You wanna see something pretty wild?
Check this out.
[slow, intense music]
♪
Let's get Undone.
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
Hey! How's it going? I'm Gerald Undone,
and today we're gonna talk about
a new product called the OBSBOT Tail.
This is an AI-powered camera that debuted at CES this year
and just launched on Kickstarter a few days ago.
That's January 2019,
for those of you watching this video in the future.
Now, I'm not a huge proponent of Kickstarter
because I don't really like the uncertainty of it,
and that's why I don't really
talk about Kickstarter products much on this channel.
I prefer to discuss products
that offer important solutions at a great value,
and because the pricing for this unit
isn't fully determined yet,
it's nearly impossible to do that.
However, I will put links for OBSBOT's Kickstarter page
in the description below in case you want to support them
after watching this video, but just keep in mind
that there are risks with any Kickstarter campaign,
and I don't have a close enough relationship
with the company to personally vouch for them.
That being said, though,
my experience with the company was pleasant,
and their presentation, service,
and even the fit and finish of the review model they sent me
all lead me to believe that
they're definitely gonna make an honest go of it.
OK. So, what the heck does it do?
They're branding it as an "auto director" AI camera,
suggesting that it's like having your own director
to track, expose, and record your movement
without having to do anything yourself.
Although that's not really the job of the director,
so, to be nitpicky, they should have called it
the "Auto Camera Operator" or "the AI Cameraman."
Anyway, the notion is that you can just set it somewhere
and the camera will follow you across 360° on a 3-axis gimbal.
The gimbal applications are skateboarding,
kids playing, and dancing videos.
And I can see how that would make sense.
There's probably quite a few people
that would enjoy making instructional videos,
or would just like to share their activities
where they can't be paying attention to the camera,
and also where a static angle just wouldn't do it justice.
Dance is a great example.
You could just set up the OBSBOT
either on a flat surface,
because of its grippy-ringed heavy base, or on a tripod,
because there's a 1/4"-20 thread on the bottom
then you just start recording,
which you can either do using the smartphone app
or by making a gesture at the camera: the "OK" sign.
The camera will then automatically
and intelligently start tracking.
Now, if there are multiple subjects and you want to choose
which one you wanted to track or if you want more control
over the tracking, again, you can set that up using
the smartphone app, or again, you can do it with a gesture.
If you just raise your hand like this, open palm,
it will identify you as the subject to be tracked.
So, in theory, you don't actually need
the smartphone app at all, which is kind of cool
because sometimes I complain that devices these days
require phones too much in order to be able to use them.
This one, I guess, really doesn't,
because you can set the tracking
and start and stop recording with just hand gestures,
and then you can offload the footage
by just taking the microSD card
out of the camera and popping it into your computer.
It's this part that the camera gets so incredibly right.
The tracking is fantastic and it's very easy to use.
You can establish your target in different framings
up to 20 meters away--
you know, whether you want full body or just the upper torso--
and it succeeds surprisingly well
at distinguishing your subject from other people and objects,
even if you're moving between and behind them.
Now the app does allow for more customization
of these functions, like the use of grid lines
to compose the shot and tell the AI
where you want the subject to exist within the frame.
Then when you resume tracking, it will try to keep the subject
in the quadrant that you suggested.
I really like this inclusion.
I found it to be quite useful and very well-executed.
I can't really go too far into the app at this time
because it's still very much in development.
The hardware I'm told, however, is pretty much complete,
so we're just waiting on the app.
It'll be available for iOS and Android,
and it's currently slated for the end of April.
I've tested it on both platforms,
and it performed pretty similarly for me
as it currently stands.
Although this is probably a good opportunity to list
some of the things that I'd like to see fixed
or included in the app, since we're at a phase
where something can actually be done about it.
I imagine they're aware of some of these things already,
but here goes.
First up, disabling the smart features appears to be bugged.
If I turn them off, they just turn themselves back on again.
