#first time this happened like 3 years ago the battery was under warranty still. now it is not | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

braveskyered · 6 years ago

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Knights (Part 14)

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13

I’ve been hellbent, babe...

Part 14: It’s Been Too Long, Babe

- - - - - - -

Arthur opened his eyes once he felt the feeling that he is being dragged by something, his vision blurry and spinning in circles.

What just...?

Arthur looked up, and in his blurry vision, he choked on a scream of terror at the sight of the wraith he ran away from so long ago. His shirt is held tightly in the wraith's grasp, giving him no chance of escape.

Why? Why is this happening? He left like they wanted, didn't he? He only wanted to escape from the place that became his hell!

“You have nerve, Arthur. Running away after what you did.”

Arthur wondered where Elaine, Morgan, and the children are. He hoped they're safe. He hoped they managed to get away from the hell he is in now. The punishments from it always hurt, always burned, always tore away at his heart and soul.

He didn't know how he managed to do it, but he pulled himself free from the wraith's grasp when it relaxed its grip for a brief moment and ran off as quickly as he could. He couldn't let himself be imprisoned. Not again. Those chains hurt.

Gwen! Percy! Vivian! He ran and ran past many doorways that lead to many more dead ends. Elaine! Morgan! Where are you?! Please be safe!

Those damn hallways again. The hallways filled with black and purple and magenta that reeked of death and despair and sorrow and misery and why can't he ever escape from this hell?! The fact that the wraith had found and captured him, and possibly his family, made him grit his teeth in frustration, fear, and sadness, all at the same time.

That wraith, and so many others, wanted Arthur to leave their lives, and he did just that. He left Tempo, and everyone and everything he knew, and what little he loved remained behind except for a single hamster. Leaving Tempo itself wasn't enough to satisfy that monster. No, it wanted whatever Arthur happened to possess, even the things he received after escaping from this hell. It wanted his love for the family he married into, his love for his wife, his children that soon became his only reasons for living. It wanted his happiness.

It wanted Arthur's life for its own.

He can't die by that monster's hand. He can't let the wraith take his life. Not while his children are still so young, not when they're still with him.

Not ever.

Soon, the hallways came to an end, and Arthur ran through a door that didn't lead to death and kept looking for a way out to escape the hell once again. He tried to ignore the stalagmites covered in red that littered the giant... room? Or hall? Or... cave?! His left arm is suddenly gone. Red splattered all over his clothes and face, red dripping off his left shoulder, leaving a trail of where he goes.

“Even now, you still struggle?”

He has to, for the sake of the little ones, at the very least. He tried to stop the red bleeding from him. He couldn't stop running. His tears wouldn't stop falling.

I don't want to do this anymore! I don't want to go through this again! I don't want to live my life afraid!

...

...Afraid?

He stopped running, stopped trying to prevent the red flowing from his arm, and looked back to the monster pursuing him.

The wraith threw a hand at Arthur's head, the fingers tightly gripping at his hair.

��Where are they?”

Arthur gritted his teeth. It can't have his children. They won't love the monster.

“The real monster is you.”

He is well aware.

“My star...”

The feeling of being slammed against a solid surface never came. Arthur felt the clutching hand leave his head. He felt himself falling.

Falling.

And falling.

And falling even more as he closed his eyes.

“My star. It's okay.”

Elaine?

“There's nothing here. It's okay. Breathe.”

- - - - - - -

It took him a moment to realize the gasp he heard was from himself. He could breathe again.

Breathing heavily, he opened his eyes and blinked. Confused, he looked around and saw that he is still in the camper, his seat belt still secure.

“It's okay, my star. It's okay. I'm here. Just breathe. Come on.”

He felt a hand gently massage his left shoulder. Another hand reached out to hold his right hand, still clutching his left arm. He realized rather belatedly that he couldn't move his left arm, even the fingers were immobile.

“It's okay, my knight,” Elaine muttered in a comforting tone near his ear, “It's okay. It's just us.”

Arthur strained his ears, and realized that he couldn't hear the roars of the truck's engine from before. He looked at the side mirror to his left. To his confusion, he didn't see the wraith's possessed truck within the reflection. Cradling his arm while being mindful of Elaine's hold, he poked his head out the window to look at the area behind the camper.

There's really nothing but the road and the desert in its usual nighttime setting.

“T-The truck's not...?”

“Arthur?”

“It's not there?” He pulled himself back in and looked at the side mirror again, “The truck's not chasing us?”

“A truck?” He heard Elaine's questioning tone, “Gwen, Percy, did either of you see a truck behind us at any point?”

“No, it was just us for the past few hours,” he heard Percy answer, “We had a car or two pass by us, but neither of them were trucks.”

“And even then, those cars were in the opposing lane that goes in the opposite direction,” Gwen added.

No one else saw it?

Arthur saw the wraith's truck while the rest of his family didn't. They're on the same road where he was chased by it seventeen years ago, and he never properly recovered from it because of its hatred for him. If that's the case, then...

Right... Flashbacks and disassociation, nightmares and anxiety. He's already been diagnosed with PTSD from the wraith's abuse back in Cantabile by his therapist in the early years. Over the years, he was gradually recovering, and a year before his family discovered Elaine's pregnancy with Vivian, he no longer had to visit that therapist as regularly, and gradually got off some of his anxiety and antidepressant medication. His remembered feeling his mood and demeanor gradually coming out of its frightened shell as the years passed, feeling safe for the first time in so long.

He was happy. He thought he was recovering from the hell he endured.

With the flashback of the wraith's truck, however, it only proved that he never did truly recover.

Being away from the hell he escaped from so long ago made him careless. He could escape from the hell, he could recover from the wounds, but he could never truly forget the pain and memories associated with Tempo. As long as the children exist, Arthur knew with a heavy heart that he will never be able to forget it completely.

He bit his lower lip, and tried to hold the tears back. It wouldn't do if anyone but Elaine were to see him cry now.

Their names... why did I give them their names?

Even though Arthur tried and tried, he couldn't bear to let go the few memories that clung to him all these years.

He heard Gwen and Percy wanting to ask what happened, but Elaine shook her head at them before turning her attention back to him. He stared down at his lap, where his prosthetic arm is carefully draped over.

He didn't dare look up. The damage he did on the camper's interior isn't something Morgan is going to forgive him for anytime soon, no doubt.

He heard the sound of the camper's front hood being slammed shut. The door opened and he heard someone climb inside.

“Okay, I replaced the battery,” Morgan's voice reached his ears, “The camper should be up and running now.”

“I'm just happy you brought a spare battery for occasions like this,” Elaine sighed in relief when she tested the engine by turning the key, giving a nod of satisfaction upon seeing the engine come to life, “But didn't you and Uncle Miles buy this camper new just a few months ago? The battery shouldn't die so soon.”

“I thought so, too. I even checked for current, and I'm getting zilch. It's completely dead,” Morgan rolled her eyes and gave a grunt of annoyance, “Fortunately, the battery's under the dealer's warranty, which doesn't expire until just before Christmas. So once we're back home, I'll head over there to get a replacement for that hunk of junk. Annoying, but it can't be helped. Kinda wish that he didn't leave a dent on my dashboard, though. That will take a bit to repair.”

Arthur turned his head away from Morgan's direction. Breathing somewhat heavily, Arthur could only tremble in the driver's seat while holding Elaine's hand.

“If anything, we should've known this was going to happen,” Elaine squeezed Arthur's hand a little tighter, “If that ghost truck he saw was real, then we may be facing a genuine threat here.”

“A ghost truck, Elaine? We would've sensed it if something that powerful was nearby,” Morgan shook her head and shrugged, “Not just us, but Gwen and Percy would've noticed it long ago. However, none of us did. I hear it's not unheard of for hallucinations to occur when one is tired, but...”

Was it really just a hallucination?

The pain that paralyzed his left arm felt all too real. It felt like the time back when the wraith pursued him. What the wraith's power is capable of has long ingrained itself into Arthur's mind and body. The scars he has prove it all too well, and ever since this started happening, all of his scars began to ache. Arthur could only hope that other than his left arm being messed up when he slammed it against the dashboard, the rest of the pain is just all in his head.

“Regardless of what it is, Aunt Morgan, it still scared him enough to do this.”

He couldn't take it anymore, “E-Elaine...”

“My star?”

He tried to hold the tears back as he cradled his damaged arm, “I'm sorry, but... c-could one of you... take over? Please?”

He wasn't given an answer at first, which made him slowly glance up at Elaine, who is facing Morgan. The two nodded, and Morgan soon made her way to him.

“Go rest in the reclined seat. Elaine and I will take it from here.”

- - - - - -

“How's the damage, Gwen?”

“Daddy busted it up pretty badly, Mom. It'll take us a while, maybe a few days tops, to repair it since he's...”

“That's fine, we have the previous model as a spare on hand, so we'll have him use that. You and Percy just fix up what you can for tonight and we'll finish it once your father settles down.”

Arthur pretended that he is asleep in the hotel bed, complete with a blindfold to prevent any sudden flashing lights from startling him. By tilting his head upward slightly at the right angle, he could practically see the twins looking over his damaged prosthetic with Elaine hovering over them while holding Vivian, who is asleep in her arms.

“Mom, will he be okay?”

Arthur would've tried comforting his son in a heartbeat, but he is too tired to think straight, too afraid to hold anyone right now. He couldn't break down in front of them. He couldn't put up a brave face for the kids.

He is a coward, and he knew it.

“He will be, Percy,” Elaine nodded with a worried smile as she looked over to Arthur, “He just needs time to adjust, and it will take a while for him to feel comfortable being here in this town again,” she turned back to them, “Don't stay up too late, okay? We'll be heading over to Kingsmen Mechanics to meet your grand uncle at ten tomorrow. Let me know if you need anything, but try to be quiet tonight for him, okay?”

“Okay...”

Arthur watched the twins leave the room through the attachment door with his prosthetic arm to go to the neighboring room where Morgan is. Once they were gone, Arthur tried to relax himself. He could barely see Elaine place Vivian in the other bed next to his and tucked her in, then closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

Soon, he heard the rustling of Elaine changing her clothes, and then crawling into the bed with him, his back facing her.

“I'm here for you, my star,” he heard her whisper and place a hand against the stub that is his left arm, “I will do whatever I can to protect you,” she then planted a kiss against his temple, “Know that no matter what, I will always love you.”

I love you, Elaine. I truly do.

“Thank you for being the star of my life.”

Slowly, Arthur reached his right hand to his left shoulder, and felt Elaine's fingers intertwine with his. She didn't make a comment about him still being awake, and Arthur soon felt her nestle down behind him to hold him from behind before falling asleep.

Thank you, Elaine... for being the light of my life.

He didn't stop the tears from falling before sleep took over.

He didn't know if it's act of mercy, but he did not have any nightmares for the remainder of the night.

When he woke up, he found Vivian curled up beside him.

- - - - - - -

“Whoa...” Gwen stared in awe, “You didn't tell us that its this big, Daddy.”

“You know, Dad, if you hadn't told us ahead of time that this is a repair shop like Queens, I probably would've thought it was a castle.”

Seeing it from inside the camper, Kingsmen Mechanics has definitely changed in appearance since the last seventeen years, and Arthur knew it. But to his family, it's them seeing it for the first time.

