#my gallery is currently in test mode but it's pretty much ready to go

[vladdyissues]

Since Twitter and Bluesky require accounts to see mature images—or in Twitter's case, to see anything—I'm working on erecting (ha) my personal art gallery so my art is more easily accessible. Hopefully I'll open it up later this week.

[featheredpheonix]

I watched the 4th (and final, if reports hold true) season of Netflix’s Castlevania series, and I am now putting as many of my (many, many) thoughts on it in the read more below to prevent them from continually filling my head until I die from a brain herniation. Spoilers for the new season obviously below.

The really short version of this is that, in contrast to a lot of the sentiment I have been seeing online, I don’t think this season is very good. I think it might actually be worse than season 3. If that thought offends you, please bear with me for a bit, as I suspect it is Netflix itself rather than the showrunners who are to blame.

Season 3′s fundamental flaw, in my opinion, was that it tried to cover too much at once, which made the pacing really fast and resulted in the season’s more obvious problems (how inconsequential Trevor and Sypha’s arc felt, how generally messy and underwritten Alucard’s whole section was, etc.). However, Season 3 did bear some merit, as so far as some of the conflicts it seemed to be setting up held some decent potential. Alucard was poised to have some real inner turmoil as he sent back to square one of his isolation in the castle, and by way of a far more traumatic series of events than during his initial farewell with Trevor and Sypha. Isaac was faced with a pretty open suite of paths to take his life, and a new philosophy on life to help guide him. There was the question of how would the world react to Carmilla’s expansionist ambitions, and just how far she would go to see them through. There was even a lot of engaging stuff that could have come out of Hector’s entrapment into magical servitude by Lenore. I was ready to give Season 3 some slack because I saw it as setting up interesting conflicts for Season 4, which while technically counting as kicking the can down the road, might have at least counted for something.

The issue with Season 4 then, for me, begins with it utterly ignoring or cutting short many of the potential story lines just discussed, opting in favor of conflicts devoid of set up, with threadbare emotional stakes, and which didn’t really challenge the cast in any way beyond testing how well they can swing a sword or throw a fireball.

Alucard seems barely fazed at all by the killing of his father or his brief pair of homicidal lovers, so much so that his recounting of the latter, an event which must have been a traumatic experience for him, is delivered off-screen and then promptly joked about. Carmilla’s character her arc is resolved with her complete abandonment of any of the political wit or strategic thinking she displayed in seasons past, getting promptly curb-stomped by Isaac for reasons only tangentially related to her manic world domination plot, and then girlbossing so hard she explodes. Most inexplicable of all, Hector, Lenore, and the story in general appear to have forgot or moved on from the whole “sexually-induced magical slavery” thing altogether, and the two are getting along swimmingly until Lenore decides to kermit herself (If I had a nickel for every morally-questionable vampiress who committed suicide this season, I’d only have two nickels, but it’s weird that it happened twice). Only Isaac’s story at all resembles what was being foreshadowed in Season 3, and even then only by the narrative being very vague about what his future plans actually are.

What we receive instead of payoff on previously established story threads are a coalescence of the different character arcs in a manner so rushed as to make them logistically impossible were it not for the sudden and conspicuous abundance of magical teleportation mirrors, a rogue’s gallery of new villainous vampires who exist only to be introduced and killed off in quick and meaningless succession, and a BBEG-from-the-machine who could have been interesting and entertaining if he had been given any build up or time to breath as a character, in either a previous or current season. Even the happy endings I was hoping for this season feel somewhat spent, more a product of consequence than something the characters actually struggled for. As such, the resolutions of the character arcs I did like felt less like rewards for sticking with the series, and more like bribes meant to convince me to forget the bad writing which preceded them.

Now that I’m finished beating this season with a stick, I think it’s worth noting that none of this feels like something the showrunners should be blamed for. Rather, this feels to me like one of my favorite Netflix properties being brought low by Netflix’s internal policy of cancelling beloved shows in search of greater market yields. I suspect that the showrunner did not choose to end this series after four seasons, but were commanded to do so by corporate higher-ups sometime either late into season 3′s production, or more egregiously, prior or even during the creation of season 4. This would obviously mean the Castlvania crew were doing the best they could to deliver any sort of half-decent ending in the short time they had left, and any blame for the faults of the show should instead be laid at the feet of the larger corporate machine behind them, and at the feet of the capitalist mode of production more broadly.

