This video is sponsored by Squarespace. This one is weird. I'm going to tell you right up front, it's a head scratcher. This is more of a let's talk about technology rather than a specific review of this camera and you'll probably see why as we go through this video.
This is the Yong Nuo Micro Four Thirds camera. The YN455. It came out in 2021 so it's positively brand new by Micro Four Thirds standards and as you may notice it is attached to an Android phone.
There have been a few devices like this over the years, probably most recently the Alice camera. And we've also got even some from Lumix with the Lumix CM1, which is a little bit older now. And I'd probably say like the Olympus Air is one in this camp as well, where you just literally have to attach a phone for it to work. It's a sensor on a stick. And of course, Samsung Galaxy have a couple of these devices as well over the years.
But... There are very few, if any, that I can think of that is a dedicated phone that has a micro four-thirds sensor. And that's why when I heard about this device, I was like, please let me just try it.
Please let me try it. It's so weird. It's so cool. It's right up my street.
So why the heck do these devices even exist? In theory, I suppose it means that you can take the photo, edit the photo, share the photo, and check your emails, I guess, all on one device. So in theory I understand, I think it sounds like a great idea.
But in practice, is it more like we're reinventing the wheel with these sorts of devices? I mean there's been loads of iterations of them over the years and not one of them has really stuck. Is it a case of just because we can doesn't mean we should? Well, after having used this Yongnuo device for a couple of weeks now, I think maybe... I had grand designs of making it my only device for a week and I lasted about half a day before it didn't become practical.
But let me tell you more about it. So first of all the build quality is utterly brilliant. I was so surprised when I got this in my hand. There's a lot of engineering and a lot of quality that's gone into this design and the screen is huge. It's a three by five inch screen so bigger than some external monitors that you can buy.
So the large screen makes for a decent ish android experience and also great for monitoring yourself when you are filming slash pew pewing however this device is blooming hench it's 40 grams heavier than the om1 for example so pretty much like one of the largest micro four thirds cameras on the system this is 40 grams heavier i saw in a review that someone described this as a brick with buttons and i'm just like that makes so much sense it makes it makes so much sense And it is a 20 megapixel with an asterisk that I shall explain momentarily, micro four-thirds sensor. And for the phone slash Android device we have on paper some good specs as well. It will take a SIM card, though there's no way to make calls, but you can use it for data and text, which means in theory you could live stream from this device anywhere you have signal. It's Android 10 so it's not the oldest version in the world, it's pretty much modern enough to run anything I've thrown at it.
The Achilles heel of these devices like the beloved CM1 which I think is Android 5 is once your Android becomes out of date, apps stop being supported, it becomes a paperweight. So we're starting all right with Android 10 on this young new device. There's 64 gig internal storage and you can add your own micro SD slot as well and there is a mic input and a headphone jack for your audio needs and yes the camera has autofocus.
It does. It does have autofocus in the sense that it does have autofocus. Is it the worst autofocus I've ever used?
Quite possibly. Terrible, right? Shockingly bad. I have to press the red button again because the show button doesn't work. And that's just...
oh my god. But it's there. Points for trying.
And the battery is even removable. On the Alice camera this is a little bit of contention with this device because there is no removable battery. So removable storage, removable battery, very well thought out for the user.
So is it the best autofocus in the world? No. Is it the worst autofocus in the world?
Quite possibly. Is the device hard to hold when you're using it as an Android device? Yes. Is it massive if you're using it as a camera? Also yes, so the amalgamation of these two things coming together, it does take two separate experiences that would otherwise be good and make both of them slightly worse.
That confused face of the shot right there. It was a genuine confused face. I was trying to figure out how to change my aperture. It's fine, it's just four clicks deep in the app.
It's what you need. And I think not to bash this device too much because I am so here for camera innovation. Give me all of the weird cameras. Make cameras weird again. I just feel like this has got so much going for it.