It still looks the same from before he left Tempo, but despite the rundown and nostalgic feel he has, Arthur could tell that the shop has received some renovations over time. The place is still made of red brick, but the impression of it looking like a castle is somewhat more apparent, the parking lot looks like it has been paved recently to cover the bumpy cracks he remembered long ago, the canvas top that was above the entrance had been replaced with a sturdier one that's finer in quality, and the classic logo of the crown above the wrench looked a bit more sleek.

Appearance aside, the junkyard behind the shop looks like it has been cleaned up a bit and is more organized, and there's even a fence guarding it now with a sign that claimed it as private property. To the right of the shop's front entrance, Arthur could see that two more garages were added to the building itself, meaning that more clients are coming and going.

At the very least, Arthur can take comfort in knowing that he wasn't truly needed here... He thinks.

“My knight? Are we not going in?”

Arthur looked at Elaine and Morgan, then turned his attention to the twins, and finally looked at Vivian, who is drowsy in her seat. He bit his lower lip in thought before reaching a decision.

“Gwen, Percy, I want the two of you and Vivian to stay in here with your grandaunt. Elaine and I... will go in first, and if by some chance things get... unpleasant, we'll leave, and try to enjoy our vacation elsewhere. Okay?”

There's also that “job” Mr. Yukino hired Elaine for, but he isn't going to think about it. Just leave it to her. Leave it to her.

“I suppose that makes sense,” Morgan crossed her arms with a conflicted sense of understanding, “I mean, this town is the place where you left to escape from the abuse you suffered from. You said your uncle didn't have anything to do with it, right?”

“No,” Arthur shook his head firmly, “If anything, before I left, he's the only one I know who still cared. I just don't know if he does now.”

“But the letter from him says that he only wants to see you and 'those that have made you happy,' which is us,” Elaine also crossed her arms in thought, “At the same time, though, I wonder what he meant by 'wanting to make things right.'”

The twins, Arthur noticed, were looking a little uncomfortable. He internally winced, they're only fourteen, and yet here they are being shoved in a situation children their age shouldn't ever come across. If his uncle has come to hate him over the seventeen years he has been gone, there's a possibility that the hate might go forward to his children as well. Regardless of his feelings, he isn't going to let that happen if he can help it.

His mind made up, he stood to his feet and started to leave the camper.

“Arthur?”

“Let's just get this over with, Elaine,” he held out a hand to her once he exited the vehicle, “I've stalled on this long enough.”

Elaine nodded in understanding, then gave the others the order to remain in the camper before taking Arthur's hand, “We'll be back, Aunt Morgan.”

“Just let us know how things go.”

Arthur and Elaine soon reached the entrance door. The sign said that it's open for business, and Arthur hoped that there won't be any customers in today for all the reasons he could think of. He lifted his hand to push the door open and hesitated for a moment, but then Elaine's hand moved over his and had the both of them push the door open together. The sound of a bell ringing that alerts shop staff of incoming customers reached Arthur's ears, and with Elaine gently pushing him forward, the two entered Kingsmen Mechanics.

Strangely, no one was there to greet them at first, which gave Arthur a chance to look at the interior. Most of it still has the same feel he remembered in the past. A simple reception desk, keys on a large board shaped like the shop logo nailed to the wall behind it, and many posters and pamphlets attached to some cork boards that advertise either the repair shop itself or other local businesses. One such pamphlet has a familiar logo of a red pepper, which took more than a little effort to ignore.

Needless to say, Arthur actually felt a little disturbed that it feels so nostalgic to be here again for the first time in seventeen years despite the drastic change from what he remembers. Yet, it feels like...

“Huh, it reminds me of Four of a Kind Queens for some reason,” Elaine whispered to him.

So she noticed it, too.

Before Arthur could voice his concern, he heard a door from behind the front desk followed by a cheerful voice from a young female employee wearing a yellow apron over purple and white coveralls. She somehow looks familiar.

“Hey, welcome to Kingsmen Mechanics, where we--”

The voice from the employee trailed off upon seeing Arthur and Elaine, her expression quickly changing from cheerful to confusion with a small frown. She blinked at them a few times, then her face changed from confusion to slow realization.

It took Arthur a moment, but upon closer inspection of the employee's face, one name soon surfaced in his mind, and said the name softly under his breath.

Belle?

“Oh... my gosh,” the employee's smile returned to her face, and with a laugh that's barely forming, started to run towards him with her arms spread wide, “Arthur! It... It's you! It's really you!”

Who gave you the right to be near them?

Before he could fully process what happened, Arthur quickly positioned himself behind Elaine, clinging to his wife's sleeves. He couldn't let Belle reach out to him, the wraith hates it when he interacts with the Peppers. Mr. and Mrs. Pepper still hate him, and he knows it.

Belle stopped with a hurt expression upon seeing Arthur's reaction, but then looked away.

“O-Oh... right. I-I should've known that you still--”

She suddenly turned and left through the door she came from, allowing Arthur to relax slightly.

“Who was that, Arthur?” Elaine turned to him and held his hand.

He didn't answer. The scowl on his light's face went grim.

“Was she one of--”

He shook his head. She relaxed her expression back to concern.

“It sounds like she missed you,” she whispered and cupped a hand over Arthur's face, “...dearly.”

Why would Belle of the Pepper family miss him? It's because of him that her big brother Lewis is gone and that her family was torn apart. Still, it doesn't explain why she's here, working as a mechanic in his uncle's shop. From what he remembered, Belle had no interest in repairing or tinkering with cars. Toys and computers, maybe, but those aren't the same thing compared to her known interests back then.

And she has grown so much since he last saw her...

Well, it doesn't matter why. Arthur made the turn to leave while gently gesturing Elaine to follow him. Elaine looked disappointed, but he knew that she understood his reasoning. It wouldn't do if something escalates while he's here, so it's for the best to get out while they still can. He's already beginning to regret coming back to Tempo, now that someone other than Lance has seen him. He lifted his hand towards the door that leads back outside.

“Arthur?”

He froze to the feeling of dread crawling up his back upon hearing a man call out his name. The feeling of déjà vu flows into his mind, confusing him for a while before realizing that this very same scenario is just like the time he last stepped out of Kingsmen Mechanics seventeen years ago.

Upon feeling the tug on his hand from Elaine, who stood in front of him protectively, Arthur slowly turned while clinging to Elaine's hand and shoulder.

Belle is already back on the reception desk in front of a computer, only giving Arthur and Elaine nervous side way glances. Standing before the two is a shorter and older man that is in his late sixties. His hair and beard has gray mixed in with the original blond hair Arthur remembered, and the man himself appears to have slimmed down a bit. Not much, but the trace of him being somewhat overweight is still there. His arms still looked as muscular as ever, but they look slightly thinner due to being older in age.

“Arthur...” the older man slowly shook his head as he started to reach out, “You... You're really... Belle wasn't kidding me that...”

What the hell is he supposed to do? What is he supposed to say? Should he run? Should he hide? Should he just--

Arthur felt his chest tightening, his heartbeat becoming so loud it's overpowering the sounds that reach his ears, he couldn't hear what Elaine is saying to his uncle. He couldn't set himself up for disappointment, he has to leave now, before his uncle yells at him for leaving and--

A breath of air was knocked out of him when Lance wrapped his arms around his thin stature before he realized that Elaine let him go from her hold.

“Arthur... Welcome home...”

Why is his uncle crying?

“I missed you. I missed you so damn much.”

Why isn't he angry?

“I'm so glad you're okay, Arthur.”

The anger never came.

Reluctantly, Arthur wrapped his arms around his uncle's shoulders. He knew he shouldn't be, but he's just so happy to see him again.

“It's... been a while, Lance.”

- - - - - - -

Uncle Lance soon took Arthur and Elaine into the living room of his house, which is attached to Kingsmen Mechanics, and where none of the customers would hear them. Belle was left to watch the shop for the time being. For the better, in Arthur's opinion, considering that he isn't allowed to be near the Pepper family at all.

Sitting on the sofa, which looked somewhat used, Arthur stared down at his feet, feeling numb to the bone.

“Arthur?”

“My star?”

He didn't want to look up to see his uncle's disappointed face, or trust his voice to speak. All he could bring himself to do without breaking down is weakly wrap his fingers around his left wrist.

“Daddy?”

“WHAT IN THE--?!”

The sound of Vivian's voice and Lance's exclamation startled Arthur out of the numbness, he looked up from the floor and saw Vivian standing nearby with her hands reaching out to him, her expression looking somewhat distressed.

She must have been startled by Lance's scream, he thinks.

Wordlessly, Arthur slowly pulled her into his lap. If Vivian came in without anyone noticing, then it doesn't take much to realize that she must have teleported in here from the camper. He somewhat pursed his lips in thought once he realized something. The camper has been enchanted and laced with the same charms from their house that keep Vivian from accidentally leaving it while moving, meaning the only way she could teleport here was unless she was outside the camper. He hoped the twins and Morgan aren't panicking too much, he better bring her back to them before it gets out of hand.

All Vivian did is cling to his sweater and vest, the usual habit she has whenever Arthur holds her. He made a mental note to try grooming her hair, which looks a little disheveled, later.

“Wait, who is-- how did she-- how did she get in here?” Lance shook his head and did a double take, “Wait, 'Daddy'? Th-That's yer daughter, Arthur? That's Gwen?”

“No no, sir. She's our other daughter, Vivian,” Elaine explained with a embarrassed chuckle, “She's three.”

“How did she-- Wait, then how many--”

A cell phone's ring tone interrupted Lance's questioning, which gave Arthur some relief for the distraction. From the sounds of it, Morgan had called Elaine to tell her that Vivian is missing, which Elaine calmly explained that Vivian “has poofed her way to Arthur” like she was talking about the weather. Honestly, it's not the first time Vivian has done this (and certainly won't be the last), but it's definitely a first for Lance, who Arthur could still hear him mumbling about what the hell just happened with Vivian's sudden appearance.

Honestly, that small amount of amusement is just Arthur needed right now.

“I'll go get the others,” Elaine said as she hung up, “I'll be back in a bit, and we can talk then. Think you'll be okay, Arthur?”

“Daddy's good with me!” Vivian gave her mother a thumbs up. Arthur couldn't help but breath out a small laugh from that.

Giving Arthur one last brush of her hand against his shoulder, Elaine left through the way she came in, leaving Arthur and a curious Vivian with Lance.

“Arthur?”

He still didn't look up. He could tell that his uncle is disappointed. A muffled sound of movement reached his ears, and in the corner of his eye, he saw Lance kneel down to be on eye level with him and his daughter. Instead of disappointment, Arthur only saw a smile of genuine relief and... love for family?

Vivian turned to look at Lance with a curious expression. She reached out and touched Lance's beard, then went and looked at Arthur while pointing at the older man.

“Bush Daddy?”

Arthur had to bite back a laugh, “N-No, Vivian, he's your grand uncle.”

“Grandpa?”

“Grand uncle. Like your grand uncle Miles.”

Vivian narrowed her eyes, shifting her gaze between Arthur and Lance. She then made a motion of her throwing something above her head while whispering, “Grand Dunk.”

Grand Dunk...? Wait. Slam Dunk... Grand Dunk... Dunkle... Grand Uncle...!

Arthur tried really hard not to laugh at the awful play on words his daughter just pulled. He knew Vivian inherited more than just Elaine's looks, and could only smile at her fondly while caressing her head.

“You know, after everything that happened, I actually can't remember the last time I saw you smiling like that.”