As far as the show itself is concerned, I’m still a fan, and would probably still watch whatever spinoff might be in the works, if hints from the Castlevania team are to be believed. Even in isolation, the first half of Castlevania still more than makes up for the latter seasons, with Season 2 being perhaps one of my favorite seasons of TV ever, and the S2 finale being one of my favorite finales respectively. Still, I wanted to express my critiques of this season, albeit from a place of love. I feel like there was a lot more story the team wanted to tell, that they would have preferred to tell, that they were ultimately made unable to tell by the external constraints of their less-than-benevolent corporate overlords. If such a desire existed amongst the Castlevania team, I can certainly say that I share in it, and hope that whatever they make from here on out is given the opportunity to be all that it can be.

[randomfictkin]

Octo Expansion first impressions

I was honestly really excited about the Splatoon 2 Octo Expansion when it came out. I preordered it the same weekend it was announced and kept waiting for any and all updates on it. I was really excited about there being a brand new story and and new things to learn about the lore. I was really interested to see what game design innovations were there if any, and I was ready to play basically a version of Hero Mode only with good story.

I have to say, I'm pretty disappointed for a number of reasons with this addition to the game. I'll get into what I don't like in a minute though. First I'll nail what I find good about it.

the story so far is really interesting, and explores the psychological effects of the brainwashing of the Octolings. I like how they convey how disorienting everything is for Agent 8 and how they show that Octolings aren't actually evil.

the enemy AI is actually good this time, they're not just running around shooting at random stuff, they actually strategize their attacks on you, and it actually feels like you're taking out an enemy. I really can recognize the polish they put into making the enemies themselves a challenge to take on, and I appreciate the effort they put in to make the Octolings you fight actually feel smart.

the environmental detail is excellent, I love how interesting and detailed everything looks, not a single model in this expansion is placed in the environment without an intent in mind, from graffiti on the subway train to IV stands on the trees. everything is a hint and a view into the lore of the game, it's very interesting.

now for what I don't like about it... oh boy...

I can understand the appeal of a difficult game, the high challenge gives you a sensation of euphoria once you beat a level. you get to release everything for a moment and gloat in the fact that you just pulled off something that seems extremely daunting. there's a massive difference between an interesting challenge and unfair difficulty though, and Nintendo showed so little restraint that the game is way past both of those into the realm of nearly impossible. I don't know how they expected a mainstream audience to actually enjoy this, but it's not working for me. I don't like sitting down to play a game I paid about 80 dollars for only for it to punish me for not being quite good enough at it. don't get me wrong, not all of these levels are bad. there are one or two that I've played that I found myself thoroughly enjoying. the first level was fantastic, it had some serious challenge in it, and had a logical progression of difficulty from start to end, it was a truly great level, but it just kinda devolved from there. the next level I remember playing was one where you have to get through an obstacle course in an infinite version of the baller special within a specific amount of time. I really enjoyed this level, it was really hard, but exactly what I had to do was clear, and once I figured out how my approach should work, I accomplished it. another one was a rail based level where you have dualies and your one goal is to make it to the end without dying. it was cool to quickly react to anything and everything coming my way, and think my way around the enemies and hazards in my path. but contrasted against that, you have a stupid shooting gallery level where you need to hit 20 boxes without hitting any balloons, which in itself wouldn't be that big of a deal, it would have some interesting and cool challenges to it, and it would make you think, but if you don't do it in time, our main protagonist gets remotely detonated by the guy who plopped us into the level, which brings me to my next point.

C. Q. Cumber is one of the prominent characters, and owner of the subway train that's taking you to Inkopolis. he has a cool and cute looking design and on his face, he's a likeable character, but don't let that fool you, this sea cucumber is a sociopath. he'll take you to Inkopolis, sure, but you have to do 80 nearly impossible tests for him, and you have to pay him to participate in these tests, and if you mess up just a little bit, he'll inflate your backpack until it explodes, taking you with it. I wanted to like the character, I really did, but I have to say, I hate him so much. I had a stupid grin on my face when he appeared on screen the first time, but now I can wholeheartedly say that said grin has been replaced with a grimace.

