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Blackvue DR900S-2CH Dash Camera Fails To Reliable Connect To WiFi

Blackvue DR900S-2CH Dash Camera Fails To Reliable Connect To WiFi

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I recently, (APRIL 2020) had a Blackvue DR900S-2CH Dash Camera installed in my car.  Everything about this device is quite good except it would fail to reliably connect to the cell phone WiFi.  I quickly found the solution.  I use an Android LGV30 phone.  I went into the cell phone settings and chose Network & Internet portion settings.  All I had to do was to turn Mobile Date Off.  Then the BlackVue cell phone application held a solid connection when I chose the BLACKVUE WI-FI menu selection on my cell phone.  I even drove around a while with my cell phone showing the live front dash camera signal.

Caution:  I did find a possible problem with turning off Mobile Date.  I drove over to Starbucks to buy a drink and I always pay using my cell phone Starbucks application in the phone.  Every time I open the Starbucks cell phone application I must choose “Scan in store”, a small sub menu option.  Pressing that small menu button then presents a new screen that the Starbucks people can scan to take money out of my account.  It would not work.  Was this because I turned off Mobile Data?  Or did I loose Internet?  I was forced to pay cash!  If this happens to you, just turn Mobile Data back on.

Just to check other cell phone menu options out:  I went into the sub menu of Mobile Data, after Network & Internet.  By pressing on that menu selection, “Mobile data”, I found two sub menu items:

  • Mobile: You can scroll down and view all the applications using mobile data.  BlackVue is one of them.  There are two on/off buttons you can choose.  I turned on both Background data and Unrestricted data usage.
  • Wi-Fi:  You can scroll down and view all the applications using mobile data.  BlackVue is one of them.  There are two on/off buttons you can choose.  I turned on both Background data and Unrestricted data usage.

Other Settings: 

  • Special Access > Modify system settings:  BlackVue showed “No”  (I have no opinion for this setting except to say that it was set to “No”.
  • Special Access > Wi-Fi Control > BlackVue “Allowed”  Allow app to control Wi-Fi.  It looks like you had better turn this on if not on already.
Wedding Shoot Video Idea For Better Audio.

Wedding Shoot Video Idea For Better Audio.

A friend of mine called the day before the wedding and asked if I could video tape their daughter’s wedding.  The main point of this post is to make you aware of an option I used that I think most people would overlook.  I used a Panasonic PV-GS500 camcorder that I had not used for years.  It would be my cover camera mounted to a tripod behind the audience that was set for a close up shot of the bride and groom.  I also brought a Nikon D5300 with an add on Rode VideoMic a shotgun camera microphone that easily connects to the camera shoe and the cable connects to the side microphone connector.  I hand held the Nikon and used it for good cut away shots to enhance the production.  I also brought a Tascam DR-05 digital recorder.   I had  absolutely no idea if I would use it or not.  I typically mount this on top of my Nikon and I have the adapter kit to do this which allows me to monitor the audio with headsets.  The Tascam is good for close in work as its pick up pattern is broad.  For this event, I chose the shotgun instead for the tight pick up pattern  and not the Tascam.  The Rode was hooked to the top of the camera and took the Tascam recorder along with no clear reason as if I would use it.  My point for this blog post is that I really was saved by taking the Tascam with me.   When I got to the wedding I realized that they had a sound system.  Right in front of one of the speakers was a palm tree with all kinds of woody protrusions from being pruned, perfect for hanging my Tascam audio recorder.  The recorder was right in front of the speaker.  The problem for me is the audio is unlocked with any video thus only offered me wild sound but its recording speed was as good as the cameras.  Once I got it locked in the editing software, it should not drift.  The minister for the wedding was given the PA system microphone so I now had audio much closer to the action.  I started  the recording about 10 minutes prior to the service beginning so the Tascam recorded the whole ceremony.  I walked away with a master audio track that was way better than from my two cameras.   Because my cover camera was behind the audience and picked up rather lousy audio and my Nikon was used to do insert shots only, I now had a bed of pristine audio that I now needed to insert properly timed video.  An argument can easily be made that the audio for a wedding may be just as important or even more important than the video.  After the wedding ceremony was over the wedding party went into the banquet room to eat and dance, I also used the audio recorder there.  I hung the recorder form one of the speaker stands.  I was not given an agenda so I had no idea that the father of the bride  was to give a speech as well as the best man.  Both people held the house microphone so I had fantastic audio of the people who were the talent.  If you have to record a wedding with video, you might also consider doing an unlocked audio recording from the sound system.    The pain will be when you edit and have to synchronize the video with the audio.  I really recommend Adobe Premier for this.

