

The higher compatibility with the alternative connection is both a blessing and a curse. Although the Rollei remote release can be used more flexibly with more cameras, it does not have a continuous connection cable, but a 3.5mm jack socket as an adapter in the cable, into which either the 10-pin plug or the MC-DC2 connector can then be plugged. Although this additional plug connection is very tight, there is of course the danger that the cable connection will be disconnected due to carelessness if the cable is pulled too tightly. In practice, this has not happened to me yet, but I check this connector for errors before every recording. On the other hand, nobody should pull the remote release strongly, as the movement would ruin the recording.

There is also a common minus point, because none of the devices has a tripod holder for the remote control in the scope of delivery. Please Rollei, if you can hear me, simply enclose a plastic holder for the tripod leg. This would be an advantage over the original and other third market products.

Ihre Daten werden erst beim Abspielen des Youtube-Videos an den Dienst übermittelt. Your data will only be transmitted to the service when you play the Youtube video.

Summary

I’m glad I saved almost 140€. On my Nikon D500 (Amazon Affiliate Link) and Nikon D7500 (Amazon Affiliate Link) the Rollei remote release (Amazon Affiliate Link) works without any problems, the functions and the operation are as intuitive as on the original. I can accept the differences in texture and workmanship for this price. The low price also has one plus point: I like to be clumsy and should I accidentally drop a 20€ device into the water or tread on it with my foot, it doesn’t annoy me as if I had destroyed the 150€ expensive original device.

About this test

This test was not sponsored or purchased. I bought the product myself and honestly report about my experiences. The links in the article are Amazon affiliate links as compensation for my work on this article.

Development of long-term exposures with Luminar 3

I develop the Langezit recordings later on the Mac/PC with Luminar 3, which in my opinion is the best Lightroom alternative.

Have a look and try the free demo. Just click on the banner:

All the links in this text are Amazon Affiliate Links, and by clicking on an affiliate link I will earn a percentage of your subsequent Amazon purchases. However, this circumstance does not influence the background of my product recommendation. This product recommendation is independent, honest and sincere. 

Bei allen genannten Links handelt es sich um Amazon-Affiliate-Links. Durch einen Klick auf einen Affiliate-Link werde ich prozentual an Euren darauf folgenden Amazon-Einkäufen beteiligt. Dieser Umstand beeinflusst aber nicht die Hintergründe meiner Produktempfehlung. Diese Produktempfehlung erfolgt unabhängig, ehrlich und aufrichtig.

Der Beitrag Review: Rollei cable remote shutter release for long exposures with interval and timer function erschien zuerst auf Pixelfriedhof.