Padcaster vs iographer (for iPad and iPad Pro 9.7") By Tom Q's Tech Tips

Alright hello and welcome back to Tom Q's tech tips. Today we're going to take a look at two iPad filmmaking cases, you're, probably familiar with the names. If you're watching this video they're the two biggest names that I know of in filmmaking cases for iPad, that's I, Agra, fur and podcaster. This review will specifically apply to the podcaster 9.7 pro. It certainly will not apply to any of the IATA fur and podcaster cases for iPhone or perhaps even the iPad minis but anyway. Hopefully this will be helpful to someone else all right.

So before we get into doing demos, I want to just do a quick rundown of the facts. I want to say, first of all that all these cases have been purchased with my own money. I have not received demo versions of them by either I offer or podcaster, and I'm just going to start by saying that my first case was for the iPad Air and air, to which I was very happy with I, never actually used it for filmmaking I used it on a daily basis for using the iPad in a relaxed position. You can see the video that we made on making a tabletop tripod that I use when I'm laying in bed with the iPad, so, so anyway. I had the iPad Air and air to case for probably a year and a half before I got the iPad Pro nine point.

Seven and the eye Agra fir case for nine point. Seven, the iPad Air case is a little cheaper than the iPad Pro nine point seven, but they share a lot of similarities. In fact, all the cases we're going to be looking at have the quarter twenty tripod mounts on the bottom of the case in the case of Viagra, fir that it is a metal piece embedded in the plastic. The ABS plastic. Both of these cases have a 37 millimeter mount for accessory lenses, I actually purchased a get from Best Buy when I got the air and air to case that included the two lenses, the wide-angle and the 2 X optical zoom, lens I.

Don't think Best Buy carries that kit anymore, but those same lenses worked fine with the IR fur iPad Pro 9.7 case. They both have three cold shoe mounts on the top for adding accessory, microphones or lights, or whatever else you might want to attach to your film making case. I want to point out something that I wouldn't have known if I had started with the iPad Pro nine point, seven case, but the air case had two ribs that funneled down into the tripod mount that provided extra support and firmness for the iPad that I'm greatly missed on the iPad Pro nine point: seven case it's perfectly flat on the back, so it doesn't have that extra engineered support, providing rigidness on the iPad and- and that's going to be one of my chief criticisms of the iPad Pro nine point. Seven case they did bend the handles back on the iPad Pro nine point, seven case which I really like it does a number of things. It allows you to actually set the iPad case on a table, and it will stand upright without any tripod mechanism at all.

It allows you to plug in accessories into the Lightning port or the headphone jack easier. Then it was possible to do with the air case that has the handle sticking straight out. It even allows you to charge the Apple Pencil in the Lightning port, which was not possible with the iPad Air case. So anyway, I like the bending back of the handles on the iPad Pro nine point. Seven, they also embedded quarter-twenty mounts on the sides of those organic handles, so giving you two additional places to mount accessories that ended up being a critical Edition for me to overcome the lack of support on the back of the case.

That will only help you if you happen to have a certain type of video head and will hope to cover that in some detail so on to the Pat caster. So, first, you'll notice that the price is significantly higher. The Pat caster is known as the Cadillac of filmmaking cases, and it is priced accordingly. It's not triple the price of the biographer case, but it is well more than double the price that would explain why I tried the locker four cases. First I'm on a tight budget and I felt like I, could get away with the lower build quality of the ARC refer cases, and so I tried this first, but anyway, the pad caster has an aluminum frame, a very rigid aluminum frame with a flexible rubber insert that contains the pad.

It also has a quarter twenty tripod mounts on the bottom. It is actually drilled through the aluminum frame. So, unlike the biographer, it is not a metal mount embedded in plastic instead of a 37 millimeter lens mount. This has a 72 millimeter mount with a 58 millimeter step-down ring included. If you were to purchase the lenses that are available on the podcaster website or if you bought one of the bundles that included the wide-angle lens, then that will be a 58 millimeter lens, and you'll need to use.

The step-down ring comes with one cold shoe adapter. However, there are six quarter-twenty mounts and 12 three-eighths. Sixteen mounts that are in the frame of the podcaster, so why you don't have the cold shoe mount, so you have lots of additional options so anyway, that's a quick look at the facts of both I'm just going to go one more time. Comparing item by item on the iPad Pro 9.7 case versus the podcaster case, price 69.95, to give the slight edge to Ayala foreign that that was what attracted me to their cases in the beginning was the huge difference in price material. The acrylonitrile butadiene styrene abs for short plastic versus the aluminum frame and rubber insert for the podcaster I'm gonna.