There's so much that could work brilliantly, but it does just feel like a first generation device at the moment. I am excited to see where it goes in the future, but there are quite a few things to iron out until then, which I shall go through shortly. So good stuff. This device is powerful enough to run Lightroom.
So you can take a photo, edit it in Lightroom, share it on Instagram. You can run Instagram on this thing. You can take photographs and put them straight on your Instagram stories, which I have done a few times over the last month.
You can run all kinds of apps. In fact, everything that I've thrown at it, it's done fine. Even Filmic Pro.
for video which is more of a pro user app. It's a good Android experience and the Play Store is built in so yeah it works great. So in theory having a Micro Four Thirds sensor stuck to Lightroom sounds like music to my ears.
That sounds amazing but in practice how does that actually play out? Now this is not my first rodeo. I know when I get a device like this that I need to write headache day in my diary when I'm about to set it up. Here are some headaches.
that I've navigated for your viewing pleasure. So there's no way for me to add something to my stories live because I'll have to press and hold the button to keep it recording. Seems like a little bit of an oversight.
Okay, back to the drawing board. So this is what it would sound like in a video scenario. I've got the 17mm Olympus lens and I think I've connected the audio correctly. There's no way to monitor the audio on this app.
As you can see, the rolling shutter, even with the slightest jitters, is a little bit inclement. I was hoping to demonstrate a live stream but yeah, technical difficulties. This is what it would look like if you were shooting handheld on the Yongnuo. You'd get better results on a tripod, definitely. I just hope I'm in focus because there's no focus peaking on the default app.
Yes, this camera has a 20 megapixel sensor. However, you can only access it in the default app. In every other app, like Lightroom Mobile for example, it will only give you 16. megapixels. And yes, this camera can shoot 4K video, but there is no stabilisation to speak of, and the rolling shutter is the worst I've used on any device in existence. It even creeps into the photography if you're walking, or even if you're not walking.
The rolling shutter is quite something to behold. And yes, there is a shutter button, but it doesn't work in the video button of its own app. It doesn't work in third-party apps. and it doesn't work on Instagram Stories. As I may have established that the autofocus is a little bit pants, manual focus is an option but there's no focus peaking in the default app.
So we go to a third-party app, I found ProShot had focus peaking but that only has a 16 megapixel output and doesn't shoot RAW and it can't use the shutter button. I thought another great use case for this device because I do like sharing time lapses on my Instagram Stories at the moment, I've been using the DJI Pocket 3. is I thought what a great thing to do I could just shoot some time lapses on the Yongnuo and then I've already got Instagram installed so I can just pop them straight online. I tried 10 different time lapse apps and every single one gave me an output like this.
So there's something going on here I don't know what it is but it's not usable for time lapse at this time and also at this point in testing well into my headache day I realized that my phone can shoot time lapses. And it's smaller and it has autofocus and it's connected to Instagram and it shoots raw and it's got more than 20 megapixels And it's even foldable so I can use it as a stand While I take photographs, it seems like a lot of fun off to wind up back where you started. These things already exist and they're in everybody's pocket.
Adorably there is also a back facing camera as well. I don't know the purpose of this because imagine buying this device and using that camera. I mean why? Why? Why would you?
So yeah that's a thing that exists. Another discovery much more positively is that Yongnuo actually make micro four-thirds lenses and they're a couple of generations in now and they have autofocus and they seem really really good quality. I have got a 17mm f1.7 unfortunately it's quite a bit larger than the Olympus equivalent but in terms of image quality it's lovely and then we have the 42.5mm f1.7 as well.
I had no idea that Yongnuo even made lenses so I'm well chuffed. This is good. They're very affordable and they're really good quality.
I'm going to be giving away some copies of these lenses as part of my photo contest so subscribe for that if you'd like to get involved. It's free and free stuff and cool stuff is always up for grabs. So before I turn this into a roast, there are some great things about this camera. As I say, it's a gen 1. I can't wait to see where this line of cameras is going to go.