Arthur finally looked up at his uncle, who didn't look disappointed at all. Instead, the old man is smiling a little. What is he talking about?

“So,” Lance gestured at Vivian, “How did she get in here, anyway? She just appeared in here from smoke all of a sudden like it was magic.”

Arthur had intended to not tell Lance about the quirks of the Knights family since he knows that his uncle prefers to stay away from that kind of thing, but he shrugged it off. He'll leave the details being given by Elaine or Morgan.

Regardless, he answered slowly, “It's something she got from her mother's side.”

Thankfully, Lance seemed to get the hint that Arthur didn't want to elaborate. Vivian giggled and hugged Arthur. He could only smile slightly and hug her back. He didn't want to let go.

“Arthur, I'm back.”

Arthur looked up upon hearing his light's voice, and saw Elaine approaching with Gwen, Percy, and Morgan closely following. It made Arthur's heart ache to see the twins look so nervous, so he stood up with Vivian in his hold and went to their side.

“Sorry, Dad,” Percy muttered to him, “Vivian said that she wanted to see you when she woke up, but as soon as I took her out of the camper to put the charms on her, she disappeared.”

Arthur placed a hand on his son's shoulder, giving him a slow shake of his head with a sad smile.

“My word...” Lance slowly approached them. Or rather, more at Percy, “You really do look so much like your father now that I see you up close. It's almost uncanny,” he then looked at Gwen, “I can tell you take after your mother, but you have his eyes.”

The twins glanced at each other for a moment, then back at Lance. Arthur can tell that they're not sure what to think of this.

Lance then looked at Vivian, a brow raised slightly, but his smile shows that he isn't upset, “We all thought you only had the boy and girl twins that are high-school aged. At least, that's what Nobuhiro told us. We never knew you had a third child.”

Vivian only waved at him, and Arthur could tell that she's winning Lance over if she hasn't already.

Wait. Arthur realized somewhat belatedly. Lance thought that I only had Gwen and Percy? He didn't know about Vivian until now? Did Mr. Yukino not know? ...Does anyone else know? But wait, how did Lance know--

“How did you find me?” Arthur asked, trying to not make it sound like a demand, “And how did you know Gwen's name and that I even had my family?”

From Lance's wince, it wasn't enough, but soon, he gave Arthur and his family the gesture to wait and left for the workshop. Roughly a minute later, Lance returned, holding a sheet of paper with some text and a picture printed on it. Elaine took it, and nearly raised a hand to her lips.

“It's the article that has Gwen and Percy with the prosthetic they made,” Elaine murmured, “It's the project that made them get accepted into their school. Their names are on it.”

“Nobuhiro has a friend in Missouri that's into prosthetics,” Lance slowly explained, “This article was posted online, they happened to see it and linked it on their social media. When Nobuhiro saw it on his end, he immediately contacted me and told me to look. Neither of us could believe the resemblance when we saw him,” he gestured at Percy, who made a movement to hide behind Elaine, “At first, I thought it was just a coincidence, until I took a closer look.”

When Arthur looked at the part of the picture Lance pointed at, he could feel himself go white and slowly turned to his son. On Percy's purple vest is the black and white skull pin Arthur used to wear so long ago.

The Mystery Skulls logo.

“That pin is one of a kind in a sense,” Lance continued to explain, “Only three exist in the world since they're custom made. One is with someone from the Yukino family, another is buried in the cemetery on the other side of town. And the last one...”

“...Is the one I have,” Arthur finished.

“Wait, so it's my fault that we're even here?” Percy tearfully pointed at himself, his finger touching the skull pin, “S-So if I wasn't wearing this, Dad wouldn’t--”

“We would've gone to Cantabile even if you hadn't,” Lance interrupted with a sad smile, “Your resemblance to Arthur alone was enough for me to write that letter to him, all the pin did was confirm my suspicions. Even if by some chance you weren't related to Arthur, and it was just coincidence, we would've left you alone. Maybe just say hello, apologize for our mistake, and then leave.”

Arthur didn't know what to do.

“'We'?” Morgan finally decided to cut into the conversation with a stern look, “'So it wasn't just this ‘Nobuhiro Yukino' that came to our hometown?”

Send the children back outside?

“Not exactly. Originally, I meant to go, but I couldn't leave the shop with my assistant Belle out sick at the time,” Lance shook his head, “So I asked Nobuhiro to go in my stead. He's the one who found that there was a teaching assistant named 'Arthur Knights' on that Cantabile university, and then connected the dots from there, using his grandson's interest in robotics as an excuse to make an appointment with him.”

Take them and run?

“And thus caused this series of unfortunate events,” Morgan crossed her arms with a grunt of annoyance.

If I don't get them out of here, who knows what will-- Wait...

What did Lance say? ‘Grandson?’ Mr. Yukino wasn't lying about that?

Arthur then quickly tried to piece things together as Lance rambled on. The only way for that to happen was unless--

“Granted, Jason's only eight, but Nobuhiro doesn't like lying.”

For some reason, Arthur feels that should be impossible. The person she loved is dead.

Although he wanted to know more, he knew better than to press for specific details. He doesn't have the right to press into the lives of the Yukino family or the Peppers. So he went with a more indistinct question, even though he dreaded to speak about it. He set Vivian down, and finally asked Lance the question.

“Whatever happened to them? The Mystery Skulls.”

It was like a switch flipped. Immediately, Lance went from nostalgic to an emotion that Arthur couldn't exactly identify, but he could pick up a disgusted tone from his voice.

“For one of them, it's better if ya actually see for yourself.”

- - - - - - -

It took some time, but Elaine convinced Arthur to let the children stay with Lance so they could know their grand uncle more, especially after they became eager upon learning that he was short on help on repairing a few cars. Morgan asserted that she will watch over the children to make sure everything is fine.

“We'll have to let them have their 'play time' so they can let loose with their powers for a bit,” Morgan shrugged, “But since this is a town so far out in a desert, they should be fine on their own so long as they don't go too far and they carry the proper protection charms. I'll explain everything to Lance for you, Arthur. So you and Elaine just go out and relax for a bit, okay?”

Within half an hour, Arthur and Elaine had arrived to a place where the latter least expected.

“Arthur? Why did your uncle direct us to a graveyard?”

Arthur vaguely remembered Lewis's funeral happening around here, when it was established that Lewis was declared legally dead. He couldn't attend it back then due to being in the hospital after taking an injury meant for Vivi, and Mystery and Lance had scolded him for his recklessness. The injury came from a case right before, after he and the Mystery Skulls finally talked about what happened in the cave. He knew Vivi attended it, and he remembered the tearful phone call from Mr. Pepper asking him why Lewis's death even happened.

And everyone knew it was his fault back then.

Arthur only visited Lewis's grave once, and that was a few weeks after the funeral, when he had a moment to himself after taking some punishment from the wraith. Back then, Arthur could feel sadness and grief upon seeing the elaborate tombstone set up like a memorial, but soon came to accept it as the grim reality. Nothing ever comes smoothly, after all. No matter how much one would deny or refuse to acknowledge it, a reality someone will not like or agree with will ensue no matter what.

And on Arthur's end, he always got the short end of the stick. He had become a victim of so many possibilities going wrong, he wondered how he is still alive.

If anything, he should've been the one that died.

“You'll see what I mean once you reach here,” Lance said as he handed Elaine a small map with a small red X marking where they need to go.

Once Arthur and Elaine reached closer to their destination, to their surprise, they saw someone they know well looking down with a scornful gaze in front of one of the graves.

“When did Niniane get here?” Arthur whispered to Elaine.

“She arrived here a few days ago,” Elaine whispered back, “I know she went and scouted out Tempo ahead of time to make sure you would be safe. But this doesn't explain why she's here of all places.”

When the two approached, Niniane glanced their way to acknowledge them with a nod, then crossed her arms and gave the simple grave marker a look of disgust.

Arthur could only look down at the simple stone slab that only had the name legible, everything else was-- He did a double take.

...What?

Niniane gave a humph of contempt.

“I guess the actions of your abuser didn't go unnoticed.”

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

It's like I haven't got a clue, and...

Part 15: Every Note...

#mystery skulls animated #msa fanfic #fanfic #fanfiction #msa arthur #arthur kingsmen #msa #msa knights #elaine knights

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updatedc-blog · 6 years ago

Photo

New Post has been published on http://www.updatedc.com/2018/10/21/nikon-z7-field-review/

Nikon Z7 field review

Nikon Z7 field review by Stuart Palley (stuartpalley.com, terraflamma.org | @stuartpalley):

TLDR: Mirrorless is the future of working pros in the documentary/journalism/travel realm. It may take another generation or two to fully compete with DSLRs, but it’s coming. The Z7 will not replace my D850 but rather complement it for the many situations where weight and size trump ease of use and AF speed/reliability in the near term. As the Z mount lens system grows I can start divesting myself of F mount glass when a Z mount equivalent comes into production. This is written from the perspective of someone who makes the majority of their income as a photographer and creative professional.

For years many great companies have manufactured excellent mirrorless cameras already in use by working pros and enthusiasts alike. Fuji, Olympus, Sony, etc, all make awesome cameras (I’ve used many, the X100, X Pro 1, GFX, OM-D series, etc). The big news here is the FTZ adapter with solid AF/VR compatibility with my existing dozen Nikon lenses, similar button layout for fast workflow adoption, and smaller and lighter baggage.*

That means I can integrate the Z7 into my workflow with minimal fuss and rock the Z mount 24-70 f4 or 35mm 1.8 when I want to go fast and light. A metadata analysis of my images from wildfires shows 60-80% of my images shot in the 24-70mm focal length.

The other two lenses I use the most are the 70-200mm 2.8 VRII, 200-400 VRI, and Sigma 14mm 1.8, which all work great with the FTZ adapter.

Sigma 14mm 1.8 with FTZ adapter

With the Z mount 24-70 f4 I lose a stop of speed and the durability of the 24-70 f2.8 VR AF-S, (which is the best/most versatile Nikon midrange zoom I’ve used) but the lens is about 1/3 the overall mass and a fraction of the weight of the F mount big brother.

The FTZ adapter is well designed and does what it’s supposed to do, allowing me to use F mount lenses, now with the built in VR of the Z7. My chief criticism is that AF is not so great, in the case of using my 200-400 AF-S VR I for photographing Lenticular clouds over the Cleveland National Forest, it hunted for AF at sunset. I initially thought this an issue with the F4 aperture or lack of contrast in the tones of dusk, but even on contrasty and clear points on the horizon that my D850 and same lens combo would’ve likely focused on without issue, the FTZ adapter left me wanting a little more accuracy with it’s hunting and focus racking. I’m going off my own real-world experience here, lab tests and more technical analysis from might yield different results.

FTZ Adapter and 200-400 VR I, panorama stitched from two images

On the Z7 body itself, the buttons are laid out similar to other Nikon DSLRs and as a result I found the camera easy to pick up and start shooting with. The viewfinder is incredible, sharp, bright, and clear. Coming from using an original Fuji X100 or an earlier micro 4/3 camera you see the progress that electronic viewfinders have made in the last 5 years.