Give that a vote of confidence for the podcaster case weight is a huge difference, and I was not prepared for this. When I ordered my pad caster case I thought that when I got the podcaster I would actually probably sell the IR a-- fir case one bay, but even without the lens caster you're well over 2 times the weight on the past castor. For me, on a daily basis, the way I used the iPad for reading when I'm relaxed in bed I'm going to continue to use the IR for case. For that ergonomics I Agra fur has handles the pad. Caster does not have handles.

You could screw in something to the quarter-twenty or 3 3/8 mounts on the side, but that is going to add even more weight to the pad caster case. So we're going to give a little thumbs up to the IR golfer. On that count, flexibility, you have the three cold shoe mount on the top of the IR fur case and the two quarter-twenty mounts on the sides of the ergonomic handles on the pad caster case. Even with the lens caster mounted on the side, using that for of your mounts, there are still 18 additional options between the quarter 20 and the 3/8 16 mounts, so we're going to give a clear check thumbs up for the pad caster on that. Lastly, and most importantly, when mounting your film making cases to a tripod, the podcaster is rock-solid.

You can make adjustments, you can zoom in you can zoom out, you can be using. Perhaps the some switching apps like live to air action moving scenes around, and it's going to be rock-solid there's going to be no movement in the iPad camera as you're doing those maneuvers. This ARC refer case for the iPad Pro 9.7 is going to wobble. Unless you make some modifications to the case, I was going to write Dave about this, but I was actually watching one of his videos where he was demonstrating that the iPad fifth-generation from early 2017 could also be used in the iPad Pro 9.7 case and when he was making some adjustments. His iPad was actually wobbling exactly the way mine wobbles when I use it so anyway, I am going to give a double check all right, double thumbs up to the podcaster on this count and a double X to the refer on this count.

If you want to hear my opinion on this, this would actually be a deal-breaker for me if I was going to be using the IR for primarily as a filmmaking case on a tripod and making adjustments on the iPad while I was using it. If I was holding the handles and running and gunning with the iPad using the IATA fur, it would be a different story, but I do use this on a tripod when I'm using it, so I'm giving the podcaster my vote of confidence. I was able to make an adjustment to the eye Agra fir with a nine-inch magic arm, attaching it to the side of the handles to a very special man, photo video head that had a place to attach the arm to the side of it. So without that kind of video head you're going to get wobbling with the IR 4k. So anyway, if you're interested in seeing some demos stay tuned.

If not that's my review, you can hat. You can leave questions at the bottom comments. So thanks for watching this has been Tom Q's tech tips. Ok! Welcome back now for just a little of hands-on some stuff, that's a little hard to show in diagrams and stuff, so, so anyway, right to it. This is my first case.

This was the was for the iPad Air, and you can see the two ribs that I was talking about that funneled down into the area where the tripod attaches, and you can see the metal ring embedded in this plastic. It's kind of a's, it's a little flexible plastic, but it's its very hard. I assume this is pretty stable inside the plastic ring, although I did drop this case and when I did some cracking began, which got gradually worse and eventually, this metal ring, which was embedded in the plastic, began to become loose so anyway, after I bought the iPad 9-point pro case. I continued to use this case here for my daily use, which was mounted on a board like this, which I know, use what I'm laying in bed. This allows me to angle the iPad forward and so forth, and this case worked fine for that, because it didn't matter if the camera lined up inside this ring or not, but once I actually began to use the case for its intended purpose, which was for filmmaking I needed.

The ability. Excuse me for these accessory lenses, and specifically I needed the 2 X optical zoom, to be able to mount on the back of the iPad, and so this lens will then screw in up here, and so I needed one where the lens is actually perfectly centered inside the ring. This is the iPad Pro 9.7. You can see what I was talking about. How that this case right here is lacking the extra the ribs that funnel down into the tripod mount.

So what that translates into- and let me turn this around and by the way, I really, really like the way. The handles angle out, and I really, really like the quarter-twenty mounts on the side. In fact, those quarter-twenty mounts kind of saved my life, figuratively speaking, of course, in the conference, which I'll talk about in a minute all right, so you can actually see this already at work, but anyway, I just want you to look at this down here at the bottom. They have made some efforts to make the iPad really easy to get out of this case by pulling down on this clip and apparently in order to do that, they needed to keep this part right down here. Clear of plastic ridges such as what is the extra supports that are on these handles, for instance, this section down here does not have those kinds of supports, so it does make the iPad very easy to get out you just pull this clip down, and I may not be able to do it in this particular environment, but anyway yeah there.