Now, locking the gimbal works, but right now
I don't see a purpose for the other toggle
because it seems like it just always turns itself back on,
and the AI seems to always be initiated.
That's something you need to keep in mind about this camera.
If you're the type of person that likes to compose shots,
this camera will drive you crazy.
Every time you set something, it then makes an adjustment.
You zoom in, it zooms back out a little bit.
You frame the shot but then you move your head,
it reframes the shot to follow your head.
It's definitely 100% set-it-and-forget-it camera.
It does that well
but it's frustrating to operate it conventionally.
Same goes for exposure.
It has a method of automatically metering
that I don't think makes a lot of sense.
It averages areas of your scene
that should otherwise be ignored, in my opinion,
which can sometimes cause the subject to be overexposed.
And if the whole purpose of this camera
is to track a subject, then the metering
should be heavily biased toward that subject.
Take this shot here, for instance.
See how overexposed my face is,
but the shadows in the bottom corners are exposed for?
But if I block those dark areas like this,
then my face gets a lot better.
And if I show them again then my face gets worse.
The metering should be adjusted to address this,
or maybe add a function in the app that allows you
to choose your metering options between, say,
just the tracking box or the entire frame.
Another issue I have with the app as it stands right now
is there's no pro exposure settings.
You can't adjust your shutter speed or your ISO.
There isn't even a basic exposure compensation.
At the very least, there needs to be
an exposure adjustment slider so that you can compensate
when, say, something's blown out.
Now, it connects fine. It uses Wi-Fi.
It's really intuitive, the device just sort of hosts
its own Wi-Fi network and soon as you turn it on,
you just find it in your Wi-Fi, tap on it,
and then you're connected once you go into the app.
But the problem was that when I looked at the files
that were transferred to my phone, they were only 720p.
But when I looked at the ones on the card,
they were definitely 4K. So, it does record in 4K,
but it doesn't seem to put the 4K on the phone.
Now, my guess is that this is to be efficient for space
and for speeding up the process,
and also maybe for saving bandwidth
if these files are intended for social sharing,
but I would prefer to have the option
of choosing which resolution I would like to send
if I had the time to wait for the 4K.
And speaking of direct publishing,
there are other creative control aspects in the app
that some people might enjoy.
For instance, you can set it up to slowly
and continuously zoom in and out or roll left and right.
There's also beauty filters and colour filters,
and I can see the purpose of these
if you're planning to upload straight from your phone
and you wanted to put a little bit of a fun look on it.
And they worked fine in my testing.
I just don't really care that much about them
and I kind of found them to be a little bit gimmicky.
One thing I can say about the experience,
including using the app is that everything
is very quick and snappy.
And this is likely a result of this camera essentially
being a computer and not requiring your phone to do
as much work as some of the other products do.
This device has a decent amount of computing power
and does allow for some impressive feats,
but there are some cons that go along with that.
First of all, it's noisy.
It has an exhaust fan that makes
close audio recordings pretty much a non-starter.
My test package included this little microphone,
because yes, this camera does have a mic jack
right here along the bottom.
But because of the pickup pattern
of the microphone and the proximity to the exhaust fan,
it sounded like I was recording inside of a server room.
Using more focused microphones
and having the microphone further from the OBSBOT
will obviously help with this issue,
but it's still noticeable.
You might be surprised how loud this is.
[whirring]
[softer whirring]
Of course, this is a non-issue
if your only intention is to put the footage to music,
which I imagine is a large segment
of their target customers.
The processor also allows for 4K60 recording currently,
as well as future implementations
of features like HDR10 and digital noise reduction.
Now, in terms of camera hardware,
it's using a Sony 1/2.3 sensor, so the same sub 1/2 inch
sensor size you'd find in compact point-and-shoots,
the Osmo Pocket, many drones, and GoPros.
And the lens is a 4mm to 14mm f/2.4 to f/5,
and you're looking at around a 5.3x crop factor.
So, you're gonna get an equivalent field of view
to a full-frame 21mm to 74mm lens,
but with a much deeper depth of field.