Pearl and Marina have integral roles in the story too. I actually like what Marina does, that's some pretty nice stuff, but Pearl does some stuff that in my book, is really not okay. when you run out of currency to continue playing a level, even if you have enough to go back and grind on an early level(you will, trust me) she has the "bright" idea of removing some money from her father's account and giving it to you, making you pay it back to her. you read that right, Pearl forces debt on you. then the game has the nerve to treat you like a child and tell you "when you have debt, you should always pay it back" even though Pearl never asked you if you were okay with being put in debt. I would've said no if I was given the choice, honestly. personally, being in debt whether it's in real life or not seriously stresses me out, that's one of the reasons why I don't like living in the house I'm in, because something might happen and my parents go "ok you owe us now" despite the fact that it's insanely hard for me to make any money due to their own restrictions. I currently "owe" them $150 because they've asserted that it's not a big deal for them to force that kind of debt on me. so it's pretty obvious what Pearl giving me a "loan" of 3000 points reminded me of.

so far, I feel like Octo Expansion is really really promising, but I can't in good conscience call it a good expansion.

[gavbon]

Introduction

Ever since Apple announced that the iPhone 7 would no longer feature a 3.5mm audio jack and instead would launch wireless earbuds called AirPods, the wireless headphone and earbud market had a massive leap in sales*, resulting in Apple taking a large slice of the pie. Similar announcements by a number of other leading phone brands have only increased the demand for wireless audio, so it is of no surprise that we are now seeing a flood of hundreds, if not thousands of wireless headphones enter the market. If you were an audio brand, what would be a good way of distinguishing your products from everything else out there? One innovating way would be to integrate fitness monitoring, which is exactly what Jabra have done with their latest earbuds dubbed Jabra Elite Sport.

Jabra, previously known for their hand’s free devices and office audio equipment, took a jump into the consumer audio arena several years back, having produced both traditional ear buds and headphones, alongside Bluetooth speakers (one of which I still use to this day). The decision to launch Bluetooth earbuds was no doubt bolstered by the trend in ditching the audio jack and the improvement in Bluetooth audio quality. By combining with a heart-rate monitor, Jabra has produced quite a unique audio product that is not only wireless but also durable (i.e. sweat proof) making it perfect for those sporty types.

* Source: Intelligent Slice

Specifications

General

True wireless smart earbuds

Lightweight

Waterproof up to 1 metre

Jabra Sport Life for Apple iOS and Android

Bluetooth

Bluetooth version: 4.1

Music and calls: Elite Sport is compatible with all Bluetooth-enabled devices, including Apple iPhone, Android, and Windows devices.

Performance tracking: Elite Sport is compatible with Bluetooth smart ready devices supporting Apple iOS and Android.

Jabra Sport Life app is compatible with Android and Apple iOS.

Battery and charging case

Talk/music time (with or without tracking): Up to 4.5 hours continuous play time

Charging case provides additional 2 full charges of up to 13.5 hours

Audio

Bespoke bass-enriched speakers with 20 Hz to 20 kHz frequency range

Passive noise cancellation

HearThrough channelling external ambient noise into earbuds for awareness

Calls

Advanced calling with 4 x digital MEMS microphones with advanced noise cancellation technology

Microphone sensitivity: -38 dBV/Pa

Microphone frequency range: 100 Hz to 10 kHz

Controls

General controls: volume, HearThrough, pair mode, Siri / Google Now activation

Music controls: play, pause, track forward, track backward.

Call controls: call answer, end, reject.

Tracking controls: open Jabra Sport Life App, start/stop and pause work-out, real time coaching feedback

Sensors

Clinical grade in-ear heart rate monitor

TrackFit motion counting sensor [tri-axis accelerometer]

Earwings & eargels

3 sizes of earwings (S, M, L)

3 sizes of silicone eargels (S, M, L)

3 sizes of foam tips (S, M, L)

Performance tracking*

Time, speed, distance, pace, steps, cadence, calories, heart rate, heart rate zone, VO2 Max estimation, repetitions*, real-time audio coaching

*Varies by activity and requires Jabra Sport Life

Durability

Waterproof rated to IP67

Warranty

3-year extended warranty against perspiration damage (requires registration through the Jabra Sport Life app)

Closer Look

The Elite Sports come in a pretty standard box, grey-scale with the Jabra yellow theme. The front can be opened to display the earbuds behind a window.

The Elite Sports come in in a plastic shell, which can be lifted to reveal the different buds and wings. There are three sizes of the foam and silicon buds and 3 sizes for the silicon wings. A short micro USB cable is supplied along with a quick start guide and other warranty information.

The earbuds themselves are fairly large. Out of the box, you get to select the buds you want, although a pair of wings is fitted as standard. These can be easily replaced. On the right earbud, you have a microphone, heart rate monitor (bottom edge) and the buttons to control the app (top) and play/pause/power/answer call button (bottom). The left earbud has volume up/next track (+) and volume down/previous track (-). The two small holes on each earbud are microphones for noise cancellation, calls, and HearThrough.