For photography, it was quite fun. I took it for a little photo walk around Liverpool and it was fun. The AF.
caught me out a few times and I missed a few shots and sometimes I took a few photographs of the floor which was nice but on the whole it did the job. It was interesting, it was a bit bulky, it was fun and sometimes I've noticed in, I don't know if it's just the raw files or just a characteristic of this camera but I find that there is a lot of weird stuff going on in the shadows sometimes in these images. Even in broad daylight some of them are quite noisy which is unfortunate so maybe the JPEGs will render better.
Unfortunately there is no... JPEG plus RAW way to shoot so I can't categorically say that but yeah the RAW file's left a little bit to be desired to be honest. The experience of changing settings in devices like this is something that I'm growing to severely dislike.
I don't like tinkering in apps. There's only one device in my mind that's made the touchscreen and the sort of hybrid experience really nice and that's the Leica T-Type 701. and that has a really big widescreen touch screen on the back but it has dials as well so you get this beautiful sort of best of both worlds where you can touch screen and everything's really user friendly but you do have dials look at this as a side by side if i wanted to change the shutter speed on the young nuo camera this is what i needed to do versus a more traditional camera you see what i mean for day-to-day shooting it's quite a novel experience i do like the idea that i can take a photo faff with it in Lightroom and upload it. I do like that I can stick a sim card in that and do that anywhere in the world but you could also do all of those things with, say it with me, your phone.
I'm not convinced that the image quality is improved over a phone because this is where this thing all falls apart. The reason that phones are brilliant at taking photographs is loads of computational features like noise reduction. and stabilization to balance it out for longer exposures and HDR and things like that. If you could have those computational features with a larger micro four-thirds sensor, this is where the magic would happen and this is where these devices start to make perfect sense. However, there isn't the app support for it.
There just isn't yet. I'm not saying there never will be, but it's just not there. So what you get is all the bells and whistles with your small sensor on your camera phone, or None of the bells and whistles and a semi-crippled experience with a larger sensor if you use this sort of device.
And it's a shame because having that noise reduction and all the stuff that your phone can do on a larger sensor would be so powerful. But it's not there yet. It's just not there yet. These are the kinds of devices that shoot for the stars and in reality they barely get off the ground and it's unfortunate.
Live streaming could genuinely be pretty cool. You could stick it on a tripod, lock off the autofocus, you could have a wireless microphone, you could broadcast to anyone in the world via social media. That's pretty cool. However, there are a lot of devices that can do that, like your phone, like a tethered Osmo Pocket.
There's a lot of competition in that arena and this may not necessarily be my first choice, even though it would be pretty good for it. So what about low light? I took one or two low light images versus my phone just to see how things panned out and without stabilization, without the computational features, it's... it's... have a look.
So I... is it any better than a phone? Maybe not. And all the way through this I would like to point out that I have the Galaxy Fold 5 which is an atrocious camera so I'm not even comparing this to a good camera phone. Headaches aside, jokes aside, criticisms aside, I don't want you to take away from this video that it's just a failed experiment because I think...
It's the first step on a long journey. I do think once things get ironed out and improved and next gen, next gen, next gen, these devices could be really interesting. I'm not quite convinced it's here yet, but that's not to say Yongnuo have done anything bad with this device. I just think it's suffering from the first gen nature.
I think there's a Mark II that's been announced, so I'd be very excited to see where this progresses. Me, as always, I live in hope. I think this is a few iterations and a few killer apps away from being a very exciting product. Otherwise just as an interesting piece of tech it's been fascinating to have a stab with it and really interesting to to see a quirky camera because so many cameras these days are very very similar and it's nice to see a company do something a little bit out of the box even if it's weird and possibly flawed in many ways. I've mentioned my photo contest once or twice in this video and I run that and all of my website through Squarespace who are the kind sponsor of this week's video.
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