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So the day finally arrived and my T5e is here! It took a long time to get here but I expected that considering it was being shipped from China. The package made it here in good shape. I of course tore into it to see my new prize. The camera looks almost identical to my gopro3 size factor wise. Had a very nice feel to it with a rubberized feel to the plastic that gave me a nice grip. I love the screen as it was both bright and crisp. Considering the low price point on this, I was pleasantly surprised by that.
The next thing I did was of course work my way thru the menu and have to say there are a lot of choices. I think ThiEye should have considered a layered menu and divided it up into maybe 3 or 4 sub-fields just to save some time but that isn't really a big deal and I am always happy to have the option of controlling functions so it is a good trade off. The two options I wish they would add would be 1)low light mode which would lock the framerate so it cant slow that down to compensate for low light. 2)digital zoom mode to allow for full view or cropped view options like other cameras have. I realize it is something that can be done in editing but it would still be a handy option to have. Hopefully ThiEye will consider adding those two options in a future firmware update or I might see if I can find a hack to get the options.
Next I had to at least test the camera out so did a couple sample photographs and shot a 1080px120 video just to see if they both work. Inspecting the resulting images... the video was captured in 1080px119fps and the image was listed as size stated. I will post up some samples later after I have a chance to tweak the settings and see how they look in direct sunlight but to just comment on first impressions... the images were fairly crisp with the expected softness around the edges. In default settings, indoor images were nice although with a bit exagerated contrast which to be fair... just about all the camera makers do that these days and I am confident that minor tweaks to the settings will improve the already nice pictures.
Just comparing default settings with my gopro3, I would have to say the edge sharpness would be about a wash. Both showed the expected softness and slightly exaggerated contrast. Now as for video mode... it is no contest. The T5e beats the GoPro hands down. I wont go in depth on the T5e since I have just started to get to know it but I will say I do like what I see so far. I plan to put the camera thru its paces this weekend and will post up more of my findings. I will close by saying I am impressed by what you can get for $115 these days. My GoPro cost me over $300 when I bought it and it doesn't have nearly the capability of this new camera. I think we live in a great time to be a camera enthusiast. The gear is becoming smaller, better and faster while price keeps dropping.
The next thing I did was of course work my way thru the menu and have to say there are a lot of choices. I think ThiEye should have considered a layered menu and divided it up into maybe 3 or 4 sub-fields just to save some time but that isn't really a big deal and I am always happy to have the option of controlling functions so it is a good trade off. The two options I wish they would add would be 1)low light mode which would lock the framerate so it cant slow that down to compensate for low light. 2)digital zoom mode to allow for full view or cropped view options like other cameras have. I realize it is something that can be done in editing but it would still be a handy option to have. Hopefully ThiEye will consider adding those two options in a future firmware update or I might see if I can find a hack to get the options.
Next I had to at least test the camera out so did a couple sample photographs and shot a 1080px120 video just to see if they both work. Inspecting the resulting images... the video was captured in 1080px119fps and the image was listed as size stated. I will post up some samples later after I have a chance to tweak the settings and see how they look in direct sunlight but to just comment on first impressions... the images were fairly crisp with the expected softness around the edges. In default settings, indoor images were nice although with a bit exagerated contrast which to be fair... just about all the camera makers do that these days and I am confident that minor tweaks to the settings will improve the already nice pictures.
Just comparing default settings with my gopro3, I would have to say the edge sharpness would be about a wash. Both showed the expected softness and slightly exaggerated contrast. Now as for video mode... it is no contest. The T5e beats the GoPro hands down. I wont go in depth on the T5e since I have just started to get to know it but I will say I do like what I see so far. I plan to put the camera thru its paces this weekend and will post up more of my findings. I will close by saying I am impressed by what you can get for $115 these days. My GoPro cost me over $300 when I bought it and it doesn't have nearly the capability of this new camera. I think we live in a great time to be a camera enthusiast. The gear is becoming smaller, better and faster while price keeps dropping.
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