Another advantage of the Z7 is the reduced size and weight. Size wise, it’s mainly the bulk that is reduced in all dimensions. After using the Z7 for an afternoon and placing it on the counter next to my battle worn D810 with a vertical grip, the D810 looked like a pig and felt like a lead weight. This is a little hyperbolic but it’s liberating to not have a boat anchor hanging off your neck. Heavy cameras are terrible for your back ligaments, muscles, and spinal column, so any reduced size and weight is a welcome improvement when these are tools you use to make a living with day in and day out.

This past weekend I did a 4-mile hike and brought the Z7 along with my trusty 105mm f2.8 AF-D Macro lens. It manual focus only with the FTZ adapter, but having stabilization on a macro lens was great and I had a good time playing around with the forms of cactus spines along the trail. I wouldn’t have brought my D850 with a grip, that’s for sure.

FTZ adapter and 105mm 2.8 AF-D Macro (manual focus)

Virtually a 100% crop from the Z7, FTZ adapter and 105mm 2.8 AF-D Macro

FTZ adapter and 105mm 2.8 AF-D Macro (manual focus)

The lenses still retain a similar size to DSLR lenses, but with the shorter flange to sensor distance, optical designs can be optimized to make lenses slightly more compact. Additionally, the wider diameter of the Z mount will allow lens designers to take more engineering liberties when designing new lenses, meaning better performance, even more extreme focal lengths, and apertures too. Case in point, the 50mm-ish f0.95 lens Nikon has announced is a show lens to demonstrate the Z mount flexibility. Personally, the lens is useless to me since it lacks autofocus, and the sway of your body while breathing will put your subject out of focus at f0.95 handheld with manual focus. Try focusing an f1.4 lens in the dark and tell me it’s easy!

Every camera is only as good as the system around it and the company making it, so I look forward to Nikon fleshing out the Z lineup of lenses. The 35mm 1.8 is sharp from corner to corner, and the 24-70mm f4 is a versatile lens, but needs to be “unlocked” and expanded from its compact stowage position. As an NPS member I received priority delivery on the camera, and despite my concerns about Nikon’s repair logistics and inability to keep important parts in stock (Ask about my months long parts hold repair on a 70-200 VRII in 2015) rest assured Nikon will fix the camera should anything happen under warranty, and afterwards for a fixed fee. Cameras have always come back fixed right and with firmware upgrades, a sensor cleaning, etc from the repair center in Los Angeles.

A Storm is Coming

Randy’s Donuts, Los Angeles. Z7 and 24-70mm AF-S, ISO 140, 1/25 sec, Auto ISO. In body stabilization allowed me to shoot from the passenger seat of a car, at a stoplight, with a much lower shutter speed than I would usually select. Accordingly I was able to shoot at a lower ISO.

Another advantage of a smaller system is that everything gets smaller. The bags, tripods, tripod heads, filters, etc. needed to support the Z7 all shrink. Things get smaller and lighter, requiring less energy to cart around, which equates to more focus on shooting and creating pictures and telling a story, the whole reason I’m here in the first place. Everything about the equipment is in the service of creating the image. Instead of a Think Tank Retrospective 30 for my fast and light kit, I can get the Z7, 24-70 f4, 35 f1.8, and my ancient Nikon 70-210 AF push pull zoom (which I got for $60 :-p) with the FTZ adapter into a smaller Retrospective 7. I have space for spare cards, batteries, filters, and the charger.

Think Tank Retrospective in Pinestone with Z7, 24-70mm f4, 35mm 1.8, 70-210 (works in MF only with FTZ adapter, replacing with a 70-200mm f4 AF-SVR). GoPro Hero 4, spare batteries.

A Z7 and two lenses will now fit into the pack I carry around at wildfires that includes mandatory safety gear like a fire shelter and radio. That weight quickly adds up and adding a camera swinging off your neck with a strap isn’t ideal. Being able to stow the camera and it’s accompanying weight into my actual pack where the load bearing harnesses can support the load is a godsend for longer hikes. Sometimes I have to go hunt down fire crews in the bush and having a camera swinging off your body isn’t ideal. I was hiking at the Ferguson Fire in Yosemite National Park on assignment for the US Forest Service when my 24-70 decided to detach itself from my D850, and a lucky fall onto dirt with the lens hood saved it from damage.

This issue illustrates the two ways I usually shoot in the field. The first is up close, where the heaviest fire activity is present and I’m hiking around and moving a lot, getting in and out of a pickup truck, going up hills in smoke and ash. The smaller Z7 in good to decent lighting conditions is ideal for this. The jury is still out on how much I can push it in low light with the contrast detect AF. In darkness or low light, I would still be partial to a D850 and 24-70.

On a tripod with more relaxed conditions, perhaps photographing the fire from afar or just general nightscape photography, the Z7 perfect. I have three tripods, a large and medium Really Right Stuff carbon fiber tripod that is perfect for DSLRs and long lenses, and a tiny travel tripod. The medium tripod is perfect for a Z7 and a wide lens with FTZ adapter, and I could probably get away with one of their compact tripods in the future or my tiny travel tripod.

I disagree with Nikon’s decision to fit just one XQD slot in the camera. While memory cards are much more reliable than they were a decade ago, I still don’t fully trust them. My D850 is still coming out for when I need extra peace of mind. I hope that Nikon puts in a second SD slot, double XQD, or double SD in future versions. I would prefer a slightly larger camera with dual slot security. For me it’s just an extra short-term backup during shoots. Everything immediately goes onto a solid state RAID array when images are uploaded to my laptop, but once I click the shutter on the Z7, a potential card failing means it’s 2005 all over again. As I use the Z7 more I suppose I’ll grow to trust single slot XQD, but the jury is still out along with low light AF (which I’m finding is wholly satisfactory the more I use it). Buy good cards and format early and often.

Watch and Wallet: Z7 at ISO 11,400, 1/125 sec, f5: Nikon 105mm f2.8 AF-D with FTZ adapter in manual focus. This shot would not be possible without VR, at least handheld.

In conclusion this trend toward smaller and lighter with similar image quality to pro DSLR’s has long been in practice. Sony did it with the A7 series, their compact cameras with full frame sensors, etc. Now that the big two, Nikon and Canon have jumped on board, we have a real integration of mirrorless into pro workflows, We still have ground to cover when it comes to AF and lens selection, but the future is here, and the same way that the 4×5 Speed Graphic gave way to the 35mm SLR slowly over the years, so will the DSLR give way to mirrorless. Onward.

Stuart Palley is a Southern California based photographer who recently published his first photography book, Terra Flamma: Wildfires at Night, (Schiffer Publishers, 2018) photographing wildfires in California via long exposure over the last five years.

His work on climate change and the environment has been featured in National Geographic Magazine and has been recognized in Pictures of the Year International. He is a contractor for the US Forest Service and works commercially with various Fortune 500 clients in addition to select editorial publications internationally.

www.stuartpalley.com

www.terraflamma.org

Instagram @stuartpalley

*** Every camera on the market makes great images, it’s all about ease of use, ergonomics, lens options, price, etc. There are no bad cameras in 2018, just photographers that should focus on the art of making pictures rather than the gear. No camera manufacturer sponsors me or gives me anything for free, these views here are entirely my own and based off my experience as a working professional.

If you have an interesting idea for a guest post, you can contact me here.

For additional Nikon Z coverage like the Nikon Z Facebook page and join the Nikon Z Facebook group

Source from nikonrumors

#camera #Canon #dslr #Fuji #lens #mirrorless #news #Nikon #Olympus #om #rumors #sensor #Sigma #Sony

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theinvinciblenoob · 6 years ago

Link

The iPhone XS proves one thing definitively: that the iPhone X was probably one of the most ambitious product bets of all time.

When Apple told me in 2017 that they put aside plans for the iterative upgrade that they were going to ship and went all in on the iPhone X because they thought they could jump ahead a year, they were not blustering. That the iPhone XS feels, at least on the surface, like one of Apple’s most “S” models ever is a testament to how aggressive the iPhone X timeline was.

I think there will be plenty of people who will see this as a weakness of the iPhone XS, and I can understand their point of view. There are about a half-dozen definitive improvements in the XS over the iPhone X, but none of them has quite the buzzword-worthy effectiveness of a marquee upgrade like 64-bit, 3D Touch or wireless charging — all benefits delivered in previous “S” years.

That weakness, however, is only really present if you view it through the eyes of the year-over-year upgrader. As an upgrade over an iPhone X, I’d say you’re going to have to love what they’ve done with the camera to want to make the jump. As a move from any other device, it’s a huge win and you’re going head-first into sculpted OLED screens, face recognition and super durable gesture-first interfaces and a bunch of other genre-defining moves that Apple made in 2017, thinking about 2030, while you were sitting back there in 2016.

Since I do not have an iPhone XR, I can’t really make a call for you on that comparison, but from what I saw at the event and from what I know about the tech in the iPhone XS and XS Max from using them over the past week, I have some basic theories about how it will stack up.

For those with interest in the edge of the envelope, however, there is a lot to absorb in these two new phones, separated only by size. Once you begin to unpack the technological advancements behind each of the upgrades in the XS, you begin to understand the real competitive edge and competence of Apple’s silicon team, and how well they listen to what the software side needs now and in the future.

Whether that makes any difference for you day to day is another question, one that, as I mentioned above, really lands on how much you like the camera.

But first, let’s walk through some other interesting new stuff.

Notes on durability

As is always true with my testing methodology, I treat this as anyone would who got a new iPhone and loaded an iCloud backup onto it. Plenty of other sites will do clean room testing if you like comparison porn, but I really don’t think that does most folks much good. By and large most people aren’t making choices between ecosystems based on one spec or another. Instead, I try to take them along on prototypical daily carries, whether to work for TechCrunch, on vacation or doing family stuff. A foot injury precluded any theme parks this year (plus, I don’t like to be predictable) so I did some office work, road travel in the center of California and some family outings to the park and zoo. A mix of uses cases that involves CarPlay, navigation, photos and general use in a suburban environment.

In terms of testing locale, Fresno may not be the most metropolitan city, but it’s got some interesting conditions that set it apart from the cities where most of the iPhones are going to end up being tested. Network conditions are pretty adverse in a lot of places, for one. There’s a lot of farmland and undeveloped acreage and not all of it is covered well by wireless carriers. Then there’s the heat. Most of the year it’s above 90 degrees Fahrenheit and a good chunk of that is spent above 100. That means that batteries take an absolute beating here and often perform worse than other, more temperate, places like San Francisco. I think that’s true of a lot of places where iPhones get used, but not so much the places where they get reviewed.

That said, battery life has been hard to judge. In my rundown tests, the iPhone XS Max clearly went beast mode, outlasting my iPhone X and iPhone XS. Between those two, though, it was tougher to tell. I try to wait until the end of the period I have to test the phones to do battery stuff so that background indexing doesn’t affect the numbers. In my ‘real world’ testing in the 90+ degree heat around here, iPhone XS did best my iPhone X by a few percentage points, which is what Apple does claim, but my X is also a year old. The battery didn’t fail during even intense days of testing with the XS.

In terms of storage I’m tapping at the door of 256GB, so the addition of 512GB option is really nice. As always, the easiest way to determine what size you should buy is to check your existing free space. If you’re using around 50% of what your phone currently has, buy the same size. If you’re using more, consider upgrading because these phones are only getting faster at taking better pictures and video and that will eat up more space.