So, it does suffer from that, "Everything is in focus,
but everything is kind of soft," look
that many of the action cameras have.
Its ISO range is from 100 to 3200,
but again, that's not manually adjustable in the app
as it currently stands,
so that's more of just its auto ISO range.
And like many other tiny-sensored cameras.
ISO 3200 is quite noisy.
But I encountered some other issues with low-light shooting,
or just with changing light intensities in general,
when shooting with this camera.
This is definitely not a vlogging camera.
While it does produce very steady shots
thanks to its gimbal, its weight, and the AI,
it doesn't perform very well when changing environments
or just walking around through various lighting conditions.
The weight, by the way, is 610 grams--
so 1.3 pounds-- thanks in part to its hefty battery,
which doesn't seem to be easily replaceable by looking at it.
And the battery is rated for three hours at 1080p,
but expect less life when using 4K60 or intensive AI tasks.
Anyway, like I was saying, changing environments.
It would appear that there's a combination
of exposure adjustments that take place whenever the light
available in a scene changes,
and often the effects of these adjustments
are not favourable.
In this studio, for example, as I showed you earlier,
it lowers the shutter speed in order to raise the shadows
in the corners, but that causes my face to be overexposed.
Then there's also these pretty intense ghosting artifacts
whenever I move, which is worsened by the fact
that the camera's trying to whip around to keep up with me
whenever I do move, and you can see, like,
a trail of myself because the shutter speed is so low.
And, also, the whole image is just kind of softer
during motion because of that lower shutter speed.
Now, in much brighter environments,
the image is a lot sharper, and the ISO is also lowered
so you're gonna get better dynamic range.
And that ghosting thing goes away
because everything's just a little bit
sharper and more precise.
But by comparison to the softer, slower image,
it almost seems too fast and is a little bit harsh on the eyes.
Now, as separate, individual scenes,
whether bright or dark, this can still be workable
if you have time to set up and make adjustments,
but if you transition between those environments,
like a vlogger might,
what you'll see instead is colour shifting,
extreme white balance adjustments,
motion blur changes, and fluctuations in detail
that make the softer shots look too soft,
but even the sharper shots look way too sharp when juxtaposed.
And transitioning from front-lit to backlit
leads to terrible reproductions of skin tones.
So, when it comes to image quality, it varies.
It can look really good, better than the competition,
when the scene is ideal,
but it can also look much worse than the competition
when the scene isn't. Even when the scene is ideal
and the image is nice and sharp,
it still suffers from improper metering,
which can create blown-out highlights,
and the inability to control the shutter speed
makes for suboptimal motion blur.
And these are all things that are kind of important
when it comes to tracking motion,
especially since you're not always gonna have
the opportunity to create
a perfectly lit environment on the fly. So, I'm torn.
While I do think that these issues could be easily remedied
by allowing for more control over exposure in the app
or by changing the way that the metering works,
I'm not sure that adding more manually controlled features
really helps support the camera's intent
of being "Set it and forget it."
I do hope, however, that this video helps
the manufacturers tweak the product a little bit
to hopefully overcome some of these issues,
because I do think the tracking in this camera
is quite remarkable,
and I can totally see it being the best solution
for someone who wants to film a moving routine by themselves
without having much knowledge of cameras,
as long as that person is willing to sacrifice
some image quality to get that impressive tracking.
But now I'd love to know what you guys think.
Are there other applications for this product
that you can think of
that might have slipped under the radar?
On Kickstarter right now, it's about $500 US.
Do you think at that price point, it's a good solution
for someone to self-film their interests with?
Are there any other features you'd like to see implemented?
Let me know any and all of that in the comments below.
But that's gonna be it for me. I hope you found this video
helpful or entertaining. If you did, make sure
you leave it the old thumbs-up and consider subscribing
if you haven't already.
But if you did not find this video helpful or entertaining,
feel free to hit the dislike button twice.
Alright... I'm done.
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