On the reverse of the earbuds, you have the charging points. You can just about make out the heart rate monitor on the bottom of the right earbud.

Software / App

The Elite Sport earbuds use standard 4.1 Bluetooth, so can be used with any device that can connect to them. This means whatever your app, the audio can be streamed directly to the earbuds, allowing you to make use of the standard audio controls and wireless nature.

Jabra does provide a fitness app that is required if you want to make use of the heart-rate monitoring. The app, called “Jabra Sports Life” can be downloaded from the Play or App Store, however, you must also download the Jabra Service app, which contains their library. I’m not 100% certain as to why Jabra have opted for a second app to make this compatible, however, it is lightweight and can just sit in the background.

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Pairing your phone and app to the ear buds

The App asks for some basic information about you

How to setup the ear buds

Making sure you get the best fit

You need a decent fit for the heart rate monitor to work correctly

Calibration is required to test the heart rate monitor

The app is bundled with tests to analyse your current fitness

The app is feature-rich, with training plans, body updates, exercise tracking…

The app itself is designed for fitness tracking and monitoring, so has a ton of features to help you do that, such as VO2max, cool down and other tests. When you first run the app it talks you through pairing your phone with the Elite Sports and then asks for some information on yourself and then some short calibration tests to ensure the heart-rate monitor is a good fit. If it isn’t, it suggests you change the wings to get a better fit.

You can now log exercise when you press and hold the lower button on the right earphone. You are also able to view your current heart-rate, which is not that far out from my FitBit Blaze I wear – although I suspect it is slightly more accurate considering it has a tighter fit.

I can only scratch the tip of the iceberg with this review as the app is incredibly in-depth allowing you to record and track your exercise routines, displaying all sorts of information, allowing you to optimise your workout – perfect for those that frequent the gym or are really focused on their wellbeing.

Performance and Testing

As with all audio reviews, it can be quite subjective when testing, as some peoples’ hearing is different from others – adults tend to miss out the higher-pitch ranges, so take this review with a pinch of salt.

The earbuds were very easy to set up. Essentially the right earbuds do all the work – it pairs to your phone, houses the microphone and heart-rate monitor. They communicate automatically with each other via near field magnetic induction

Not being a massively sporty person, I decided to go for a quick run. Firstly, I must point out that the Elite Sports have a great fit and I couldn’t feel any movement. One of my biggest worries was that they’d come loose and fall out, which isn’t ideal when you’re on a jog down a country footpath. The medium wing tips seemed to fit best and there was a big difference in noise cancellation when using the foam earbuds over the silicon.

The audio quality is fantastic for earbuds – I must expect I wasn’t anticipating any real depth to them, but the Elite Sports seem to have that little extra to the bass, although not as much richness as you’d get from the larger headphones. Mids and highs were spot on and the range is decent too – no matter what genre I throw at them, the sound reproduction was crisp and pleasant on the ears (pun intended).

An interesting and incredibly useful feature is the “HearThrough” ability – where the right earbud uses the microphone to allow background noise through so you can hear yourself and others clearly when speaking.

Call quality was probably one of the best I’ve experienced with headphones and earbuds – no doubt because Jabra is king when it comes to hands-free communications and commercial-grade comms. I wasn’t expecting great quality audio for those I was on the phone to considering the microphone placement, however, the audio was clear and crisp.

Jabra boasts an IP67 rating, meaning it can withstand being submerged in 1m of water for 30 minutes, whilst I didn’t really fancy putting this to the test, I did brave the shower. The tight fit of the earbud ensured I still go clear audio throughout, although I can only see this featuring being useful when caught in the rain or you get extra sweaty in your ears.

I managed to eek out about 3.5 hours of life from a charge, which isn’t quite a marathon for some but would cover most exercises. When not in use you simply put them back in the case, which provides up to another 2 charges before the case itself requires charging. A bit of a faff, but does mean you can charge them on the go.

Conclusion

I went into this review a little apprehensive, as this is Jabra’s first set of wireless earbuds and the fact that they had been combined with a heart rate monitor, microphone and IP rating, means there is a lot that could let it down.

Performance

All negative emotions were quickly dismissed once I had set up the earbuds and starting piping music to them – the biggest factor for me was the quality and I was impressed at the sound coming from such a small driver. Whilst it didn’t have the richness you’d get from fully fledged headphones, the bass was deep and the highs and mids crisp – perfect for most genres. Naturally, the call quality was also superb but I wouldn’t expect anything less from Jabra considering their background. Of course, if you don’t find the audio perfect yourself, you can tweak the EQ yourself in the app.

