Review Delays
I’d like to apologize to readers as well as manufacturers and media sample providers for being slow with review writeups. I am still way backed up with tool reviews, but am moving as quick as I can without diminishing the quality of the content. On the bright side, there will be a lot of reviews and recommendations coming out in the next few months.
New Videos!
Some readers prefer written reviews with still photos, others like videos. I plan to provide both.
As you see from ToolGuyd’s YouTube channel, I uploaded 10 videos in 10 months. The lighting is dark, the colors are a little weird, and camera angles are off.
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A year ago we moved to a smaller location, and so I have an even smaller indoors workspace to use for content creation, projects, and product testing. It’s not well optimized for video production, but I have been cleaning up and moving things around, and it looks like I finally found a configuration that works better for videos without hampering my other activities.
New lighting and video equipment is on the way, so hopefully the production quality will improve. It will still require a bit of trial and error before I get into the groove of things.
For the time being, videos will be more or less straight from the camera. At some point I will look into video editing software, but right now I want to focus on catching up with my review backlog.
Reader Feedback?
I haven’t seen any complaints in a while, so I assume everything is perfect and everyone is happy. I’m still implementing little tweaks every now and then, but don’t plan for any major changes. You might have noticed that I changed the colors at the top a bit and tidied up the navigation menu to remove less-clicked items.
My goal is for a clean layout that reads well on desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. The navigation menus might be a little tricky on touch devices, but nobody mentioned anything yet.
If you have any feedback, comments, or criticisms, please met me know! If you primarily visit ToolGuyd with your smartphone or tablet, I’d like to hear about any site issues you might have come across.
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Jerry
Works good from the iPad, here.
As for the complaints, get off the sofa, and get moving. Those reviews won’t write themselves!
J/K, doing good, looking forward to the reviews.
mike foley
Use a good old tripod and shoot it straight into the camera, and if you need to keep it simple but make a couple of straight cuts, I can show you iMovie’s editing process in about 10 minutes, don’t sweat it!
Stuart
I might be interested in your iMovie 10-minute editing tips!
But lighting is an issue – I have one flourescent lamp in the room and it’s not cutting it.
Good news is that the lighting gear arrived last night. Bad news is 1 of 2 main units is damaged or defective, plus 1 of 2 small units is defective and the other has a semi-faulty switch. I’m not happy that I went with one of the only USA designers and manufacturers in the business only to run into defects not to mention a few design concerns. Ah well, replacement is on the way and alternate products for the smalls as well.
JeffD
It doesn’t take professional equipment to take decent photographs. I made my own lightbox and use fluorescent lighting. I find that 6500k bulbs provide the best light for what I accomplish. My lightbox is here: http://www.jeffdegenhart.com/light-box.html
Stuart
I have all I need for photos – it’s continuous lighting for videos that I’ve been working on acquiring.
Problems with the first order and then an issue with the replacement have left me furious and in the dark. I should be able to improvise for the time being and will try again in a couple of weeks.