The review units I was given both had the new gold finish. As I mentioned on the day, this is a much deeper, brassier gold than the Apple Watch Edition. It’s less ‘pawn shop gold’ and more ‘this is very expensive’ gold. I like it a lot, though it is hard to photograph accurately — if you’re skeptical, try to see it in person. It has a touch of pink added in, especially as you look at the back glass along with the metal bands around the edges. The back glass has a pearlescent look now as well, and we were told that this is a new formulation that Apple created specifically with Corning. Apple says that this is the most durable glass ever in a smartphone.

My current iPhone has held up to multiple falls over 3 feet over the past year, one of which resulted in a broken screen and replacement under warranty. Doubtless multiple YouTubers will be hitting this thing with hammers and dropping it from buildings in beautiful Phantom Flex slo-mo soon enough. I didn’t test it. One thing I am interested in seeing develop, however, is how the glass holds up to fine abrasions and scratches over time.

My iPhone X is riddled with scratches both front and back, something having to do with the glass formulation being harder, but more brittle. Less likely to break on impact but more prone to abrasion. I’m a dedicated no-caser, which is why my phone looks like it does, but there’s no way for me to tell how the iPhone XS and XS Max will hold up without giving them more time on the clock. So I’ll return to this in a few weeks.

Both the gold and space grey iPhones XS have been subjected to a coating process called physical vapor deposition or PVD. Basically metal particles get vaporized and bonded to the surface to coat and color the band. PVD is a process, not a material, so I’m not sure what they’re actually coating these with, but one suggestion has been Titanium Nitride. I don’t mind the weathering that has happened on my iPhone X band, but I think it would look a lot worse on the gold, so I’m hoping that this process (which is known to be incredibly durable and used in machine tooling) will improve the durability of the band. That said, I know most people are not no-casers like me so it’s likely a moot point.

Now let’s get to the nut of it: the camera.

Bokeh let’s do it

I’m (still) not going to be comparing the iPhone XS to an interchangeable lens camera because portrait mode is not a replacement for those, it’s about pulling them out less. That said, this is closest its ever been.

One of the major hurdles that smartphone cameras have had to overcome in their comparisons to cameras with beautiful glass attached is their inherent depth of focus. Without getting too into the weeds (feel free to read this for more), because they’re so small, smartphone cameras produce an incredibly compressed image that makes everything sharp. This doesn’t feel like a portrait or well composed shot from a larger camera because it doesn’t produce background blur. That blur was added a couple of years ago with Apple’s portrait mode and has been duplicated since by every manufacturer that matters — to varying levels of success or failure.

By and large, most manufacturers do it in software. They figure out what the subject probably is, use image recognition to see the eyes/nose/mouth triangle is, build a quick matte and blur everything else. Apple does more by adding the parallax of two lenses OR the IR projector of the TrueDepth array that enables Face ID to gather a 9-layer depth map.

As a note, the iPhone XR works differently, and with less tools, to enable portrait mode. Because it only has one lens it uses focus pixels and segmentation masking to ‘fake’ the parallax of two lenses.

With the iPhone XS, Apple is continuing to push ahead with the complexity of its modeling for the portrait mode. The relatively straightforward disc blur of the past is being replaced by a true bokeh effect.

Background blur in an image is related directly to lens compression, subject-to-camera distance and aperture. Bokeh is the character of that blur. It’s more than just ‘how blurry’, it’s the shapes produced from light sources, the way they change throughout the frame from center to edges, how they diffuse color and how they interact with the sharp portions of the image.

Bokeh is to blur what seasoning is to a good meal. Unless you’re the chef, you probably don’t care what they did you just care that it tastes great.

Well, Apple chef-ed it the hell up with this. Unwilling to settle for a templatized bokeh that felt good and leave it that, the camera team went the extra mile and created an algorithmic model that contains virtual ‘characteristics’ of the iPhone XS’s lens. Just as a photographer might pick one lens or another for a particular effect, the camera team built out the bokeh model after testing a multitude of lenses from all of the classic camera systems.

I keep saying model because it’s important to emphasize that this is a living construct. The blur you get will look different from image to image, at different distances and in different lighting conditions, but it will stay true to the nature of the virtual lens. Apple’s bokeh has a medium-sized penumbra, spreading out light sources but not blowing them out. It maintains color nicely, making sure that the quality of light isn’t obscured like it is with so many other portrait applications in other phones that just pick a spot and create a circle of standard gaussian or disc blur.

Check out these two images, for instance. Note that when the light is circular, it retains its shape, as does the rectangular light. It is softened and blurred, as it would when diffusing through the widened aperture of a regular lens. The same goes with other shapes in reflected light scenarios.

Now here’s the same shot from an iPhone X, note the indiscriminate blur of the light. This modeling effort is why I’m glad that the adjustment slider proudly carries f-stop or aperture measurements. This is what this image would look like at a given aperture, rather than a 0-100 scale. It’s very well done and, because it’s modeled, it can be improved over time. My hope is that eventually, developers will be able to plug in their own numbers to “add lenses” to a user’s kit.

And an adjustable depth of focus isn’t just good for blurring, it’s also good for un-blurring. This portrait mode selfie placed my son in the blurry zone because it focused on my face. Sure, I could turn the portrait mode off on an iPhone X and get everything sharp, but now I can choose to “add” him to the in-focus area while still leaving the background blurry. Super cool feature I think is going to get a lot of use.

It’s also great for removing unwanted people or things from the background by cranking up the blur.

And yes, it works on non humans.

If you end up with an iPhone XS, I’d play with the feature a bunch to get used to what a super wide aperture lens feels like. When its open all the way to f1.4 (not the actual widest aperture of the lens btw, this is the virtual model we’re controlling) pretty much only the eyes should be in focus. Ears, shoulders, maybe even nose could be out of the focus area. It takes some getting used to but can produce dramatic results.

A 150% crop of a larger photo to show detail preservation.

Developers do have access to one new feature though, the segmentation mask. This is a more precise mask that aids in edge detailing, improving hair and fine line detail around the edges of a portrait subject. In my testing it has led to better handling of these transition areas and less clumsiness. It’s still not perfect, but it’s better. And third-party apps like Halide are already utilizing it. Halide’s co-creator, Sebastiaan de With, says they’re already seeing improvements in Halide with the segmentation map.

“Segmentation is the ability to classify sets of pixels into different categories,” says de With. “This is different than a “Hot dog, not a hot dog” problem, which just tells you whether a hot dog exists anywhere in the image. With segmentation, the goal is drawing an outline over just the hot dog. It’s an important topic with self driving cars, because it isn’t enough to tell you there’s a person somewhere in the image. It needs to know that person is directly in front of you. On devices that support it, we use PEM as the authority for what should stay in focus. We still use the classic method on old devices (anything earlier than iPhone 8), but the quality difference is huge.

The above is an example shot in Halide that shows the image, the depth map and the segmentation map.

In the example below, the middle black-and-white image is what was possible before iOS 12. Using a handful of rules like, “Where did the user tap in the image?” We constructed this matte to apply our blur effect. It’s no bad by any means, but compare it to the image on the right. For starters, it’s much higher resolution, which means the edges look natural.

My testing of portrait mode on the iPhone XS says that it is massively improved, but that there are still some very evident quirks that will lead to weirdness in some shots like wrong things made blurry and halos of light appearing around subjects. It’s also not quite aggressive enough on foreground objects — those should blur too but only sometimes do. But the quirks are overshadowed by the super cool addition of the adjustable background blur. If conditions are right it blows you away. But every once in a while you still get this sense like the Neural Engine just threw up its hands and shrugged.

Live preview of the depth control in the camera view is not in iOS 12 at the launch of the iPhone XS, but it will be coming in a future version of iOS 12 this fall.

I also shoot a huge amount of photos with the telephoto lens. It’s closer to what you’d consider to be a standard lens on a camera. The normal lens is really wide and once you acclimate to the telephoto you’re left wondering why you have a bunch of pictures of people in the middle of a ton of foreground and sky. If you haven’t already, I’d say try defaulting to 2x for a couple of weeks and see how you like your photos. For those tight conditions or really broad landscapes you can always drop it back to the wide. Because of this, any iPhone that doesn’t have a telephoto is a basic non-starter for me, which is going to be one of the limiters on people moving to iPhone XR from iPhone X, I believe. Even iPhone 8 Plus users who rely on the telephoto I believe will miss it if they don’t go to the XS.

But, man, Smart HDR is where it’s at

I’m going to say something now that is surely going to cause some Apple followers to snort, but it’s true. Here it is:

For a company as prone to hyperbole and Maximum Force Enthusiasm about its products, I think that they have dramatically undersold how much improved photos are from the iPhone X to the iPhone XS. It’s extreme, and it has to do with a technique Apple calls Smart HDR.

Smart HDR on the iPhone XR encompasses a bundle of techniques and technology including highlight recovery, rapid-firing the sensor, an OLED screen with much improved dynamic range and the Neural Engine/image signal processor combo. It’s now running faster sensors and offloading some of the work to the CPU, which enables firing off nearly two images for every one it used to in order to make sure that motion does not create ghosting in HDR images, it’s picking the sharpest image and merging the other frames into it in a smarter way and applying tone mapping that produces more even exposure and color in the roughest of lighting conditions.

iPhone XS shot, better range of tones, skintone and black point

iPhone X Shot, not a bad image at all, but blocking up of shadow detail, flatter skin tone and blue shift

Nearly every image you shoot on an iPhone XS or iPhone XS Max will have HDR applied to it. It does it so much that Apple has stopped labeling most images with HDR at all. There’s still a toggle to turn Smart HDR off if you wish, but by default it will trigger any time it feels it’s needed.

And that includes more types of shots that could not benefit from HDR before. Panoramic shots, for instance, as well as burst shots, low light photos and every frame of Live Photos is now processed.

The results for me have been massively improved quick snaps with no thought given to exposure or adjustments due to poor lighting. Your camera roll as a whole will just suddenly start looking like you’re a better picture taker, with no intervention from you. All of this is capped off by the fact that the OLED screens in the iPhone XS and XS Max have a significantly improved ability to display a range of color and brightness. So images will just plain look better on the wider gamut screen, which can display more of the P3 color space.

Under the hood

As far as Face ID goes, there has been no perceivable difference for me in speed or number of positives, but my facial model has been training on my iPhone X for a year. It’s starting fresh on iPhone XS. And I’ve always been lucky that Face ID has just worked for me most of the time. The gist of the improvements here are jumps in acquisition times and confirmation of the map to pattern match. There is also supposed to be improvements in off-angle recognition of your face, say when lying down or when your phone is flat on a desk. I tried a lot of different positions here and could never really definitively say that iPhone XS was better in this regard, though as I said above, it very likely takes training time to get it near the confidence levels that my iPhone X has stored away.

In terms of CPU performance the world’s first at-scale 7nm architecture has paid dividends. You can see from the iPhone XS benchmarks that it compares favorably to fast laptops and easily exceeds iPhone X performance.

The Neural Engine and better A12 chip has meant for better frame rates in intense games and AR, image searches, some small improvement in app launches. One easy way to demonstrate this is the video from the iScape app, captured on an iPhone X and an iPhone XS. You can see how jerky and FPS challenged the iPhone X is in a similar AR scenario. There is so much more overhead for AR experiences I know developers are going to be salivating for what they can do here.

The stereo sound is impressive, surpassingly decent separation for a phone and definitely louder. The tradeoff is that you get asymmetrical speaker grills so if that kind of thing annoys you you’re welcome.