European Trip Photo Mistakes and Correct Decisions

European Trip Photo Mistakes and Correct Decisions

I took my first trip to Europe, June 2014.  We traveled to Amsterdam, Germany and Austria.  The Germany and Austria part of the trip was with Trafalgar Tours.  I really was looking forward to taking a lot of pictures and short movies.  Being my first trip to Europe, I had no clue what to do and not to do with a whole lot of issues.  Here is my good and bad list:

Correct Decisions

  • I decided to buy a new Nikon camera body, D5300, instead of using my Nikon D3000 or buying a D7100.  The D5300, for me was a perfect vacation camera.  The pixel resolution blew the socks off of the D3000.  It also was perfect for quickly switching between still and motion picture.  The one problem I did have was that in motion picture mode, I learned that I had to t use still image to focus and then switch over to motion picture, otherwise, shots were out of focus.
  • I agonized over whether to take a telephoto lens.  My daughter and a friend recommended not taking one because if I shoot high resolution images I can very often crop which results in a zoom in with Lightroom.  This was a perfect decision because I found very few times that I really wanted to use a telephoto and the Lightroom crop seemed to work most of the time.
  • Taking a 64 GB SD card and never deleting any images off that card was really smart.  I also had a 32 GB SD card that I had to use because I shot over three thousand images in two weeks.  I also took a Macbook Air with an external 1 TB hard drive.  I downloaded all my images to both computer and hard drive so I would have three copies of each photo image.
  • The GPS feature supplied with the Nikon D5300 really attracted me because I just love new technology.  For some of my photo shoot I did turn GPS on.  It really drains the battery.  I now wished I had turned it on all the time.  The reason is that I am using Lightroom Photoshop 5.  This program has a Map tab which shows you approximate location for each of your images.  I took over three thousand photographs.  Let me tell you that I had a real mess on my hands trying to figure out where each image was taken.  The Map feature really speeds up the catalog process.

For Your Consideration

  • I purchased a SD card wallet and never used it.  If you decide to take a bunch of SD cards with you that are small in memory size, this might be necessary.  I put my backup SD card in my travel wallet.  An Australian friend that was on the trip with us had the view that you use small SD cards in case one goes bad, you are not out a lot of images.  I just did not want to deal with managing different SD cards so i went with 32 and 64 GB cards.
  • I had just purchased a Tamron 17-50mm F2.8 lens from a friend for a very good price.  This lens was for a full frame chip so it had a slight magnification factor.  This meant that it was not as wide angle as you would suspect.  The lens was faster than my kit lenses and a bit wider angle which really helps.  I really recommend that you take a wide angle lens that is fast, meaning it lets in a lot of light.  During any tour, you most likely will be in some dark places and most museums will not allow flash.

Mistakes

  • Turning on the date and time was a huge mistake on my Nikon D5300.  Make darn sure you set the time zone and set the correct time when you arrive in the country that you are visiting if you use date time stamp or not.  You really want the metadata to be accurate.  Then double check the time that appears in a test image with the local time.  If you need to turn date time on for some reason, really understand where the date time stamp will appear in your images and you can not easily remove it,  Seriously consider widen out your shots enough so this information is below peoples feet, below statues base, below the bottom of buildings enough so when you go into Lightroom, you can crop the date time stamp out of any shot.  My daughter found a Photoshop solution for removing the date and time stamp and she plowed through most of my images removing that flaw.
  • Not checking my images and movies at the end of the day was a serious mistake.  When shooting movies I held my lens cap with the same hand as the one cradling my lens.  The cap made a ticking noise when it hit the side of the lens.  I also had the tendency to not hold my camera level.  A good example of this can be seen here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9_ttkq22ig

The above video was shot full wide angle and I did not use the tilt screen but shot totally wild, meaning that I used NO viewfinders.  What was nice about this method  is most everyone that saw me with the camera did not know I was doing a video .
  • Not realizing that my Tamron 17-50mm F/2.8 lens would not easily and smoothly zoom in and out during filming was a real disappointment.
  • Not taking pictures of each person on the tour and identifying them during the trip really added hours of research time when I got home.  When I got back, it took me days of looking at my images and blowing them up to read the name tags.   I still have not identified all the people on the tour.
  • Leaving my second camera battery at home was really stupid.  I had to buy a new backup battery in Germany.  Because I turned on GPS, shot a lot of images and took a lot of movies, a single battery was not enough.
  • I tried to take pictures of all the people taking our tour with us but some individuals really did not appear in most of my shots.  I really need to improve upon this in any future tour.
  • For some reason, I failed to understand the name of some of the places we visited.  I later found out that our tour itinerary did not adequately identify some of the places we stopped at.  I really recommend that you use GPS and shoot images of building names and street corner signs when possible.  My wife took really terrific notes and this helped to identify some of the places we visited and particular shots taken inside museums.
Fantastic Nikon Single Lens Reflex Camera Magazine

Fantastic Nikon Single Lens Reflex Camera Magazine

I was utterly blown away with The Ultimate Nikon SLR Handbook 2014 “magazine” that I found at Barnes & Noble book store (April 2014).   It is published by Zino.  The stunning magazine images and graphics coupled with concise explanations, for me, simply works in a most astonishing way.  I could not believe that in one page of image and text that some complex photographic concepts could be simplified so nicely.  The Nikon SLR cameras are not all that simple to operate because they are full of features that help us tackle aspects of getting better images.  And on top of the camera complexity one should understand the science of light, the technology of lenses and camera operation of shutter speed, ISO, and a host of more factors.   All this is a bit more daunting for most of us to comprehend so finding a simplified explanation is most appreciated.  The more you understand the science behind the various factors that one needs plug into proper camera operation, so as to move away from the AUTO mode, the better but it can be a bit difficult to wrap you mind around the technology to achieve better results.  This magazine moves you forward toward using shutter or aperture priority shooting.  This magazine really speeds up our minds comprehending the science, the steps to operate your camera for better images, and tips on how to properly frame or compose your images.  The price is $29.99 but it is simply worth every penny.

Update: December 7, 2017, This magazine comes out periodically and each edition shows the year and volume number.  Because I reviewed only this single issue, I leave it up to you to put value to more recent volumes.