It goes I've just popped, the case out and anyway, it's easy to pop in its easy to pop out I'm going to pop it back in so alright, so you can see I mean I'm using movie Pro. Here it is actually will focus a little more on me. You can actually see one of my pad caster cases over here, which we'll talk about in a little here, but anyway, as I touch. This I've got controls for focus, I've got controls for exposure up here and as I touch it the iPad is wobbling. Actually, let me just switch to that camera, and we'll just actually see that when I'm touching it, and I'm I'm going to keep this firm to the ground, but as I'm touching okay.

So moving these things around just I'm gonna. Do it as gently as I possibly can when I let go. There's wobbling, and I am unable to deal with that in my conferences that I do so, let's go back over here. Okay, fortunately, for me, I had taken along this video head. It's made my man Frodo, it's the MPH 502 aah, it's one of the few video heads that you're going to find that has an accessory mount.

So this is actually a 3/8 mount and I just happen to have taken with me. A little reverse cold shoe adapter here that screwed into that 3/8, mount and I had also brought along with me this magic arm. So this I think it's a 9 inch or 11 inch magic arm. So what I did was I screwed the magic arm into the quarter-twenty, mount that I told you I, loved and then on the other end of the mount I put a cold shoe adapter, so I screwed this onto here, and the reason I had to do. That is because once you've screwed in one of these things, you're not going to be able to you're not going to be able to screw in the other one.

So, so anyway, let me bring this closed and pop this into and fruit. Oh, and don't have it quite put on here in such a way that it's going to work, but I loosened this up, loosened up the magic arm and brought it around and popped it down. Then I slid this over the reverse cold shoe, which I had all this tightened up properly and then I. Then I screwed this down with this set up right here. Okay pop around, and we'll switch back over to that camera and whoops I do need to tighten this up all right.

So I, don't even have this tighten down properly, but it's already I think you can. You can see it move a little, but the wobbling itself is gone it. A lot of this is good would go away if, if I had this tightened down, I haven't even tightened this arm. Yet let's tighten the arm all right now when I touch this now, if you know if I do that, if I do it carefully, I get to make my adjustments and there is no wobbling. So, if you have a nice video head like the MPH 502 aah and I mean really like the MPH 502 aah I haven't seen another video head.

That has those accessory mounts on the sides, but this one has a mount on both sides. I could have purchased a second magic arm, but anyway, I just bothered me that this case had that wobbling feature, and I was considering replacing the whole case for my everyday purposes and for my conference purposes. So if you- but if you have a video head like this you're gonna, be ok with the IR a-- fir case. If you also get the magic arm and get it stabilized, it basically stabilizes this whole system through with one arm and probably two arms. So anyway, that whole fiasco is what prompted me to take another look at the podcaster okay.

So now we're going to take a quick peek at the podcaster case. This is made of a very solid aluminum frame with a flexible rubber insert and the iPad is going to go into this lip here. One thing I like about the bottom of the case is it has a hole for the pin, that's going to provide extra stability for the case once I screw down Plus. This is metal in metal as far as screwing in, so I'm, very confident in the stability of the whole rig. Alright, let's pump this around Lynn's first and by the way, the is the Lynne's caster, and it has the 72 millimeter.

Actually 72 millimeter outer ring with a step-down ring, ? I, think one of 58 millimeters, or something like that. Alright, so I'm going to pop this in to the same video head down and alright, let's go ahead and pop the iPad in alright. So let me pop in the Lightning port has a hole in the side to be able to thread through lightning cords and so forth. That is a little easier to do on the IR golfer, so I'm, going to switch over to that camera and I am moving controls around and there is zero movement again, so I'm moving this around I am pressing on the iPad and there is's hardly any movement at all. Much certainly no wobbling on a sturdy tripod.

This is as solid as a rock so going forward. This is what I'm going to be using for mounting my iPad on a tripod, so rock-solid compared to wobbliness at worst and some slight movement. If you modify a video head with the magic arms, so anyway, that's my review, you can hat! You can leave questions at the bottom comments. So thanks for watching this has been Tom Q's tech tips.

Source : Tom Q's Tech Tips