Upgrade or no

Every other year for the iPhone I see and hear the same things — that the middle years are unimpressive and not worthy of upgrading. And I get it, money matters, phones are our primary computer and we want the best bang for our buck. This year, as I mentioned at the outset, the iPhone X has created its own little pocket of uncertainty by still feeling a bit ahead of its time.

I don’t kid myself into thinking that we’re going to have an honest discussion about whether you want to upgrade from the iPhone X to iPhone XS or not. You’re either going to do it because you want to or you’re not going to do it because you don’t feel it’s a big enough improvement.

And I think Apple is completely fine with that because iPhone XS really isn’t targeted at iPhone X users at all, it’s targeted at the millions of people who are not on a gesture-first device that has Face ID. I’ve never been one to recommend someone upgrade every year anyway. Every two years is more than fine for most folks — unless you want the best camera, then do it.

And, given that Apple’s fairly bold talk about making sure that iPhones last as long as they can, I think that it is well into the era where it is planning on having a massive installed user base that rents iPhones from it on a monthly or yearly or biennial period. And it doesn’t care whether those phones are on their first, second or third owner, because that user base will need for-pay services that Apple can provide. And it seems to be moving in that direction already, with phones as old as the five-year-old iPhone 5s still getting iOS updates.

With the iPhone XS, we might just be seeing the true beginning of the iPhone-as-a-service era.

via TechCrunch

#IFTTT #TechCrunch

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fmservers · 6 years ago

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Review: iPhone XS and the power of long-term thinking

The iPhone XS proves one thing definitively: that the iPhone X was probably one of the most ambitious product bets of all time.

Whether that makes any difference for you day to day is another question, one that, as I mentioned above, really lands on how much you like the camera.

But first, let’s walk through some other interesting new stuff.

Notes on durability

As is always true with my testing methodology, I treat this as anyone would who got a new iPhone and loaded an iCloud backup onto it. Plenty of other sites will do clean room testing if you like metrics porn, but I really don’t think that does most folks much good. Instead, I try to take them along on prototypical daily carries, whether to work for TechCrunch, on vacation or doing family stuff. A foot injury precluded any theme parks this year (plus, I don’t like to be predictable) so I did some office work, road travel in the center of California and some family outings to the park and zoo. A mix of uses cases that involves CarPlay, navigation, photos and general use in a suburban environment.

That said, battery life has been hard to judge. In my rundown tests, the iPhone XS Max clearly went beast mode, outlasting my iPhone X and iPhone XS. Between those two, though, it was tougher to tell. I try to wait until the end of the period I have to test the phones to do battery stuff so that background indexing doesn’t affect the numbers. In my ‘real world’ testing in the 90+ degree heat around here, iPhone XS did best my iPhone X by a few percentage points, which is what Apple does claim, but my X is also a year old. I didn’t fail to get through a pretty intense day of testing with the XS once though.

Now let’s get to the nut of it: the camera.

Bokeh let’s do it

Bokeh is to blur what seasoning is to a good meal. Unless you’re the chef, you probably don’t care what they did you just care that it tastes great.

I keep saying model because it’s important to emphasize that this is a living construct. The blur you get will look different from image to image, at different distances and in different lighting conditions, but it will stay true to the nature of the virtual lens. Apple’s bokeh has a medium-sized penumbra, spreading light out from light sources but not blowing them out. It maintains color nicely, making sure that the quality of light isn’t obscured like it is with so many other portrait applications in other phones that just pick a spot and create a circle of standard gaussian or disc blur.

It’s also great for removing unwanted people or things from the background by cranking up the blur.

And yes, it works on non humans.

The above is an example shot in Halide that shows the image, the depth map and the segmentation map.

My testing of portrait mode on the iPhone XS says that it is massively improved, still some quirks that will lead to weirdness and it’s not quite aggressive enough on foreground objects — those should blur too but only sometimes do. But the quirks are overshadowed by the super cool addition of the adjustable background blur.

Live preview of the depth control is not in iOS 12 at the launch of the iPhone XS, but it will be coming in a future version of iOS 12 this fall.

But, man, Smart HDR is where it’s at

I’m going to say something now that is surely going to cause some Apple followers to snort, but it’s true. Here it is:

iPhone XS shot, better range of tones, skintone and black point

iPhone X Shot, not a bad image at all, but blocking up of shadow detail, flatter skin tone and blue shift

And that includes more types of shots that could not benefit from HDR before. Panoramic shots, for instance, as well as burst shots, low light photos and every frame of Live Photos is now processed.

Under the hood

In terms of CPU performance the world’s first 7nm architecture has paid dividends. You can see from the iPhone XS benchmarks that it compares favorably to fast laptops and easily exceeds iPhone X performance.

youtube

Upgrade or no

With the iPhone XS, we might just be seeing the true beginning of the iPhone-as-a-service era.

Via Matthew Panzarino https://techcrunch.com

#TechCrunch

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robertkstone · 7 years ago

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Crowning a Singular Champion: Behind the Scenes at 2018 Motor Trend Car of the Year

The 2018 Motor Trend Car of the Year program started out as so many of them have for the past seven years: with me stopping off to grab three bottles of good whiskey—to be consumed in the evenings once our cast and crew were safely ensconced at our hotel, naturally. As James Joyce wrote in Ulysses, “The bards must drink and junket.” To put it in the parlance of our times, we had 46 cars to test and evaluate in two weeks of intense Mojave Desert heat and wind. Do you know how much bickering that could entail? A good stiff drink or two is essential for inspired debate.

Before the editors arrived to judge the field subjectively, our hard-bitten advance team of testing director Kim Reynolds, road test editor Chris Walton, and associate road test editor Erick Ayapana spent a week at the Hyundai Kia Proving Grounds. These guys ran our field through endless 0–60 dashes, 60–0 halts, quarter-mile blasts, dizzying figure eights, and anything else that could place a quantifiable number to the relative performance of our field. To say this trio (along with number cruncher Alan Lau) looked spent is an understatement. Now it was the judges’ turn to take the wheel. Kim and Chris joined the panel to be sure the empirical data was fairly included in our deliberations.

After a small delay due to air travel, the 11 judges were assembled at the vast blackness of the proving grounds’ vehicle dynamics area, better known as the VDA. At this point we do our walkarounds based on comprehensive notes explaining why each particular new car is at Car of the Year, what’s new if it’s a refresh, and what it competes against. Unlike what comes later on (the fighting!), our walkarounds are lighthearted and, frankly, fun. You can usually find international bureau chief Angus MacKenzie huddled up with our legendary guest judges Tom Gale and Chris Theodore guffawing about some mangled attempt at an A-pillar, me talking over everyone else, and editor-in-chief Ed Loh screaming at us to stay on target because we’re running out of daylight.

Walkarounds are a little bit of shoptalk, a little bit of design critique, and whole lot of tire kicking. This year’s greatest moment occurred when features editor Christian Seabaugh decided to remove the hood from one of the Smart Fortwo EDs. The hood, which I think would be better referred to as a “quote hood,” is not hinged or even permanently attached to the Smart. It’s cabled to it, like a leash on a surfboard. I guess if it flies off in a crash, you won’t have to walk far to find it. I mention this because it took us about five minutes to figure out how to reattach the “hood.” The best part was that it baffled Chris Theodore, the former head of engineering for both Chrysler and Ford. There we were, standing around, trying to figure out a way to get it reconnected. Hot tip: do not remove.

With walkarounds complete and our collective brains stuffed chock-full of new knowledge, it was time to make the 35-mile schlepp to our hotel in the high-desert hamlet of Tehachapi. Christian and I volunteered to take the Tesla Model 3—even though that meant getting up 30 minutes before everyone else the next day so we could hook it up to the Supercharger in Mojave. Like all Teslas, the newest one is loaded with Easter eggs. Click down four times on the cruise control lever, and you enter Rainbow Road, which shows a moving rainbow on the instrument cluster and plays the audio from the “More Cowbell” skit from Saturday Night Live. There are a few other options to play around with, as well. There’s Mars Rover mode, which turns the nav screen into the Martian surface and the directional arrow into what I guess is Tesla’s Mars rover. Because, you know, Elon Musk wants to go to Mars. There’s also an egg that changes the central screen to a doodle pad. I’m not going to tell you what NSFW things Christian and I drew on the Tesla’s screen, but we laughed for 20 minutes straight.

Heading to the Supercharger in the morning, we happened to pass a massive gas station under construction on Tehachapi’s main drag. Driving past it in the Model 3 left me with an incongruous feeling. Who’s out of touch? Tesla or the coming-soon petrol palace? Heading down Highway 58 and seeing what must be thousands and thousands of electricity-generating windmills, you get the feeling that Tesla knows something others don’t. That said, after more than an hour of charging, the Model 3’s battery still wasn’t full, and we were forced to call in the cavalry (visual assets czar and COTY whisperer Brian Vance) because we couldn’t be late to the morning briefing. It seemed to us that the baby Tesla doesn’t supercharge nearly as quickly as the Model S and X.

After some procedural words from the fine folks at Hyundai Kia and a warning from executive editor Mark Rechtin to keep the notes regarding our 46 cars short and pithy (we tend to overwrite), it was time to begin the monumental task of hacking our massive field of contenders down to a more reasonable, manageable group of finalists. Motor Trend’s Car of the Year is the hardest two weeks of work within the auto industry. I’m going to put in a plug for our process. Unlike our main competitor, which quits when it gets to the point we reach after two initial days (they hand out some sort of participation trophy/everyone’s-a-winner award), after we’ve identified the top candidates, we keep on going before declaring an actual Car of the Year. It sure ain’t easy. But the reward for our due diligence, at least on the first day, was tacos.

As is often the case, there’s a contest within a contest, a race within a race. At Car of the Year, the secret competition is who can eat the most of Wantacos’ delicious creations. First thing that needs to be said is that Ed cheats every year. See, real tacos have two soft corn tortilla shells (if you’re not from California, I’m sorry to break this news to you). But every year, Ed asks for his tacos with only one shell. Blasphemous gringo? Absolutely, but he’s also into being thin. Weirdo. Whatever his motivation, the result is just straight-up cheating. Who actually wins isn’t a matter for public record, but the industry as a whole might be shocked to learn that the photo and video crew routinely out-eats the editors. That’s because while the editors are driving in air-conditioned splendor, the visual assets crew is running around in the desert scrub, seeking out the just-right vantage point to shoot their art while hot-footing it past some of nature’s nastier creatures. Tacos ingested, we head back out for more of the same. The first day concludes with all 11 judges having driven somewhere between 20 and 25 cars. The photographers are cashed out. Useless zombies, we eat some pizza and pass out. The whiskey stays sealed.

Morning brings the highlight of the entire event: Tom’s design showcase. We could charge money for this. We should. Tom is the former head of design for Chrysler during a golden era and the person behind the first-generation Dodge Viper. What more do you need to know? Every year Tom lines up all the contenders in a specific nonrepeating order then analyzes them one by one, explaining what it is we’re actually looking at. Tom—and to a large, though secondary, degree, Chris Theodore—hits us with all the industry speak we can handle. Gesture, grain and gloss, surfacing, horizon lines—they don’t talk down to us, but those two are way over all our heads. Anyhow, Tom is very careful not to tell us what to think but rather to explain how a design works. Why we like what we like or dislike what we dislike. “Whoever designed this should be arrested,” barked Tom as we walked up to the new Honda Odyssey. In Tom’s defense, he’s right.