The paired app is fantastic for those that are really into their fitness, with the ability to monitor nearly everything about their exercise and paired with the fact that the heart rate monitor is fairly accurate, means you had solid readings to analyze your work out. I did notice that the app drained my phone’s battery somewhat – caused by the constant GPS use to track my routine – I couldn’t find a way to turn this off without disrupting the main functionality of the app.

Battery life is pretty good, although at 3-4 hours, you may not be able to run a marathon, it would be sufficient for most fitness activities. The charging case is also good for another two uses, although you would have to charge that up also. Unlike other wireless earbuds, the charging case cannot be used to charge any other devices – quite a few other brands allow you to do this.

Design

Whilst I love the fact that Jabra has crammed so much into such a small earbud, some could say they are a little large – they do extrude somewhat from the ears, but don’t look anywhere near as silly as some other wireless earbuds. I do feel like I am out of a Sci-Fi series, but the snug fit and portability get me past that and I suspect it will for most also.

Value

Price: Now, at £229.99 (at time of review) these could be considered expensive, but if you have a moment to think about what you are getting (which is a great deal), you would quickly change your mind. Bearing in mind Apple AirPods is £159, but not perfect by all means, you get better audio quality, more features and a comprehensive fitness app, then it is priced about right.

Overall I am incredibly impressed with the Jabra Elite Sports. Whilst they may not be that visually appealing to some, the performance and features far outweigh the limited battery life and price point. For these reasons, I’m giving the Jabra Elite Sport our gold award!

Jabra have released the first wireless Bluetooth ear buds that also contain a heart rate monitor - how do these unique ear buds perform? Find out now. Introduction Ever since Apple announced that the iPhone 7 would no longer feature a 3.5mm audio jack and instead would launch wireless earbuds called AirPods, the wireless headphone and earbud market had a massive leap in sales*, resulting in Apple taking a large slice of the pie.

[wepani]

(P)REVIEW: CASIO EX-FR200 Action Cam

Editor’s Note: It should be known that this (p)review was conducted a while back with a pre-release version of the camera, but we still wanted to get the info out there. The full-on version, with fully cooked software, is now available, and we’ll hopefully get around to reviewing the whole shebang sometime soon!  

Third time’s the charm.  

CASIO has released the third installment of their EX-FR modular outdoor “action” camera series with the new EX-FR200. Unlike last year’s incremental EX-FR100 (released after 2014’s inaugural EX-FR10), however, the FR200 brings two big new features into play that should revolutionize the lineup and finally give the series a practical leg-up over the competition that the previous two didn’t quite deliver.  

[RELATED] MINI-REVIEW: CASIO EX-FR100 Outdoor Recorder REVIEW: CASIO EX-FR10 Action Cam (GALLERY; VIDEO)  

180° and 360° video and photography...  

...are growing in popularity, and with two of the biggest social networks, Facebook and YouTube, now supporting 360° images and video, in addition to the push for consumer VR in the Android and gaming PC markets, there have been a number of solutions popping up for creating 360° content. On the high-end, it generally involves expensive, multi-camera rigs; on the consumer side, the focus has been smaller, easy-to-use devices that necessarily sacrifice overall quality.

Enter the EX-FR200  

In the most simplistic terms, CASIO has essentially taken the EX-FR100 body and slapped a massive 185° lens on it (...okay, so there is a bit more to it, but that general idea is on-point). They have also expanded on the previous model’s ability to communicate with devices beyond its dedicated controller - so a single controller can now connect with two cameras.

When combined with their 360° mount and CASIO’s EXILIM 360 video stitching software, the consumer space has gained an affordable multi-camera setup, which should provide a seamless, end-user friendly, camera-to-social 360° capturing experience. We say “should provide,” because at the time we got to play with the pre-production version of the EX-FR200, the camera was pretty much sorted, but the software was still in development, and as a result we had trouble taking full advantage of the device and the content it produced.  

Taking it around the block:  

The camera itself is robustly built, but the massive protruding lens is vulnerable and should be kept capped whenever not in use. It’s fully weather-sealed and withstood our unscientific, running-around-in-a-typhoon weatherproofing test. It carries over the same controller as the EX-FR100, with its responsive and bright 3-inch touch screen. Most options are fairly easy to access, though the exposure compensation requires a few too many steps.

