The Next Wacom Cintiq for Designers, Illustrators and Photographers

Wacom has announced its latest Cintiq display tablet. These devices are, and always will be aimed at creative artists looking to go beyond using their trusty iPad for design or photography. Yes photography, too.

Image credit: Wacom. Wacom Cintiq 16

I’ve been a bit of a fanboy of Wacom for years. A dear friend of mine got me into the Intuos devices to replace the mouse on my computer. It really does make things easier for me with regards to photo retouching. Later, I got my hands on the Cintiq line because I was interested in having the actual display at my reach. I LOVE it. Especially for working on headshots in post. So of course when I got wind of the latest Cintiq becoming available, I spoke with the Wacom team for more details.

Streamlined look and feel

Wacom announced two new Cintiqs for creative artists. The Cintiq 16 and 24. Both of these sizing options are great as it allows the device to be an easy fit in most workspaces. The form-factor is thinner and lighter further advancing the portability of the Cintiq line. Not to mention, the footprint has improved.

Image credit: Wacom. Wacom Cintiq 24

You can now lay the Cintiq flat on your desk space as you would an Intuos. This gives you the feel of actually drawing on a smooth sheet paper or a sketch pad. If that’s not your preferred way of working, you can still opt for a tilt angle on your desk with the foldable feet on the Cintiq 16 or the foldable stand on the Cintiq 24. Whatever works best for you. You can also utilize the integrated VESA mount option on the rear of each Cintiq if you’re interested in mounting these devices onto third-party monitor arms. I’ve done this before and it can be quite handy as an additional monitor for day-to-day computing.

Other tech specs

Each device will utilize the Wacom Pen Pro 3 stylus. The 2.5K screen resolution is beautiful with anti-glare etched glass. The Cintiq 24 also offers touch mode if you’re into using your fingers in addition to the Pen Pro 3 stylus.

The updated Cintiq line will be available this summer with a starting price of $699 for the Cintiq 16 and $1299 for the Cintiq 24.

Boyamic2 Wireless Lav Mic is a Budget-Friendly Option for Creators

A few weeks back I began playing around with a set of wireless mics sent to me by the team at Boya. It’s the Boyamic2 Wireless lav. Let me be straight with you; initially I didn’t have much interest in this mic set because there isn’t much one can say about mics. But of course the buzzword of AI was thrown into the description. So I took a look for kicks and giggles at the very least. I’ve not been the biggest fan of the label “AI” getting slapped onto EVERY DADGUM PIECE OF TECH today. Most of the time it’s a bunch of bunk that’s not very helpful or useful. Just marketing buzz. Well, I can’t say that in the case of the Boyamic2.

Boyamic2 lavalier mic

Like most wireless lav mics today, you get a pair of mics (transmitters) and one receiver to capture the sound. The receiver allows you to pipe the audio into your camera or smartphone. Just use a TRS cable or a dongle. Pretty easy to use.

Boyamic2 lavalier and receiver

Boyamic2 lavalier and receiver

Nothing new here. So what’s the deal with this mic?

So Boya has touted having much better noise-cancelling in these mics to help provide a better listening experience. Granted, one must also consider other recording variables with a bold statement like that. Variables such as mic placement, what the actual ambient sound is, where the ambient sound is coming from, wind and more. In my testing, the environment was pretty tame. Some wind here and there, but even with that in consideration, the Boya2 did offer pretty effective noise cancellation on the fly with its AI.

But I have to give some additional credit. Even without the active noise cancellation activated, the mics do a pretty nice job with picking up the audio you actually want instead of the whole environment. Here’s a screenshot of room tone captured by my professional, studio mic - the Heil PR 40*. Notice the room tone is coming in at about 1kHz in the spectral display. And I mean BARELY at that because you can barely see the purple color in the spectral display.

Now take a look at the Boyamic2 in the same room with the same spoken word. It’s doing a really great job as it barely capturing room tone at 2kHz in the spectral display. So yeah, credit where credit is due.

The Boyamic2 is available now online* with competitive pricing. As previously mentioned, they’re very easy to use with either your camera of choice* or your smartphone. The key is you’ll spend a lot less time in post-processing trying to clean up your audio for your podcast or other content.

*Affiliate link used. Affiliate links allow me to earn a small commission as a content creator if you purchase items using the affiliate link. Thank you for your support.

Canon Announces Its C80 Cinema Camera

On the heels of announcing its flagship camera and update to its popular portrait camera, Canon has announced another update to its cinema camera product line with the C80.

image credit Canon USA

This is an update to its C70 cinema camera that I really enjoyed. The update includes a few big changes and a pretty solid price. The C70 has a Super-35 sensor. The C80 has a full frame sensor. The C70 topped out at 4K resolution. The C80 tops out at 6K.

image credit Canon USA

A couple of years ago I talked about the C70 and its prowess. It definitely gets the job done for cinematographers, but it did have limitations when it came the Super-35 sensor. One being the crop factor as well as the difference in depth of field. I guess Canon took the hint from creators about this.

Other tech specs include two recording codecs, XF-AVC S and XF-HEVC S. Oh and yes, you can still shoot Canon RAW. I’m curious to know how the battery performs. Canon has had a bit of an up-and-down-and-up reputation when it comes to battery life on some of its cameras. I also wonder if the media slots are still SD card slots or now CF Express Type B. No mention of this in the press release.

UPDATE - The camera does have dual SD card slots. With that said, I recommend using V90 cards* for high resolutions and framerates.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get my hands on one of these Cameras, but I’m curious. I love the form-factor and the fact that it’s now full frame. More information on the announcement can be found on Canon’s site here.

*Affiliate link used. Affiliate links allow me to earn a small commission as a content creator if you purchase items using the affiliate link. Thank you for your support.

Building Your First DaVinci Resolve Node Tree For Color Grading

On my recent Creator Office Hours, I shared my understanding and workflow when it comes to coloring video footage in Davinci Resolve. Yes, I’m a proud Adobe Creative Cloud user and still use Premiere Pro* for video editing, but I also use DaVinci Resolve. Not to mention, I wanted to share this because not everyone can get Adobe Premiere Pro, but DaVinci Resolve is free with plenty of useable tools in its free version. So here’s a Creator Office Hours session with an overview of building out your node tree for color correction and color grading. Hope it helps you. Thank you for watching and thank you for being in my Patreon community.




*Affiliate link used. Affiliate links allow me to earn a small commission as a content creator if you purchase items using the affiliate link. Thank you for your support.