After a day spent sprinting to track-test the rest of the field, it’s 4 p.m. and time to start cutting down the field. All 11 judges pack into a room, guzzle enough La Croix and Gatorade to fill a hot tub, and start eliminating the cars we don’t think have a snowball’s chance in the Mojave of being Car of the Year. This isn’t a pretty process even when we’re in agreement. When the Smart ED was dismissed for having only a 58-mile range, technical director Frank Markus said, “Thank God. Could you imagine spending 300 miles in one? That should be against the Geneva Convention!” It got cruel from there. “This is as far from the ultimate driving machine as they’ve gone,” said Chris Theodore about the BMW 5 Series. After Detroit editor Alisa Priddle explained how much she enjoyed the “More Cowbell” in the Model 3, Angus weighed in with his feelings: “I hate f��ing cowbell.” When we got to the Lincoln Continental, a person who shall remain anonymous began defending the car. “There’s a lot of money to be made from this level of tastelessness.” At one point, things got so heated that Mark sardonically blurted out, “Let’s just piss off every automaker, shall we?”

However, one large theme emerged after the “discussion.” The Korean car industry is on the ascent. Two Kias made the final cut—the surprisingly good Rio and the impressive Stinger, making up 25 percent of the finalists—and the Hyundai Elantra GT Sport was our bubble car, meaning it almost came along for the final two days. “Good value, good warranty? No! Good cars,” Chris Walton said of the Korean entries. Angus said if he were Japan, he’d be worried. The room agreed.

Speaking of Japan, we took an unusual step with the Honda Civic Type R, electing to not only bring it along as a finalist but also to separate it out from its lesser brethren, specifically the Si. See, the Civic itself was actually new two years ago and was a finalist in our 2016 competition. We dig that car. In fact, the Civic went on to win one of our Big Tests, straight-up beating every other car in its class. We view the Civic Si as a variant of the Civic we already know and love and therefore not Car of the Year material. The Civic Type R? An entirely different animal.

I’ve rarely witnessed so many people so impressed by a performance car. Angus crowed it’s the most impressive car from Honda since the original NSX. I kept asking the question, “What if the new NSX was this good? Hell, half this good?” Using the excuse/insider knowledge that the Type R is actually designed and built by a crew in the U.K., as opposed to Ohio, we took the unusual, probably unprecedented step of bringing the Type R along as a stand-alone finalist.

Anyhow, we had our Elite Eight.

That night we finally broke into the liquor and even a couple of cigars. If Tom’s design showcase is the part of Car of the Year evaluations we could profit from, then knocking back a couple while talking shop about the car industry is the part that would cost us. Tales and truths are told. Boardroom dramas revealed. Due to the possibility of personal defamation lawsuits, perhaps the less said here, the better.

The Finalists

The next morning began our standard finalist drive loops. Because we had gotten our high-speed thrills out of our system at the proving grounds, for the most part the loops were uneventful. (I got pulled over by a friendly Tehachapi officer for something or another but was let go with a warning.)

The talk at lunch was mostly about how good all the finalists are and how the argument the next day should be a knock-down, drag-out type of affair. I developed some sort of flu and headed back to my room as soon as the loops were done. Everyone else went off on a photo shoot and then dinner.

A pounding on my door woke me up at around 9:30 p.m. It was Ed and Frank. They wanted the whiskey. I handed over three bottles. Two of them came back the next day.

We had four loops left the following morning, then lunch, and then the main event. Of the eight finalists we brought along, seven were deemed competent enough to take home the Golden Calipers. After shining on the test track, the Lexus LC 500h had failed to impress us out in the real world. We probably should have brought along the V-8, but the thinking was that because Toyota has built its rep as the leader in hybrid tech, bringing along the gas/electric LC 500h was the smart play. Turned out we brought the right car, but only because it made our decision-making process easier. With such stiff competition you’d think that the deliberations would be testy. For the most part, though, they weren’t, with several cars being billed as “great car, just not Car of the Year.”

If there was a single car I think most judges would have stolen, it was the Porsche Panamera Turbo. Yes, sure, of course, it starts at $147,950, but have you driven it? Forget about straight-line speed (0–60 in 3.0 seconds, quarter mile in 11.4 seconds at 121.2 mph), on the winding track the 550-horsepower, 4,662-pound big-dog Turbo cornered so hard that the windshield wiper fluid sloshed out of its container and across the windshield. It happened to me! That said, the “little” 4,498-pound twin-turbo V-6 4S Panamera was pretty sweet in its own right.

Although either Porsche constitutes a legitimate finalist, the decision was made to bring the 4S—not the Turbo—along. I gotta tell you, I was against this. However, most people felt the Turbo constituted “too much.” I’m not s from PerformanceJunk WP Feed 3 http://ift.tt/2BjR3IP via IFTTT

#IFTTT #PerformanceJunk WP Feed 3

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damajority · 7 years ago

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DaMajority Fresh Article https://www.damajority.com/week-iphone-x-worth-hype/

A week in with the iPhone X — Is it worth the hype?

Before I begin, here’s a TL;DR for you if your attention span is short and you’re on the fence. The iPhone X is great. It’s a definite step up from previous iterations, and is better than the iPhone 8/8+. The screen is gorgeous, the phone feels weighty and substantial, the speakers are clearer (not louder), photos are noticeably better, and the notch should only really be annoying if you’re coming to the X from an Android device. Do you need a case and screen protector? Yes. This thing is a scratch magnet, and if you drop it, it’s game over. Do you need AppleCare+? Absolutely, because repairs will break your soul. For a more detailed review, photo comparisons, and video, keep reading.

https://www.damajority.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/video-1510711079.mp4

_________________

During my second year of undergrad, I lost a political science paper to a blue screen of death. Nine pages and two weeks of research on how Marcus Garvey’s black nationalism compared to the Nazi philosophy of lebensraum, gone. I got a matte black MacBook, and never looked back. I’m completely immersed in the Apple ecosystem—a die-hard fan. I’m also dramatic. The kind of dramatic that would make me play “Barry Bonds” as I unbox my iPhone X. Somehow, Kanyé rapping “This what y’all all been waiting for, ain’t it? What people paid paper for damn it, they can’t stand it, they want something new, so let’s get reacquainted” feels like a fitting way to introduce myself to Apple’s newest offering. This isn’t going to be one of those reviews where I talk lustfully about the iPhone’s innards and drone on about things that you couldn’t care less about. This is an everyday user review where listen to music, spend time arguing with people on social media, occasionally use the camera, and hope my battery lasts until I call it a night. Here we go.

So shiny — an introduction

I’ve been waiting for Apple to redesign the iPhone since the 6 Plus. I had hoped that the iPhone 7 would be where that redesign happened, but it was not to be. The candybar form factor with the bezels on the top and bottom is dated—like Jheri Curls and Fila gear. So, when the rumour mill started churning out news of a redesign, I was all in—when I picked up the redesigned iPhone X for the first time, I was sold.

My first thoughts were that it was the most beautiful piece of technology I’d seen in recent history. The phone feels weighty, the materials used are gorgeous, and the fit and finish is on par with what you’d expect from a $1,100 phone. My first gripe is that I wish Apple would have put AirPods in the box, but we can’t have everything. In typical Apple fashion, though, the transfer process from my 7 Plus to the X was seamless. I turned the phone on, went through some steps, and iOS 11 noticed I had an new device in close proximity to an old one, and offered to set up everything automatically over the air. When I tell people that the Apple ecosystem is incredible, these are the kinds of creature comforts I’m talking about.

Screen play

The screen on this thing is incredible—the new Samsung-made OLED blows everything I’ve ever used out of the water, perhaps with the exception of the 5K Retina iMac. The Galaxy S8+ and Note 8 are beautiful devices, with screens that would make the most loyal Apple fan jealous. But they have nothing on this. Blacks are pitch black, colours are vibrant without being oversaturated, and everything looks incredible. The notch is noticeable at first, but not in a way that I find upsetting. I may come to hate it eventually, but right now, it doesn’t matter. I will say this: if you’re coming to the X from any previous model of the iPhone, the notch likely won’t bother you much either. If you’re an Android convert, especially if you’re accustomed to Samsung’s huge, gorgeous screen real estate, then it will definitely be more visible, and probably more annoying. If I were to complain about something, I’d say that I would have preferred a wider aspect ratio, because this thing is long. Not long enough to be uncomfortable, and certainly not longer than the competition. Just long enough to make you notice.

Face ID?

With all the pre-release hype (and criticism) over the home button being gone, users needing to get used to a new gesture-based interface, and Face ID being a poor replacement for Touch ID, I was a bit apprehensive about how everything would work. After setting up Face ID, which was seamless, I started going through my usual routine of checking email, deleting old notifications, and overusing social media. This is where the X surprised and impressed me most. It’s also why I detest pre-release reviews from writers who spent 10 minutes or so with the device on launch day.

First, I never missed the home button. Swiping up felt as natural as putting my finger to the Touch ID sensor—perhaps more natural, since Face ID allowed me to glance at the phone and swipe up in one fluid motion. Second, Face ID feels like a near perfect security solution. Critics of Face ID have harped on about how it doesn’t work under all circumstances, which puzzles me because Touch ID didn’t work for me all the time either. Wearing dark sunglasses in bright light while using Face ID is the equivalent of trying to use Touch ID with wet hands—it will or won’t work. Is it mildly annoying? Sure. Is it a backward step because Touch ID was perfect and Apple ruined everything? No. I’m convinced at this point that some tech writers are luddites who loathe progress, especially when Apple’s the frontrunner. Headphone jack, anyone?

Third, the True Depth camera and Face ID work together using Attention Detection to handle notifications and prevent random unlocking for those people who prize their privacy. Messages and email, for example, show up with a name and time stamp but will not show their content until the device recognizes your face. To unlock the device, you have to be awake and looking at it, so the hypothetical situation where a jealous or nosy partner uses your face to unlock your phone while you’re sleeping is near impossible.

Fourth, and maybe most importantly, is how Face ID handles passwords. I have not needed to remember a single piece of security information since I picked up the iPhone X. Apps, website logins, shipping and billing addresses, and banking security information populate automatically once my face is recognized. If you use LastPass or 1Password to supplement Safari’s native password saving capabilities, then Face ID can authenticate those too. I’m excited for a Mac ecosystem where biometric scanning is ubiquitous, and I can sit at the computer and start working without needing to type in a password.

Housekeeping — AppleCare+, phone cases, and battery life

There is no way around it—this phone will break if you drop it. Apple claims this glass is the hardest glass it’s ever made, and the hardest ever in a phone. Cool story, but it’s still glass, and glass breaks. It’s also a scratch magnet, so especially on the space black version, scratches will ruin your vibe. If you want to protect your phone and still show it off, I recommend this Tech Armor screen protector and this transparent Otterbox Symmetry case or this one from Spigen. Otterbox is synonymous with bulletproof drop protection, Spigen’s pretty good, too, but your mileage may vary. True, AppleCare+ is an eye-watering $199US on top of your $999 or $1,149 phone, but with iPhone X screen repairs at $279 and other out of warranty damage at $549, I’d argue it’s essential.

Battery life is what you’d expect from a phone made by Apple. Long enough to get you through a day, but definitely not long enough to survive 9 cumulative hours of heavy screen use. With all-day bluetooth tethering to my Apple Watch, 3-4 hours of music, pictures of my food, the occasional social media argument, and constant texting, I can call it a night at 11pm and wake up with 20% battery the next morning. If you live on your phone all day, consider a battery case or a charge pack of some kind.