Image: CASIO  

It sports a 1 / 2.3-inch CMOS backlit sensor, resolving 21 megapixels, but due to crop factors, lens aspect ratios, etc., stils are limited to 12 megapixels, which keeps it in line with higher-end smartphones. The EX-FR200 also shoots stills at 3888 x 3888px in 180°, 7456 x 1864 in panoramic mode, and 3232 x 2424 in super-wide-angle mode.  

It can shoot in full 180° in standard 16:9 aspect ratio wide-angle, a panoramic 4:1 aspect ratio, and Instagram-friendly 1:1 videos at resolutions ranging from 4K UHD down to 640 x 480. depending on the framerate you choose. The EX-FR200 can shoot slow motion at 120 and 240 fps in 720p and 480p, respectively. Driving all of this is the same HS.V3 EXILIM imaging engine as the EX-FR100, though it appears to be optimized well for the new lens setup.  

Some Test Video:

VIDEO

In testing, the video quality was significantly better than the EX-FR100, which is good news as this iteration will likely be used for video far more than it’s predecessors were. When shooting 1080p or lower resolutions, there is the option to use electronic image stabilization, and like the FR100 it comes in two levels. Unlike the FR100, however, the first level is quite usable; the second level still reduces the quality enough that the stabilization is negated.  

In 180° mode and super-wide-angle 4K mode, not only is there no image stabilization, the camera doesn’t output imagery to the remote so you can’t effectively frame your shots. The extreme width of the lens means you’d definitely get what you want in the shot, but after you set it up and hit record, you’re just winging it.  

Actual 180° and 360° footage is decent. It can’t compare to multi-million-yen professional multi-camera rigs, but in the consumer space, it’s a real step up from the Ricoh Theta and Kodak Pixpro SP360. It will be interesting to see how it compares with the Nikon Key Mission 360.  

Some Test Stills:

Quality-wise, the 185° lens will of course result in softness toward the edge, so overall image quality takes a bit of a hit, which is to be expected. For the super-wide-angle, standard aspect ratio images, it is degraded further as it appears to be cropping the sensor to get the correct field of view. It’s on par with the 1st-generation EX-FR10 (MORE), which wasn’t bad, but if you care more about overall photo quality than you do about the 180° FOV, you’d be better off with the EX-FR100 (MORE).  

Some 360° Test Video and 180° Stills  

When paired with a second camera, the EX-FR200 can also take full 360° images and video, or it can be paired with the EX-FR100 for different creative options, whether that’s self-shooting, picture in picture, or just capturing different angles of the same subject.  

None of this would mean anything if you couldn’t use what you shoot, and to that end, CASIO has drastically improved the way in which users can interact with their images and videos through the EXILIM album app for both android and iOS, as well as their EXILIM 360 app for Windows.  

In the final versions of the software, the mobile app can collate what you’ve shot into galleries based on when the images and videos were shot and automatically processes the spherical 180° media for panning views. Users should also be able to share images or sections of the images from the app. However, we weren’t able to test this fully because the pre-release beta software we had wasn’t fully ready for use. (Editor’s Note: That software is now fully-baked, and we’re hoping to get our hands back on another EX-FR200 to put it to the test.)

VIDEO

Additionally, there is an  EXILIM 360 PC and Mac app that not only lets people view their 180° media, but also exports videos and photos from CASIO’s spherical format to the current web-standard cylindrical 360 format used by YouTube and Facebook (the kind that allow users to view and pan through 180° and 360° content on social media). The software can also stitch together footage from two linked EX-FR200s for full 360° images. Thus far we’ve only had one EX-FR200 to play with, so we couldn’t test the quality of full-360 and see how well the stitching process works.  

Here and in the following, comparing how the EX-FR200 captures images, and how they work after exported from the EXILIM 360 software for uploading to Facebook.

We had better luck with the EXILIM 360 software, though sadly only after we’d have to return the camera, so by the time we could see how the 180°footage looked when processed, it was too late to then go out and shoot to to the camera’s strengths, fully review the EX-FR200’s  imaging capabilities, and produce content with it beyond random snapshots.  

Verdict:  

Despite the (admittedly pre-release) software issues and our inability to use the camera as fully as we’d have liked, My impressions were positive. Where the first two were nice concepts, what set them was their unique form factor, which only appealed to a niche audience. Adding 360° functionality now catapults it into a much broader market which has a lot of growth potential. And with most solutions either having very bad quality images in easy-to-use devices or good quality footage from expensive rigs with complex post production workflows. With the EX-FR200 CASIO has a chance to find a happy medium that can allow users to capture decent quality 360° media at a more reasonable price point.  

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