Photos & Video

I don’t have earlier models on hand currently to compare exact scenes, but I do have photos I’ve taken with various iPhone models going as far back as the 3GS. That might be overkill, so I’m going to stop the backwards comparisons at the 5S. I won’t compare the iPhone with other brands, simply because much more qualified people than me have already done so. Professional photographer Austin Mann has an exhaustive and comprehensive review on his website, and the guys over at Fstoppers compared the X to their favourite camera, the Panasonic GH5.

I’ll post a more in-depth review at a later point with photo and video comparisons, but my first thoughts are that the X is noticeably better than the 7 and 7 Plus, and much, much better than previous generations. Photos on both the front and rear cameras are crisp in good lighting, not overly saturated or washed out. In low light, there is some noise, but significantly less so than in previous generations. Throw in a camera app like ProCam or Camera+ and your DSLR is (almost) obsolete. The Portrait Lighting beta still feels like it’s, well, in beta. It doesn’t always get selfies right, and sometimes it mangles an ear or shave part of my head in real world use. Overall though, to make an Android comparison, the X is a few software updates away from the Pixel 2 XL in terms of photo perfection. Video is as detailed and rich as you’d expect from 4K, slow motion in 1080p is brilliant, and with a gimbal or tripod, you could easily shoot a movie off this thing. Again, your mileage may vary.

Augmented Reality

What’s to say about it, except that it’s really, really good? I got my hands on a Microsoft HoloLens headset a few months ago, and while I enjoyed playing with it, it felt incomplete. The iPhone is better, cheaper, and has broader application. I’ve played basketball on a table-sized half-court, measured my entire condo (at scale!) and made a 3D model of it, and developers are still thinking of ways to get more out of this thing. Changing tires, building treehouses, rebuilding engines, interactive how-to videos, the applications are endless. I’m excited about where this technology is heading, and with Apple mainstreaming it, broad adoption is inevitable.

Final Thoughts — worth the hype?

Well, it depends. If you have $999 in disposable income and want to upgrade from any other iteration of the iPhone, you won’t be disappointed. The X is familiar enough to feel like home, but different enough to warrant the purchase. The screen alone is worth the upgrade, in my opinion. But with new technologies like TrueDepth and Face ID, the updated form factor, and that new camera, it’s a must buy. If you’re an Apple fan who jumped over to Android to escape the small screens and boring form factor, it’s a great “welcome back to the fold” moment waiting to happen. If, however, you’re looking to be completely blown away by something vastly different from anything Apple branded that you’ve used in the past, leave this one alone. It’s worth the hype for the faithful. For those on the fence, if the reviews haven’t convinced you, wait a year and buy it at a discount.

#apple #featured #iPhone X #Smartphones #technology

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markdickinsonphotography · 8 years ago

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Buying DJI Drones, Phantom Inspire think again – My experience was simple but horrible and regretful

Welcome; I am not much of a complainer towards companies and I don’t leave bad reviews, negative comments or request compensation typically but, this company tops the scale for bad customer service. Granted they’re a big company now and this review or story may not affect your purchase of their drones such as the phantom, phantom 3 professional, standard and phantom 4. Drones are upwards in the 2 million plus in 2016 and according to Fortune, 4.4 million by 2020. Between now and then there will be a lot of drone companies competing. So, research thoroughly when you are finding a particular company to purchase your drone from. I’d personally stay away from DJI. Let;s explore why.

I was having trouble with a phantom 2 I purchased with flight times and battery issues. If my memory recalls me correctly I had about 25 discharge/recharges and lost about 5 minutes of flight time, then 10 or so after recharge. I log all of my batteries with dates and any noticeable flight issues and write the time/date on the battery with a fine sharpie. It was clearly failing or about to so, I stopped using it and sent it in to DJI. Sometime in early 2015 I checked in a unit to DJI, a Phantom 2 Drone batteries that I had purchased. The 5200mah 11.1 volt ones. When sending them in I knew they had just been purchased and were under warranty. They acknowledged receipt of them on April 20th, 2015 from sending them in on April 12th priority mail. I then didn’t receive any response response until May 12th 2015. A whole month just to check in a battery. E.T. With DJI Responds as follows

Dear Mark,

Unfortunately your batteries are outside of the warranty period. We are unable to cover them under the warranty. I do apologize for the inconvenient news. Due to the hazardous condition of the batteries HazMat prohibits us from sending them back as they are. We will be disposing them for you. As a courtesy we are able to offer you used battery with very little discharges at no cost. Please let us know how to proceed.

DJI North America

I thought it was suspicious, but maybe they were trying to be nice. However my batteries were NOT out of warranty. Well they were now, with the delay in shipping 2 days, plus the time to check in, plus the time to send a response they were now out of warranty. On April 20th, 2015 I stated:

“Really? It was sent in what two weeks ago? Sent from my iPhone”

Dji Responded back nicely with

Dear Mark,

I do apologize for the mistake, your batteries are definitely covered under warranty. I’ll make sure we send them out to the address you provided. Thank you for choosing DJI to fly!

DJI North America

Throughout the communication the tech was friendly and apologized for the mistake which was not needed, but I am sure things happen when you buy from Amazon, a hobby store etc., they look at the born on date and estimate the warranty date I suppose. Well I did receive the new batteries in hand and charged up and began flying again. After acknowledging the warranty, I requested any update on the status which I did not get any. On 5/26/2015 I emailed in asking if they shipped. I didn’t get a response. 39 minutes on a phone call on the 27th yielded info that they were shipping. Sometime around June 3rd I received the batteries. This isn’t my gripe with the company. Well it is but, the issue is what happens next with the batteries.

On 11/5/2015 in Florida the temperature was approximately 82 degrees in Daytona Beach and I was out flying in a new subdivision. On the battery that I was flying with I got about 10 minutes into flight and I noticed the battery was around 60 percent or so and everything seemed normal. I flew out approximately 200 yards from where I was, came back and started noticing climbing issues. I was around 100 feet in the air and heading back home. I pulled down on the stick and started to descend and watched my battery go from 60 to 40 to 32 to 20 within a matter of 20-30 seconds. By that time I was hoofing it back to where I was going to land and the copter stopped responding to turns and climbing all together and headed straight for a small retention pond. The Phantom seemed to almost autorotate down on its on or it was trying to auto land but I was not in control anymore due to the battery failure (this is one of the replacements I just got a few months back). I ran over to grab it hoping it just had a tumble but it was unfortunately in about 4 feet of water about 2 feet off the bank. Attached was all of the electronics, a gopro, a gimbal, gps etc… I was kinda hoping that I could salvage it but I couldn’t get into the water for fear of not being able to get back out. Everything was steep and no way to climb out. I had to run home and get a cast net to grab it. The unit was still powered on when I arrived but the gopro and gimbal were glitching out.

After the first response of the tech, I am wondering if they sent me used replacement batteries that were previously used. The reason why I think this is that there were some scuff marks on the battery near the lights when I received them. I noticed that a few days later and wrote it off as I thought I might have caused it from the case or transporting. With this crash, since I have 3 batteries I only had about 10 flights in them and the firmware was updated as well as everything was fine with the other batteries the day before. I can only assume it either failed or a cell had dropped out. I don’t know.

Aftermath:

I immediately put all my resources together to try to salvage what I had. I ordered silica beads, dismantled and dried all the parts putting it in a heat bake at around 100 degrees to get off any residual moisture. Nothing seemed to work. I knew the battery was shot and I marked a big X through it. The gopro powered on but the lens is cloudy. I tried the GPS and it seems to power on but gets hot. The gimbal is done. So this is how my Phantom 2 Drone with all the added purchased before they included cameras and GPS sits. I have not touched these batteries, or drone since the crash and you can see that even one of the batteries they sent as replacements still has a charge. According to the website the batteries self discharge; however, only one of them has. The battery with the X is the one that submerged in the lake on this crash. It still shows power to it but wont charge.

I emailed into DJI and asked for some assistance and demanded they let me send these batteries in. I didn’t get a word of response. Chat was in the 50 minutes to hour wait to get a hold of and phone was over 50 minutes. This is good for them but evident that they are having trouble with their products because only people who are having trouble call in and ask for help. I tried the email again and got no response after 10 days even though their zendesk said they received my message and someone would be with me shortly. I tried calling again but their phone system is always backed up. I guess I’m glad I didn’t because I would have been hung up on for how angry I was.

During this time I was pretty heated and put everything in a cabinet. This is my first RC crash other than when I first started flying in 1999.

Fast forward to 2017, January 2nd. A few friends have received drones for christmas presents. So I started looking again. Welcome back DJI. I know I shouldn’t have but I decided to find the Phantom 4 at Best Buy. I picked it up for $999.99 and since they were low on batteries I only received the one that the copter came with. I got home and checked over the included paperwork to see what has changed in two versions. Not much; same battery, same powerup but, different connection to upgrade firmware. Everything was through the app. I started to charge the battery, it flashed a few times without charging so I consulted the good old internet. Some forums posted about bad batteries and they wouldn’t charge. So I headed right back to Best Buy and attempted to do a return just 2 hours after I purchased it. I got grilled on crashing it and then finally one employee came up and said, “Some are having bad batteries. I blame it on their attempt to push so many out for the holidays.” I thought to myself yeah, makes sense. They exchanged it and I went on to fly. About 20 minute drive home and I was up and charging.

First flight, pretty awesome I thought until I noticed after landing that I received a low battery warning with 98 percent battery left. Again back to the forums and internet. I thought it was time to consult the actual company now about this. However this really stirred up some old ghosts with me with bad batteries. Not 1 day into it and I am getting all kinds of fears from flying. I hadn’t looked in the cabinet where I stuffed the Phantom but finally I did to bring it out to take pics to write in to DJI. I attempted the phones again. Guess what? A year later and still 40 minute wait, chat, 40+ minutes, Facebook 1hr response time but ultimately they told me facebook chat is not a good medium for sending in issues like I am having. I told them I had tried the others and no one responds. What do I want from DJI? While I know they will not buy me a new go-pro, gimbal, GPS, batteries, nearly $1800.00 in losses, I’m sure they have an equivalent drone sitting around. It’s not solely because of the crash that I couldn’t predict nor prevent, it’s the lack of customer service, avoidance, blow offs and wasted time that their support staff has provided. I usually am a passionate customer with businesses I love and those business that I disagree with I just silently move on. This has bugged me for some time from the initial responses. My photography company here that I am posting this on owns up to any issues that I come up with. Replace products if there are issues and this year being a small business I’ve had to replace products that didn’t hold up to continued use even though I have no warranty and some would be outside of any typical warranty.

What I do I recommend? Any one of these drones:

The Yuneec Typhoon

Hubsan H109S X4 Pro.

Hubsan H501S X4.

Autel Drones

Others

So anything but DJI is my recommendation! I am planning on returning the Phantom 4 this week if I don’t hear a response back from them. Until then, this being one of my first negative reviews, I just don’t feel that they are listening to us as consumers when we have problems. Problems that seem to arise from their faulty equipment that was replaced for a defect. The 20+ groups that I am in on facebook are having reports of issues after firmware updates as well. I really hope for a resolution on both of these batteries and the previous copter.

Chat with Robert

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